3-2-1 Blast Off! Miniature organs in space
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00:36This is a CBC podcast.Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast.15.All vents open.Copy.10.You know, we've sent a lot of weird things into outer space, Lego,Kornbeef sandwich, Buzz Lightyear doll, a dog.
01:11Now, many hearts and brains can be added to.that list. Minature lab-grown organs have arrived at the International Space Station. Researchersare hoping to use the lack of gravity in space to help study things like Alzheimer's and heartdisease. David Sacks is one of the scientists involved in this project and assistant professor of surgeryat the Icon School of Medicine at Monsana in New York and joins us now to talk more about what we'resending into space and what we might learn about it down here on Earth. David, good morning.Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. We've talked a little bit about thisidea on our program before. But from your perspective, why is space an ideal place to study
01:49things like Alzheimer's and heart disease? Well, there's sort of two reasons. One is that a lot ofstrange things happen to astronauts when they spend a lot of time in zero gravity. Their cardiovascularsystem kind of stiffens and their heart atrophies and they have all sorts of weird problemsthat seem like accelerated aging.And that's very interesting for two reasons.One is we want to know what's going to happen to astronauts, right?If we're going to have people living and working in space,we need to understand what's going to happen to them.
02:28But also, it's actually very difficult to model aging in the lab.We try, but it's just difficult.You can't just wait 70 years to see what happens to your lab model.And it's actually really nice to have a place where you can send these organs and maybe observe accelerated aging, and that would allow you to study aging on Earth.The accelerated aging, I'd read somewhere that six months in space is equivalent to something like 10 to 20 years down here on Earth. Is that right?That's right. Yeah, it's a little disturbing. You know, people sometimes ask me with this project if I'm inspired to go into space. And I say, yes, but maybe only for a week, you know, not for six months.Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is reversible, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds, but it's still a little disturbing if people are going to be up there for long periods of time.And so tell us what you're sending into space. These are miniature brains and hearts, right?
03:25That's right. So I'm collaborating with Kevin Costa at Mount Sinai as well, and we make a model of the cardiovascular system.So it's a little piece of silicone with holes and channels etched into it. And we have our,stem cells that are taken from adults at Mount Sinai,rebooted and turned into heart cells and blood vessel cells.And we're sending that up to see if we see the same cardiovascular problems that happen to astronauts.And then a colleague of ours at Mount Sinai, Joel Blanchard, has a parallel project where he makes miniature brains.And he's got some very cool research that can sort of replicate Alzheimer's in the lab,which is pretty hard to do.
04:11And so he has a contract with NASA to send those to spaceand see if we see some of the same problemsthat happen to astronauts in his little miniature brains.This is a dumb question,but do they look like miniature hearts and brains?A little bit, you know, they look like blobs.They're about a millimeter.They're not like the size of organs.
04:31You know, we're not going to implant them in youand keep you alive.The heart's beat, and they can,if the cells arrange properly, they can sort of pump fluid back and forth a little bit.So I think we're getting closer to actually growing organs, but we're not really there yet.That's sort of the long-term goal.And the brains are, you know, they contain all of the cell types of the brain, but they're not really structured like a real brain.That's amazing.
04:59And so now they're in the International Space Station.That's right. Yeah. So they're up there.And we get data back every day, which is.pretty cool. We partner with this company Space Tango, and what they do is they make theselittle robotic labs in a box that are powered by the space station, and they have a little microscope,and they can actually change the media to feed the cells. The whole thing is automated,and they stream data back to us. And you're already learning things?Yeah, I mean, so far we've learned that the cells,
05:39survived. That's the main thing.That's a big thing, right? You're sending things in outer space.I mean, who knows whether they're going to make it or not?Yeah, we weren't sure.It seemed like it was touch and go, but they're doing great up there.They're beating, they're moving some fluid around, and we're getting videos of them,and we'll see they'll be up there for about a month.And so we'll find out at the end of the month, if anything weird happens to them.
06:02And, of course, we'll have a control that's on the ground that we can compare it to.and at the endall of it will splash down off the coast of Californiaand we'll get the samples backso we can study them in the lab afterwards.So tell me more about when the samples return safelyand are brought back to your lab.What are you hoping ultimately to learn from this?
06:24What do you want this to have achieved?So what we want to see is between the samples in spaceand the samples on the groundif we observe some of the same problems that happen to astronauts.So this would be both in the videos that we take if it looks like the cardiovascular system isstiffening or atrophying.But then we'll also look at the genes expressed by the cells, both in space and on the ground,and see if we see genes expressed that are similar to what happens to astronauts.
06:58And if we do see something interesting, we can do follow-up projects where we test drugs on themor something like thator try to understand more deeplywhat exactly is going on in spacethat causes these problems.There are two streams here.One is we are travelingdeeper into space
07:15and the plan is to go to Mars,perhaps beyond.How is this research going to help thosewho would be part of those endeavors?Well, it's going to be important to understandif we can treat the diseases of space.You know, we've worked with a spacestation long enough that at this point I think we should just make a giant space station that spins
07:38like in the movies, you know, and simulates gravity. And we don't have to worry about this so much.But people are also going to be living on the moon and they're going to be living on Mars. And thoseare also reduced gravity environments. And, you know, we're not spinning the moon. So it's going to bea problem if there's diseases related to those. And if we can come up with therapies that allowpeople to live normal lives in lower gravity, that would be really helpful if we want to havelike a civilization booming in space, which would be pretty cool.The other part of this, and it's, you know, we are at this point living here on Earth,and people would think, well, what about me?
08:15Are there things that we can learn from this research that will help us here down on Earth?Yeah, and actually, that's the main thrust of the grant.You know, NASA is, their goal is actually not so much to help astronauts, becausethere just aren't that many astronauts.Their goal is to help people on Earth.And they're always looking for things that could be useful to do in space for people on Earth.So they're looking for things that maybe we could manufacture in space,that then would work better when they get to the Earth and so on.
08:46And so the real point of the grant is the accelerated aging,that it's very difficult to simulate aging in the lab.And if you can do it in space, then that would justify doing a lot of research.in space in order to understand aging of people on Earth.Is there a slight part of you that is tempted, even for a week to go up and see this researchin person?Oh, definitely.Yeah.
09:10I mean, I think everyone involved in the research wants to go to space.That's actually why we wrote the grant.I mean, you know, we can talk about like the practical applications, but the reality is there'sthis sort of, you know, primal part of being human that wants to explore.And I think that's the real reason we're doing.space research. You know, it's not, I don't have a space research lab, but the, this project is just soinspiring to all the students. It's so interesting to hear about this research, what's happening,but also what it might mean for us here and, and out in space. David, thank you very much for this.
09:47Great. Thank you for having me. David Sachs is an assistant professor of surgery at the ICANNSchool of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.com.podcasts.
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