Space.com by Robert Lea 5/9/2023
The Axiom Space Ax-2 mission to the International Space Station will grow stem cells to test how limited gravity influences the development of heart and brain cells.
Scientists will send stem cells to space in early May to investigate the effect of weak gravity or "microgravity" in space on stem cells.
The induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a type of stem cell that can develop into the three primary groups of cells that make up a human body, will be cultivated in space by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) by astronauts flying on Axiom Space's private Ax-2 mission. The mission is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than 5:37 p.m. EDT (2137 GMT) on May 21 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Growing these cells and allowing them to differentiate in space should allow researchers to determine if microgravity has any impact on the way iPSCs develop into other cell types like brain and heart cells.
"A major challenge for using iPSCs for therapies in humans is making enough of them at very high quality," research co-leader and Cedars-Sinai cell biologist Arun Sharma, said in a statement. (opens in new tab) "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. And while we've gotten better at this over the last few years, there are still certain limitations when it comes to the production of these stem cells, and we think microgravity may be able to overcome some of these."
More:
https://www.space.com/spacex-axiom-space-ax-2-astronaut-mission-stem-cells
