The truisms that microgravity science and the ISS are useless will become falsisms if the Astrogenetix Salmonella and Mersa research projects lead to viable vaccines: Can vaccine breakthrough help cure NASA's ills? - Spaceflight Now.

A vaccine to protect people against Salmonella, a deadly bacteria that often contaminates food processing operations, is headed for human testing following commercial development in zero gravity on the space shuttle and International Space Station.

And

"We are very excited about these Salmonella results that would not have been possible had we not had continuous access to space to the iterative studies necessary," says Jeanne Becker chief scientist at Astrogenetix.

Update: See also this nice explanation by Jonathan Amos of the Astrogenetix work: Spaceman: Bugs, 'pineapple cans' and a commercially savvy ISS - BBC.

It will be quite a milestone for the ISS when the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Experiment (AMS-02) is finally delivered: Space Station Experiment to Hunt Antimatter Galaxies - SPACE.com

Here's an article discussing some findings made by a prototype AMS (AMS-01) flown on Shuttle Discovery in 1998: Moon dust not as strange as hoped - New Scientist.

Alan Boyle provides a nice overview of the prospects for science research on the ISS: Space station science revs up - Cosmic Log/msnbc.com.

The Astrogenetix vaccine work, in particular, is explained well and seems quite promising. Though, as with all drug development, there is a long road with many hurdles to leap before reaching an approved treatment.

My impression has been that despite the long period over which microgravity science programs have been supported by NASA, the total amount of actual work time in space has been very small. Here is an estimate of this:

"If I look back cumulatively over the past 25 years, at the opportunities that we've had on prior programs - believe it or not, we've only had the equivalent cumulatively of about six months of laboratory time in space," Uhran said. "Remember, those missions were only 10- or 12-day missions at best. But now, with a continuously operating space station, we'll surpass that in the first 90 days. In fact, we've surpassed it already with the space station in the assembly phase. That's why I say this is a real critical juncture that we're at."