Speaker 1: Pushkin. One subject we've discussed from time to time on
Speaker 1: this show is space outer space for obvious reasons, you know,
Speaker 1: Final Frontier, etc. Another subject we've done a bunch of
Speaker 1: episodes about drug research, figuring out new and better ways
Speaker 1: to make new medicines. Also for obvious reasons, it's high
Speaker 1: stakes life or death innovation. Today we're combining those two subjects.
Speaker 1: It's a show about drug research in space. I'm Jacob
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Paul Reiker. He's a research scientist
Speaker 1: at the drug company Merk. Paul's problem is this, how
Speaker 1: can you run experiments in space to make better drugs
Speaker 1: on Earth. To be clear, Paul has not gone to
Speaker 1: space himself, but over the past thirty or so years,
Speaker 1: he has sent tubes full of proteins and drugs up
Speaker 1: to space, first on the Space Shuttle and more recently
Speaker 1: on rockets to the International Space Station, and he's instructed
Speaker 1: astronauts on how to carry out dozens of experiments in space.
Speaker 1: One of Paul's more recent experiments looked at a common
Speaker 1: type of drug called monoclonal antibodies. Monoclonal antibodies are used
Speaker 1: to treat cancer, among other diseases, and they're currently very
Speaker 1: time consuming and very expensive to deliver, and what Paul
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out was a cheaper, faster way
Speaker 1: to deliver those drugs. We'll talk about that experiment later
Speaker 1: in the show. Paul specializes in crystallization, basically getting molecules
Speaker 1: to form crystal structures, and crystallization is important in the
Speaker 1: drug business in a few ways. For one thing, it's
Speaker 1: really important for study the molecules that drugs target, and
Speaker 1: for another, crystallization plays an important role in the process
Speaker 1: of manufacturing drugs. So to start, I asked Paul, what
Speaker 1: are the reasons for going to space to do crystallization experiments?
Speaker 2: Okay, one is the obvious. One is sedimentation. We all
Speaker 2: see astronauts floating in space. So when you go grow
Speaker 2: crystals in space, they too remain suspended in space as
Speaker 2: they grow, and this suspended particle then has an opportunity
Speaker 2: then to grow more perfect than it would if it
Speaker 2: was sedimenting, dropping in the solution as it was being formed.
Speaker 1: So on Earth, when you're trying to do this you
Speaker 1: have this problem, which is the particles sync to the
Speaker 1: bottom like whatever correct coffee grounds in a cup or something.
Speaker 1: But when you're in space, you don't have that problem
Speaker 1: because there is no sinking and there is no ground.
Speaker 2: Right. And the second property we'd like to take advantage
Speaker 2: of is that molecules move more slowly in space. So
Speaker 2: processes that involve adding molecules to say, like a crystal,
Speaker 2: the molecules have a chance then to be discriminate to
Speaker 2: get the best molecule fit within the crystal lattice.
Speaker 1: So okay, so now we know why space is a
Speaker 1: good place to really you're trying to form crystals fundamentally, right,
Speaker 1: it's a good place to cause molecules to crystallize for
Speaker 1: the reasons you articulated. I don't want to do all
Speaker 1: thirty years of your working on crystals in space, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's like a moment from the kind
Speaker 1: of early Space Shuttle era, like what was one kind
Speaker 1: of important early finding you had from your work on
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle.
Speaker 2: I have a interesting but very sad story to say
Speaker 2: about that. One of the last flights we'd Space Shuttle
Speaker 2: flights that we did was STS one o seven. That
Speaker 2: Space Transportation System one O seven and that was Columbia
Speaker 2: went up in January two thousand and three, and we
Speaker 2: were trying to grow large crystals suitable for structural studies,
Speaker 2: and I uniquely had the opportunity since one of the
Speaker 2: people in our team was retiring, so we got to
Speaker 2: go to the to the launch site of Columbia. The
Speaker 2: night before launch, we went one hundred and thirty feet
Speaker 2: up in the air onto a scaffolding, up into the
Speaker 2: top of where the nose of the shuttle was, and
Speaker 2: it was it was cold, freezing cold. Little did we
Speaker 2: know but the next day, upon launch, a frozen chunk
Speaker 2: of that solid rocket booster would fall and hit the
Speaker 2: wing of Space Shuttle Columbia, and that, upon re entry
Speaker 2: two weeks later, would cause the breakup of Columbia over Texas.
