Space: The final frontier … for stem cells? Seattle’s Allen Institute for Cell Science says cells from its collection are going into space for the first time on a private mission to the International Space Station.
The Allen Cell Collection’s assortment of human induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPSCs, will be the focus for one of more than 20 experiments being sent into orbit on a flight organized by Texas-based Axiom Space. Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson will command the Ax-2 mission — Axiom’s second trip to the space station — and her crewmates will include Tennessee business executive John Shoffner as well as Saudi astronauts Ali Alqarni and Rayyanah Barnawi.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will loft the crew into orbit in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for what’s expected to be a weeklong stay on the station. Liftoff is set for Sunday at 5:37 p.m. ET (2:37 p.m. PT) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The fare for each rider on last year’s Ax-1 mission was around $55 million, and although the ticket price for Ax-2 hasn’t been announced, it’s probably in a similar range.
The stem-cell study is part of a series of NASA-funded experiments led by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. This experiment is expected to break new ground when it comes to growing IPSCs in space and modifying the cells’ DNA for therapeutic purposes.
Pluripotent stem cells have the ability to differentiate into almost any other kind of cell in the body, including heart cells and brain cells. Researchers have figured out how to reprogram ordinary cells — typically, skin cells — and induce them to become pluripotent stem cells. But there are still hurdles to overcome.
“A major challenge for using iPSCs for therapies in humans is making enough of them at very high quality,” co-principal investigator Arun Sharma, a biologist in the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, said in a news release. “We want to be able to mass-produce them by the billions so that we can utilize them for a number of different applications, including discovering new drugs that may be able to improve heart function.”
Stem cell production techniques have been improving, but researchers say gravity-induced tension may make it difficult for masses of IPSCs to expand and grow.
“Gravity constantly pulls these pluripotent stem cells toward Earth, putting pressure on them and providing a stimulus to start turning into other cell types, but in microgravity that effect will no longer be there,” said Clive Svendsen executive director of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and co-principal investigator for the experiment. “When the stress of gravity is not there pulling on the cells, we want to test whether they grow faster, have fewer genetic changes and remain in the pluripotent state.”
The IPSCs from the Allen Cell Collection carry a gene that has been edited to make parts of the cells glow when illuminated by specific wavelengths of light.
“The original purpose of this collection was to understand how the major organelles or ‘parts’ inside a normal human cell are arranged, and how they change as the cell performs different functions or even becomes a different cell type over time,” Ruwanthi Gunawardane, executive director of the Allen Institute for Cell Science, said in a news release. “From that foundation, we and others can then probe and understand how various perturbations such as human disease affect our cells.”
Gunawardane said she and her colleagues “never envisioned our cells making it to space when we created this collection,” but Sharma said the cells’ fluorescence will serve as a key metric for the Cedars-Sinai experiment.
“These particular cells that are making the journey to space are from a beautiful cell line to work with, because you can see them glowing green when they are most potent,” Sharma said. “It’s a great visual readout for how healthy our cells will be in microgravity.”
Brock Roberts, who leads the genome engineering team at the Allen Institute for Cell Science, told GeekWire that the gene-edited cells will give scientists “a readout of the cells’ potency or ‘stemness’ in real time, in live cells.”
In addition to monitoring the cells’ potency, the Cedars-Sinai team plans to investigate whether DNA can effectively be introduced into the cells in the space station’s zero-G environment.
At the end of the Ax-2 mission, the cells will be returned to Earth. If this experiment and follow-up studies live up to researchers’ hopes, it could lead to improvements in stem-cell production techniques for research and therapeutic purposes. Who knows? The final frontier just might become a new frontier for biotech.
