Cedars-Sinai Pioneering Creation of Organoids in Space

Cedars-Sinai investigators are aiming to transform stem cells into the first heart and brain organoids to be created in space. Their experiments will travel aboard a mission to the International Space Station that is scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Aug. 24.

“Organoids are three-dimensional clumps of cells—in this case heart or brain cells,” said Arun Sharma, PhD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Space Medicine Research. “To create them, we reprogram skin or blood cells into stem cells and then turn the stem cells into the heart or brain cells that will form the organoids.”

Organoids, which have thus far only been produced on Earth, are less than 1 millimeter in size and are usually too small to see with the naked eye. But they pack a big scientific punch.

“We can create thousands of these organoids in just weeks, allowing us to model disease and test drugs at a scale we would not be able to achieve otherwise,” said Sharma, also a research scientist in the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute, Smidt Heart Institute, and Cedars-Sinai Cancer, and associate professor of Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai.

The cells will travel to space as part of NASA’s SpaceX 33rd commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station, the sixth mission in which Cedars-Sinai has participated. This is the third mission funded via a NASA In-Space Manufacturing Award in partnership with Axiom Space, a Houston-based company developing space infrastructure. Some firsts from previous missions included the introduction of DNA into stem cells in space, use of off-the-shelf terrestrial lab hardware for space biosciences research, and the production of stem cells in space, Sharma said.

Sharma, a specialist in heart biology, uses organoids to study the effects of cancer therapies on the heart. Heart organoids can also be used to test therapies that might improve heart function, and to study various types of heart disease such as congenital heart defects.  

Clive Svendsen, PhD, executive director of the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute and a collaborator on the mission, studies brain organoids.

“My lab is focused on the study of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and we use brain organoids as a tool for modeling these diseases,” Svendsen said. “Creating these organoids in space is potentially a step toward accelerating our work and gaining better understanding of these diseases.”

Sharma said there are potential advantages to growing organoids in space.

“On Earth, gravity compresses these organoids, which are three-dimensional spheres,” Sharma said. “In space, gravity is reduced to almost nothing, what we call microgravity, and we believe that organoids will grow better under these conditions. They might develop new blood vessels that we aren’t able to develop on Earth, organize themselves in unique ways, or maybe even harbor different cell types that we can only develop in microgravity.”

Maedeh Mozneb, PhD, associate director of the Center for Space Medicine Research, and Sharma Lab research associate Madelyn Arzt will travel to Florida to prepare the cells for launch.

The stem cells, obtained from the Allen Institute for Cell Science, will be frozen for the trip to space and will travel aboard a SpaceX rocket in a “plate habitat” created by BioServe Space Technologies in Colorado. Once the cells reach the space station, they will be maintained by astronauts, who will change the nutrients that allow the organoids to grow and photograph the organoids using microscopes, Sharma said.

After approximately one month, the organoids will be sent back to Cedars-Sinai investigators for analysis of their size, shape, genetics and other factors. And despite the tiny size of the organoids, Sharma and his team are dreaming big.

“A dream of mine is to have a lab in space that is parallel with the labs that we have here on Earth,” Sharma said. “That would allow us to create organoids and explore biomedical applications like bioprinting of artificial heart, brain and muscle tissues in space in ways that we may not be able to on Earth.”

Next up, the team will be working on experiments funded through a new grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore using microgravity to model accelerated inflammation and aging in organ chip models of the heart, gut, and brain.

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