Speaker 2: There was a debris field over sixty three miles for that.
Speaker 1: And the death of the astronauts right, just yes.
Speaker 2: So NATS at that point decided that they would focus
Speaker 2: on doing building the International Space Station and no longer
Speaker 2: spend time with secondary projects like this. About three four
Speaker 2: months after this disaster, I got a call from NASA
Speaker 2: and said we found some of your bottle. I flew
Speaker 2: one hundred small one mL bottles and they said, we
Speaker 2: found a few of them. Would you like to come
Speaker 2: down and take a look at them? So I said yes,
Speaker 2: So I go down to the shuttle reconstruction site. They
Speaker 2: had this dedicated site there and I found three vials
Speaker 2: and within those three bottles there were crystals, and those
Speaker 2: crystals when we did the X ray diffraction study, diffracted
Speaker 2: better than any crystals we had ever seen before. So
Speaker 2: one of my great honors in my life was about
Speaker 2: three months after that, NASA asked me, would you be
Speaker 2: willing to talk to the families of the astronauts and
Speaker 2: tell them about the results of your experiment. So it
Speaker 2: was a great honor for me to have this opertunity
Speaker 2: to hopefully give some consolation to the to the families
Speaker 2: about you know, we did get some science from this
Speaker 2: and give them some relief in their suffering.
Speaker 1: And what are the practical implications of having crystals that
Speaker 1: diffract really well? Why is that meaningful?
Speaker 2: It allows you to see the intimate contacts that are
Speaker 2: made within the protein to design the better small molecule
Speaker 2: drugs that are in complex with those proteins. So one
Speaker 2: of the interesting things was is that the crystals that
Speaker 2: grew from that experiment was from an impure sample. We're
Speaker 2: actually looking at it for purification, and one of the
Speaker 2: impurities in there was zinc. And basically found that the
Speaker 2: reason why the crystals diffracted so much better than what
Speaker 2: we had previously seen before is because there was a
Speaker 2: zinc in between two molecules of interferon stabilizing it, allowing
Speaker 2: it to have a really stable form. So that was
Speaker 2: something that was I have to say that, you know
Speaker 2: a lot of microgravity research, you're really at the basic level,
Speaker 2: and you gives you an opportunity to really change the
Speaker 2: way you think because you're so focused on, you know,
Speaker 2: very simple steps in that process.
Speaker 1: You could see the protein more clearly than anyone had
Speaker 1: ever seen it before.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So that was the key finding.
Speaker 1: So okay, so we get so we get, you know,
Speaker 1: now into well into the twenty first century here and
Speaker 1: there's this new class of drugs, monoclonal antibodies, that are
Speaker 1: very powerful drugs, but they're very hard to deliver, right,
Speaker 1: and this is a problem you're working on solving. So
Speaker 1: tell me about the problem with delivering monoclonal antibodies.
Speaker 2: Okay. The issue is is that still to this day,
Speaker 2: most monoclone antibody therapeutics, which are given for a range
Speaker 2: of different modalities from cancer to cardiovascular disease to effective diseases.
Speaker 2: They've really revolutionized the way pharmaceutical research has been going on. Okay,
Speaker 2: so they are very good drugs. However, in the case
Speaker 2: of oncology patients especially, they have to get an infusion
Speaker 2: every three weeks and this is usually in the hospital setting.
Speaker 2: So this is an all day affair not only for
Speaker 2: the patient, but usually a caregiver that's accompanying their patient
Speaker 2: who's taking time off from work to go for these
Speaker 2: effusions every three weeks and usually a therapy could go
Speaker 2: as long as six months to a year. So this
Speaker 2: is a tremendous impact on both the patient and the
Speaker 2: caregiver and it adds.
Speaker 1: To the expense right, non trivially. It's more expensive just
Speaker 1: because it takes more labor on the side of the
Speaker 1: hospital or the infusion center. It's a complicated, expensive, time
Speaker 1: consuming process.
Speaker 2: It's about half the cost of the delivery of the drug.
Speaker 2: Is this infusion all right, So we are looking at
Speaker 2: opportunities to make crystalline suspensions So one of the let
Speaker 2: me take a step back and say one of the
Speaker 2: issues with making well, why don't you just make a
Speaker 2: high concentrated liquid formulation that you can inject?
