The Boeing Co. and a nonprofit group called the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, have teamed up for the fourth year in a row to provide financial support for orbital entrepreneurship through the MassChallenge startup accelerator program.

This years three winning projects will split $500,000 in grants for experiments designed to be done aboard the International Space Station in microgravity, popularly known as zero gravity.

• Cellino Biotech aims to use its NanoLaze gene-editing platform on induced pluripotent stem cells on Earth, and then see how they proliferate in the space stations zero-G environment. Cellino says the technique could generate hundreds of millions of stem cells for cell-based therapy.

• Guardion Technologies plans to synthesize two-dimensional nanomaterials on the space station, for use in its miniaturized radiation detectors. Guardion says convection-free production in zero-G could produce higher-quality samples for the detectors, which check for potential radiological threats.

• MakerHealth wants to use the stations zero-G environment as a testing ground for its AmpliRx biochemical manufacturing platform. Experiments in microgravity should help the MIT spinoff optimize the material properties and geometries for the membranes used in its devices.

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