2023-05-12 01:24:26
Axiom Space, a company co-founded by Spanish-born astronaut Michael López-Alegría, is becoming one of the biggest players in space. After its agreements with NASA to participate in the Artemis Program, creating the suits that will be used by the next batch of astronauts that will walk on the Moon in the coming years, and becoming the first company to take the first totally private crew to the International Space Station (ISS, for its acronym in English), will soon become a pioneer again by conducting the first experiment to create stem cells in space.
Driven by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Hospital (USA), Axiom Space will carry everything needed on its second private mission to the ISS for astronauts to make induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in space. These are a type of cells that are collected from animal tissue (usually from the skin) and then ‘reprogrammed’ to a previous state similar to when they were stem cells. From there, they can be ‘forced’ to become other types of cells (for example, heart or brain), which is very important not only for laboratory experiments, but also for medical treatments.
However, its production on Earth has some limitations: the gravity of our planet hinders its expansion and growth. For this reason, it is believed that in low-gravity environments it is possible to eliminate this stress and for cells to multiply faster.
“Gravity is constantly pulling these cells towards Earth, putting pressure on them and providing a stimulus to start turning into other types of cells, but in microgravity that effect is no longer there,” he explains in a paper. announcement Clive Svendsen, executive director of the Cedars-Sinai Institute for Regenerative Medicine and co-principal investigator for the mission. “We want to test whether, without the stress of gravity, they grow faster, have fewer genetic changes, and remain pluripotent. Then, when we turn them into the critical cells we need for healthcare, we’ll see if they do better in microgravity. That is the goal of this new mission, and we are all very excited.”
The ultimate goal, if everything goes according to theory, to produce them en masse. “The challenge is to create a lot of them and of very high quality,” says Arun Sharma, a stem cell biologist at the Cedars-Sinai Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “We want to be able to produce billions so that we can use them for different applications, including new drugs that can improve heart function,” he says.
In addition to this experiment, the Ax-2 mission will carry out others such as tests with nanomaterials, space aging, cloud seeding in microgravity, or the study of models that in the future could be tools for detection and therapies for cancer and others. diseases on Earth.
The second totally private mission in history
The Ax-2 mission will be launched on May 21 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral (Florida). From there, a Falcon 9 rocket will send the Crew Dragon capsule, owned by SpaceX (Elon Musk’s company that ‘rents’ its space vehicles to both the US space agency and private companies) to the ISS.
The crew is made up of Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and current Axion Space astronaut, who will command the mission; the American pilot, John Shoffner; and two Saudi citizens, the pilot and engineer Ali Alqarni and the biomedical researcher Rayyanah Barnawi, who will be the first Saudi woman in history to reach space. “This flight has been made possible by the government of Saudi Arabia, contracting the flight with Axiom Space, which has chosen the crew and their reserves in a commission for Saudi space to promote science and STEM careers in Arab countries” , they explain from the website from Axiom Space.
As a backup commander (or substitute), there is López-Alegría himself, who led his company’s first mission, the first totally private one, a year ago now.
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