Speaker 1: So the issue is to be clear, Just make it
Speaker 1: be a shot, like getting a flu shot or something
Speaker 1: fast and easy.
Speaker 2: Right. So the problem is that in the liquid form okay,
Speaker 2: as you increase the concentration, it becomes thick and more
Speaker 2: difficult to inject. So I don't think most people would
Speaker 2: enjoy getting an injection that may take five to ten
Speaker 2: minutes of time in order to get the same dose
Speaker 2: as you would in infusion. It would be extremely painful.
Speaker 2: Patients would not accept that kind of a delivery system
Speaker 2: of pain pain over a long period of time. Let
Speaker 2: me put this way. So we decided to look at
Speaker 2: there was some evidence that high concentrated crystalline suspensions are
Speaker 2: lower in viscosity than the comparable liquid formulations. Okay, So
Speaker 2: we went about looking see if we could crystallize monoclonal antibodies,
Speaker 2: and we had success with one monol anti monoclony antibody,
Speaker 2: and ultimately we hit discovered conditions for crystallizing pambrolasm app,
Speaker 2: which is a active pharmaceutical ingredient for one of our oncology.
Speaker 1: Drugs, and so you're studying it on Earth right, trying
Speaker 1: to understand if you can get it into a crystal
Speaker 1: structure so that so that it could be given as
Speaker 1: a quick injection rather than as a long infusion. What's like?
Speaker 1: What's why? Like, you're going to go to space. Spoil
Speaker 1: the story. You're going to go to space. You're going
Speaker 1: to send something up to space to study, But why
Speaker 1: did you try and do it on Earth first? And
Speaker 1: did it work?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? It works? The question is can you make it better?
Speaker 2: We always like to come up with the best therapeutic
Speaker 2: that we can deliver that has, you know, the stability
Speaker 2: and properties that we're looking for in a final product.
Speaker 2: And then second to that, we're always looking at opportunities
Speaker 2: to improve the manufacture of our drugs, possibly reduce cost
Speaker 2: and then have a more stable formulation. For example, one
Speaker 2: of our goals would be to show that the a
Speaker 2: crystalline suspension, since it's inherently more stable. Does that allow
Speaker 2: you to take a monocle antibody drug that is stored
Speaker 2: in a refrigerator to now be allowed to be stable
Speaker 2: save for six months at room temperature, and therefore that
Speaker 2: has a big impact on the number of patients globally
Speaker 2: that can treat.
Speaker 1: So then if it could be a shot that is
Speaker 1: stable at room temperature, then that opens up a lot
Speaker 1: of the developing world that right now is frankly just
Speaker 1: doesn't have the infrastructure to deliver refrigerated infusion drugs.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: Do you just call up NASA and say, hey, NASA,
Speaker 1: it's me, I want to send something to the space station.
Speaker 2: No, that's not how it works. So let me take
Speaker 2: a step back and say that after the Space Shuttle
Speaker 2: Columbia broke apart over Texas, there was no microgravity research
Speaker 2: actively research going on to about twenty ten, two eleven,
Speaker 2: and the US Congress said, we built this station, we
Speaker 2: have this beautiful laboratory in space, and it's being underutilized.
Speaker 2: So they set up a nonprofit called the Center for
Speaker 2: the Advancement of Science in Space and allowed them to
Speaker 2: manage science on the International Space Station. So about twenty
Speaker 2: eleven twenty twelve, somebody from CASES reached out to me
Speaker 2: and said, would you be interested in doing some microgravity research?
Speaker 2: Come up with a proposal.
Speaker 1: That's a nice call to get yes, And so you
Speaker 1: proposed this crystallization research on a monoclonal atta body and
Speaker 1: they say yes, and what happens?
Speaker 2: All right, So we were at this time was the
Speaker 2: early stages of where SpaceX, the Falcon nine rockets were
Speaker 2: starting to deliver their Dragon module to resupply missions to
Speaker 2: the International Space Station, and we got manifested in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen to crystallize a monoclone at a body.
Speaker 1: Manifested in this context, it's not some new age tournament.
