Astronauts’ medical needs are significantly different to many of our own, owing to their unique environment.

Unique challenges including disrupted sleep cycles, constant weightlessness, and radiation can all affect their health.

With space travel on the rise, and new explorations to Mars and beyond in the pipeline, how can we ensure astronaut’s health needs are met?

Ahead of the AI Drug Discovery Summit, we recently spoke to Marcin Von Grotthuss, Associate Director in Machine Learning, to understand how Takeda are leveraging AI/ML to accelerate the drug discovery process and meet these needs.

Can you give us an overview of the project you have been working on, and how you are leveraging AI/ML for drug discovery?

Crew health and performance are critical to successful human exploration beyond the low Earth orbit.

NASA investigates and mitigates the highest risks to human health and performance, providing essential countermeasures and technologies for human space exploration. These risks include unique challenges in medical support, human factors, and behavioral health support.

In this project, we apply ML/AI to predict genetic and non-genetic factors that predisposed astronauts to various adverse health and performance effects. And such predictive models allow us to make a reassessment of the progress in risk reductions.