Extraterrestrial medicine?: the solution to your health problem will come from space | International Space Station

Last March, while narrating the splashdown of some astronauts, a spokeswoman for NASA He mentioned that during the six months they spent on the International Space Station (ISS) they carried out more than 200 medical experiments, a figure indicative of how promising space is for finding life-saving answers.

Research on health in space began from the moment the first person was sent to the ISS, almost 24 years ago, with an objective as simple as it was fundamental: “Ensure the health of astronauts in a remote, different and stressful,” Angelique Van Ombergen, a biomedical researcher at the European Space Agency (ESA), explains to EFE.

‘Gold’ for medical research

“It was necessary to understand well what happens to the human body and mind in space to guarantee the safety of astronauts in an environment of great impact due to microgravity, radiation, or the lack of contact with your loved ones,” he continues.

Shortly after the first missions, scientists realized that astronauts are the best case studies for medical research, since few human beings are subjected to such exhaustive monitoring 24 hours a day for so long.

And astronauts are: before, during and after each mission.

“Medical monitoring of astronauts and all the data it generates has been and is gold for medical research. Such monitoring of a person’s health is almost impossible in the real world,” emphasizes the ESA researcher.

Deciphering osteoporosis

Solving one of the challenges that astronauts face in space: the loss of between 1 and 2% of bone density per month due to microgravity, has helped, for example, to understand and find solutions to osteoporosis, that reduces the quality of life of millions of people.

From the outset, Van Ombergen recalls, it led to the invention of the first 3D scanners to study the bone structures of astronauts in this process of ‘express osteoporosis’, which have subsequently been vital to advance the knowledge of this and other ailments.

In osteoporosis, specifically, space research has revealed issues as basic as that the body’s acidity accelerates the loss of bone mass, and can be counteracted by taking less salt or bicarbonate preventively, to the design of a compound that protects against osteoporosis. to bone and muscle mass and even stimulates its growth.

Trials of this treatment, with mice sent to the ISS as part of ESA’s ‘Mighty Mice in Space’ research, indicate that it could be used to prevent and treat bone and muscle loss in people on Earth.

Beyond osteoporosis, experts agree that space research is key to responding to the current great challenges in medicine, such as cancer or brain diseases.

The examples are innumerable and some are close, such as that of the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the Spanish company Elecnor, which adapted spatial image analysis techniques to brain resonance imaging for the early detection of Alzheimer’s through the AlzTools 3D Slicer application.

Regenerative medicine

In addition to disease modeling, scientists agree that the most promising field of health research in space in the coming years will be regenerative medicine.

It is a specialty based on restoring the functions of damaged tissues or organs through repair with stem cells, tissue engineering and organs created from biomaterials or 3D bioprinting.

Stem cells, as the body’s ‘raw material’, are key since the rest of the cells with specialized functions are generated from them, and organoids are also created, 3D structures that simulate real organs and whose development helps to understand. and treat the diseases that affect them.

“The microgravity environment of low Earth orbit is ideal for generating large-scale stem cells or organoids, two of the keys to the advancement of regenerative medicine,” one of the leading researchers in this field, Arun Sharma, explains to EFE. biomedical officer at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

Sharma’s team, in collaboration with the space company Axiom, has been sending stem cells into space for a year to demonstrate that microgravity makes the production of large batches more efficient.

“The production of these stem cells still has certain limitations, and microgravity can overcome them because it facilitates their proliferation and potency. Our challenge is to mass produce them in space to be able to use them for all types of applications and take giant steps in medicine,” he says.

Cancer treatments

Microgravity research carried out on the ISS facilitates the formation of organoids from tumor cells biopsied from patients without the need to grow them in a laboratory, as is done on Earth.

And the growth of these organoids offers researchers valuable clues about signaling pathways or possible treatments to combat the tumor character of the cells, as explained on several occasions by Sara García, molecular biologist at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and reserve astronaut. .

These studies in space already help to better understand many types of cancer, from diffuse midline gliomas, very aggressive in children, to others as common as colon cancer.

Biomanufacturing

Bioprinting of human tissues is another of the focuses of AEE medical research, Van Ombergen stresses.

“We recently did a study that told us that microgravity has a negative impact on skin lesions. If we are thinking about sending people to Mars, we must first get them prepared to bioprint dermal tissue in space in case they need to seal a wound,” point.

It seems like science fiction but it is reality: the answers to save thousands of lives on Earth already come from space.