Speaker 1: Means you got put on the list of stuff that
Speaker 1: gets to go up there.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what it means. You know. It was basically
Speaker 2: these are all the you know NASA terms. You know
Speaker 2: you're manifested, you know. So we always do the same
Speaker 2: experiment on ground that we do in space.
Speaker 1: Altimatically as a control control.
Speaker 2: And not only that, we usually do it in triplicate
Speaker 2: to ensure that, you know, it's not a one off
Speaker 2: or something that's not you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're sending one of them all the
Speaker 1: way to space, you might as well do three on hearth.
Speaker 2: We do we well, we do three in space too.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, so that it's not in of one.
Speaker 2: One at least you can show reproducibility that this is
Speaker 2: a real uh you know, find that you have.
Speaker 1: And so so it goes up on a Falcon nine rocket,
Speaker 1: it gets to the space station. Are you involved as
Speaker 1: it's happening, Are you like talking to the astronauts on
Speaker 1: the phone?
Speaker 2: I am. That's a good question. Usually there's there's a
Speaker 2: NASA person that's talking directly to the astronauts while they're
Speaker 2: activating our experiment. And I can actually watch by video
Speaker 2: and I can send messages through cases through NASA, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, to you know, if I see anything that's so.
Speaker 1: You're like texting the astronaut they're like wait, wait, no,
Speaker 1: turn it the other way or what like, what is
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 2: That's a that's a very good point we give. They
Speaker 2: have iPads that they use and there's very detail held
Speaker 2: instructions of the of the process that they're doing while
Speaker 2: doing these experiments. You've got to keep in mind that
Speaker 2: they're doing hundreds of experiments, you know.
Speaker 1: So they're astronauts on the space station. Presumably they're busy, right.
Speaker 2: They're they're very busy, and and you know, one of
Speaker 2: the things that's always impressed me is the is the
Speaker 2: fact that they're they're very uh focused, calm individuals.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's what you'd really want to optimize
Speaker 1: for in selecting an astronaut. Right focused is what I
Speaker 1: would hire for if I was hiring an astronaut.
Speaker 2: And they're curious too. They they they see their unique
Speaker 2: opportunity to impact science, and you can tell that they're
Speaker 2: enjoying what they're doing. You know, it's a I always
Speaker 2: found them to be extremely interesting people, you know, inquisitive people.
Speaker 1: In a minute, Paul's tubes come back from space and
Speaker 1: he gets to look at his space crystals. That's Paul
Speaker 1: how he gets the results of his experiments from space.
Speaker 1: Like what happens after his crystals come back.
Speaker 2: In the early days, the Dragon module would parachute down
Speaker 2: in the Pacific Ocean off of California, and there would
Speaker 2: be a tugboat that would go and would pluck that
Speaker 2: Dragon module out of the ocean. It would be two
Speaker 2: days back to the harbor and Long Beach and I
Speaker 2: would go there. And I always thought it was hysterical
Speaker 2: because if you were in Kennedy Space Center, there's so
Speaker 2: much security you can't get near or anything. When this
Speaker 2: boat gets to the dock, Long beach. They plucked this
Speaker 2: thing out of the water, put it up on a
Speaker 2: on a on a dock. They set up some folding
Speaker 2: tables and said, here's your here's your experiment.
Speaker 1: Here's your stuff. It's just like a yard sailor's stuff.
Speaker 2: Like picking up fish at the dock and they hand
Speaker 2: it over. And I would always be laughing hysterical as
Speaker 2: they would do this. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So you go, you walk up to the table, you say,
Speaker 1: those are my tubes. They give you the tubes and
Speaker 1: then what do you go look at them under a microscope?
Speaker 1: Like what do you actually do?
Speaker 2: We? We we take we take the experiments then and
Speaker 2: believe it or not. In the early days, we would
Speaker 2: just I was this was before that there was so
Speaker 2: many regulations about flying. I would have a cooler that
Speaker 2: I would keep and and carry the cooler back on
Speaker 2: the flight back to New Jersey. Then to do analyze
Speaker 2: the experiment.
Speaker 1: Like I just think it's a cooler full of beer
Speaker 1: or something, not your perfect crystals.
Speaker 2: You can't do that now.
Speaker 1: But by twenty sixteen, how are you doing it? On
Speaker 1: this particular one? It was twenty sixteen, right, what do
Speaker 1: you what do you'd actually.
