At Astrobiotech Event, Sanford Stem Cell Institute Celebrates 18 Launches of Space Research

The Case for Space

The GABT Hub was founded in 2023, shortly after SSCI’s 2022 inception. Featuring six independent yet interconnected centers and one program, SSCI aims to catalyze critical regenerative medicine research discoveries made on Earth and in outer space, developing them into novel therapeutics for people who need them most — patients with conditions like cancer, epilepsy, spinal cord injury, Alzheimer’s disease and rare disorders like Rett syndrome.

Scientists are still learning about the distinctive properties of space, including microgravity and elevated levels of radiation. Such conditions create a uniquely stressful environment that mimics an accelerated version of aging and disease progression on Earth. Depending on the experiment, one month in microgravity can give researchers a preview of a few years, if not more than a decade, of maturation on Earth. This allows them to quickly see how a patient’s cells might age or how a medical condition might manifest with time. It also gives them a quick preview of how a drug might work long-term on a patient’s cells — whether a cancerous tumor or a miniature organ created from stem cells.

The fact that cells age faster in space “allows us to create better models of age-related conditions here on Earth,” said Alysson Muotri, PhD, director of SSCI’s Integrated Space Stem Cell Orbital Research (ISSCOR) Center. Thanks to grants and generous donors, ISSCOR has funded the launch of 15 of the institute’s 18 research payloads (sets of scientific experiments) so far — nine from Muotri’s lab and nine from Jamieson’s lab. Muotri funded the launch of his first research payload himself in 2019, sending the first brain organoids to space, via SpaceX CRS-18, and inspiring the launch of ISSCOR.

Muotri’s brain organoid technology — created from induced pluripotent stem cells, usually derived from skin or blood cells — mimics a fetal brain. The ability of microgravity to quickly age cells has so far given him the ability to observe and experiment on such miniature models matured to childhood — a feat not currently possible on Earth, given the brain’s relative inaccessibility while patients are alive.

“Where else can you get older, living human neurons to test potential treatments on?” he said. “Right now, there is no model on which to test possible drugs for neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s. We think brain organoids aged in space provide a valuable opportunity for this.”

Enabling Human Health in the Cosmos

Inspired by the landmark NASA Twins Study, research from Jamieson and Muotri has shown that time in space can put humans at increased risk for age- and inflammation-based disease, including cancers and cognitive decline. Both researchers’ work explores not only how microgravity and cosmic radiation can be harnessed to the benefit of humans on Earth, but how such factors might elucidate the risks posed to astronauts — “crucial knowledge as space travel becomes more common and, eventually, extended,” Jamieson said.

SSCI, however, cannot make such discoveries alone. For one, its research payloads need to hitch a ride to the stars. This requires partners like Axiom Space — which facilitates private astronaut missions to the International Space Station (ISS) and is developing one of the world’s first commercial space stations — and Vast, which is also developing a commercial space station and was recently tapped by NASA to facilitate the United States’ sixth private astronaut mission to space. Just as importantly, the institute needs funding (enter grants from NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the ISS National Laboratory) and special equipment to facilitate experiments in microgravity (created by SSCI space implementation partners like Space Tango).

These entities, united by the GABT Hub, have enabled SSCI’s lengthy track record of successful research payload launches, including milestones like:

• Sending the first hematopoietic stem cells to space, in 2021, via SpaceX CRS-24.
• Sending the first Rett syndrome brain organoids to space, in 2022, resulting in FDA approval of a clinical trial of a repurposed drug for the disorder in 2025.
• Sending the first Alzheimer’s disease brain organoids to space, in 2023, via SpaceX CRS-29.
• The first FDA approval of a clinical trial of an anti-cancer ADAR1 inhibitor — based partially on data collected from tumor organoids aboard the ISS — in 2025.

Such progress is critical for everyone — not just sick patients in need of additional therapeutic options, Jamieson said.

“We’re all going to be patients someday,” she said. “One in three of us will get cancer — and we really want to strike at cancer before it’s cancer, in the pre-cancer stage. But we’ll all get some sort of degenerative disease that’s likely stem-cell derived. That’s why SSCI is really proud to be able to not only develop new therapies but run clinical trials.”

SSCI intends to launch its 19th and 20th research payloads — from the Jamieson and Muotri labs — this spring.