Draper is going from the vastness of space to the confines of a cell

The secretive Draper Laboratory is perhaps best known for its work on getting people to the moon or crafting futuristic implements of death. But the Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit has been quietly investing more and more of its efforts into an altogether different technology: biotechnology.

As STAT’s Kate Sheridan reports, Draper has partnered with seven drug companies, most recently Bristol-Myers Squibb, to develop technology that would make it easier to determine whether investigational drugs are toxic.

Much of the work has focused on organ-on-a-chip technologies, handheld machines meant to simulate human biology. The idea is to allow scientists to test how their drugs might affect a given organ without the need for animal or human trials.

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