Speaker 2: Do twenty sixteen. We flew one hundred one mL bottles,
Speaker 2: So these are all different connections conditions.
Speaker 1: Looking at one millter's tiny one hundred tiny little little bottles.
Speaker 2: And we get our experiment back and then we at
Speaker 2: that point the dragon was parachuting down in the Gulf
Speaker 2: of Mexico, and there's a helicopter that then picks up
Speaker 2: the Dragon module brings it to Kennedy Space Center and
Speaker 2: then within two hours I have the experiment.
Speaker 1: And so what do you see that first look, this
Speaker 1: thing's been up to space, it's been back. You look
Speaker 1: at it. What do you see when you look at it?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, these crystals that are extremely small. Sure, so
Speaker 2: it requires looking at the microscope, but since it's concentrated,
Speaker 2: we can immediately tell that what we sent up was clear.
Speaker 2: A clear liquid is now a paste, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, a white paste, and that looking at it
Speaker 2: closely on the microscope, we could see that there were
Speaker 2: crystals that were there. So what was what was unique
Speaker 2: about the SpaceX ten experiment that we did with pen
Speaker 2: roles am ab is. Remember the goal was to get large, big,
Speaker 2: single crystals. Well, we had one group of experiments where
Speaker 2: we got really really small crystals and a lot of them,
Speaker 2: And I said, what's going on? So the ground experiment
Speaker 2: comparable ground experiment had larger particles that were less homogeneous,
Speaker 2: so the overall population was more broad whereas it's more heterogeneous.
Speaker 2: It was correct. Yeah, okay, So we thought this would
Speaker 2: be an excellent opportunity to look at these two types
Speaker 2: of results and see whether it makes a difference. Are
Speaker 2: they less viscous and do they show better injectability properties?
Speaker 2: And what we found was is that the smaller particles
Speaker 2: that more uniform gave lower viscosity better rejectability properties.
Speaker 1: So that's what you want.
Speaker 2: That's what we want, and it was not where we
Speaker 2: were looking. We were we were up in the range
Speaker 2: of particles that were like ten to thirty microns, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden we had particles that were
Speaker 2: really small and they showed this result.
Speaker 1: So it's a prize. You didn't expect to get small
Speaker 1: small particles.
Speaker 2: Correct, right, huh. So what we did then once we
Speaker 2: got that result was we came up with processes on
Speaker 2: Earth that would mimic those results that we got in microgravity,
Speaker 2: and then we were able to get a high density,
Speaker 2: high yielding process from that.
Speaker 1: Huh, So is is the hope then that that this
Speaker 1: can lead to injectable versions not just of this particular
Speaker 1: monoclonal antibody, but of monoclonal antibodies more generally. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what you're working on next,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious in particular about how you've been inspired
Speaker 1: by an astronaut named Kate Robbins.
Speaker 2: She was a molecular biologist from Stanford slash astronaut, and
Speaker 2: I watch the video of her when she was in
Speaker 2: a mission twenty sixteen where she said she can take
Speaker 2: one personal item up to space. So she takes a
Speaker 2: pipetta up to space and she just starts moving liquids
Speaker 2: around the same way you do on Earth. And this
Speaker 2: just blew me away because all of my experiments that
Speaker 2: I had done before that were always in lock down hardware,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, with minimum conta.
Speaker 1: Like, the idea that somebody could be pipetting in space,
Speaker 1: to you as a sort of working scientist, is amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, if we could pipet up there, we
Speaker 1: can do anything.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, because up until that point we always felt as
Speaker 2: though we had to take processes that we did on
Speaker 2: Earth and then get them to Jerry rigged them to
Speaker 2: get the work in microgravity hardware. So that was always
Speaker 2: the issue. Okay. So when I saw you know, doctor
Speaker 2: Kate Rubens start pipetting in space, it opened it. It
Speaker 2: like blew me away. I was sitting in the audience
Speaker 2: and I was looking around and said, did you just
Speaker 2: see that? Did you just see what she was doing?
Speaker 1: Because what what does it mean to you when you
Speaker 1: see that?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What? What do you think? What does it mean to you?
