A First for Cedars-Sinai’s Fourth Space Launch

Cedars-Sinai is planning its first-ever attempt to produce stem cells in space and its fourth launch of stem cell experiments to the International Space Station. The NASA-funded launch is scheduled for Aug. 3 at 11 a.m. EDT/8 a.m. PDT.

"We will be conducting the entire induced pluripotent stem cell reprogramming process in space, and this is the first time this has been done," said Arun Sharma, PhD, a stem cell biologist and research scientist with the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Instituteat Cedars-Sinai.

Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, are adult cells that are reprogrammed into a state where they can be turned into many other cell types. Large volumes of iPSCs are needed for research and to create stem-cell-based treatments for disease, and investigators believe that the microgravity environment of space could make it easier to manufacture the cells.

During the mission, funded through a NASA In Space Production Applications Award, astronauts aboard the International Space Station will work with cells supplied by the Allen Institute for Cell Science. They will add the elements that will reprogram the cells into stem cells, and periodically transfer the cells to an imaging system that allows investigators on Earth to check on their development.

"Reprogramming the cells is the first step in the iPSC manufacturing process," said Clive Svendsen, PhD, executive director of the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute. "The next stage is expansion, which is the growth and replication of the cells so that we can produce billions of them. We want to know how microgravity affects these processes."

Lessons learned in space will help determine whether large-scale stem cell manufacturing there is feasible, and also will inform biomanufacturing of stem cells on Earth, Svendsen said.

"This space mission will test stem cell manufacturing on a small scale," said Dhruv Sareen, PhD, founding director of the Cedars-Sinai Biomanufacturing Center and the iPSC Core Facility. "We will use what we learn through these experiments, and lessons from our previous experiments with automated processes in space, to determine how to scale up and create best manufacturing practices for these cells."

The astronauts will employ the same reprogramming technique developed and used at Cedars-Sinai.

After approximately one month, preserved samples of the cells from the mission will be returned to Earth for quality testing. If all goes well, a mission planned for next year will see the cells turned into brain and heart cells, Sharma said.

"On Earth, we have challenges growing iPSCs, but what if they grow beautifully in microgravity?" Svendsen said. "And what if cell lines created in space have unique characteristics? These are the big questions. And if in 20 years we're making stem cells in space, these experiments will be the origins of it."

Cedars-Sinai partners in the mission include Axiom Space and BioServe Space Technologies. Project scientist Maedeh Mozneb, PhD, and research associate Madelyn Arzt are key members of the team from the Sharma Lab.

The mission will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft perched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch is part of a series of NASA-funded missionsin which Sharma, Svendsen and Sareen have played key roles. Sharma has also recently been awarded an International Space Station National Laboratory Igniting Innovation grant to conduct further stem cell experiments in space.

"This grant will build on our existing research into biomanufacturing in space with two additional missions," Sharma said.

The first mission will focus on the creation of cardiac spheroids in space. Cardiac spheroids are tiny clumps of heart muscle cells and heart blood vessel cells, created from stem cells, that function much the way they do in an actual human heart.

"We want to see if the microgravity environment can facilitate the creation of these spheroids," Sharma said. "It's possible we'll be able to achieve better symmetry in space than we can on Earth, where gravity compresses the spheroids against the dish."

Following that mission, a second mission, connected to the White House Cancer Moonshot, will involve the use of these spheroids to test the potential heart damage (cardiotoxicity) caused by cancer drugs.

"My lab has conducted experimentsusing stem cell-derived heart cells to explain why and how cancer drugs can damage the heart," Sharma said. "We're hoping that these spheroids, created in space, will give us a better way to screen cancer drugs for cardiotoxicity."

Learn more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Stem Cells in Space

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