Speaker 2: I mean what it says to me, and it may
Speaker 2: sound strange, is that you can you can do the
Speaker 2: same thing that Edison did one hundred years ago. So
Speaker 2: you can you can have a laboratory or a base, okay,
Speaker 2: and you can move liquids and you can play around
Speaker 2: with different things, and it just opens up, you know,
Speaker 2: a whole other world of opportunities for discovery, in innovation
Speaker 2: in real time. So one pipett of revolution in one
Speaker 2: pipet and one pipette.
Speaker 1: So what do you want to do with this new
Speaker 1: world of possibilities?
Speaker 2: So what we did internally here is we came up
Speaker 2: with our own three D printed hardware. Okay, so that
Speaker 2: we could mix liquids and then all the astronaut has
Speaker 2: to do is flip the switch and you can mix
Speaker 2: back and forth with the syringes, back and forth to
Speaker 2: get a homogeneous solution. So this gives you an opportunity
Speaker 2: to manipulate your experiments in space, you know, and do
Speaker 2: a wide range of different experiments.
Speaker 1: A lab in space the dream is a lab in space.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you really have an opportunity to play with things
Speaker 2: and to discover to me that you know, I'm a tinkerer,
Speaker 2: So that that's someone I'd love to play with different
Speaker 2: things and get surprises, and I think that's what attracted
Speaker 2: me to doing this type of research.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the Lightning round.
Speaker 1: Let's finish with the Lightning round. Do you think you'll
Speaker 1: go to space.
Speaker 2: Before you die? No? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: You want to go to space?
Speaker 2: I think if I was younger, I would want to
Speaker 2: go to space, but I think my time has passed.
Speaker 1: If I understand correctly, you've lived in New Jersey for
Speaker 1: all of your life. For most of your life. What's
Speaker 1: the most underrated Bruce Springsteen album?
Speaker 2: I'm not really into Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1: Is there another new Jersey artist of some sort who
Speaker 1: you want to praise this at this moment.
Speaker 2: Well, I just listened to an interview by bon Jovik.
Speaker 1: Hey are you more of a bon Jovi?
Speaker 2: Guys? Yeah, I would have more of a bon Jovi
Speaker 2: and and what impressed me is the is his interaction
Speaker 2: with trying to solve the homeless situation. And he does
Speaker 2: a number of charity concerts as well. And this really
Speaker 2: impressed me. I didn't know this that there was this
Speaker 2: side of bon Jovi.
Speaker 1: What's one thing you wish more people understood about space?
Speaker 2: That that it's it's uh, there's tremendous opportunity to discover
Speaker 2: new things taking advantage of what low Earth orbit laboratories
Speaker 2: could offer to improving human health.
Speaker 1: Is there some like dream study you would love to
Speaker 1: do in space, like if if you weren't constrained by
Speaker 1: lucious sticks or cost or something. Is there some intellectual
Speaker 1: question you have or a practical question you have that
Speaker 1: you would love to answer with a with an experiment
Speaker 1: in microgravity?
Speaker 2: It's that's an interesting question because I think that would
Speaker 2: require I would love to be, you know, an astronaut,
Speaker 2: even though I just told you I didn't want to be.
Speaker 2: I would love to be an astronaut and have the
Speaker 2: opportunity to tinker. I mean to have an opportunity to
Speaker 2: do a wide range of different experiments and and and
Speaker 2: you know, experience them firsthand, you know, and being allowed
Speaker 2: to do the second generation. Oh I found this. Wow,
Speaker 2: Why didn't I try this? Why do I try that?
Speaker 2: Why don't I try this? You know? I just love
Speaker 2: that process, and right now you don't have that opportunity
Speaker 2: to do iterative experiments. Yeah, so tinkering. I'd love to
Speaker 2: be able to tinker.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need like a remote control robot, right, you
Speaker 1: need a lab up on the space station with a
Speaker 1: robot that you can drive from like a joystick on Earth.
Speaker 1: I feel like that might do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be that would be a step forward.
Speaker 1: Yes, it seems not impossible.
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: Paul Record is a scientist. He works in the Department
Speaker 1: of Protein and Structural Chemistry at MERK. Today's show was
Speaker 1: produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by Lyddy
Speaker 1: Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Brugeir. You can email
Speaker 1: us at problem at Pushkin dot FM. I'm Jacob Goldstein
Speaker 1: and We'll be back next week with another episode of
Speaker 1: What's Your Problem.