Human brains will be grown on the International Space Station

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The astronauts living on the International Space Station ( ISS ) will have a new task. They will take brain tissue produced from stem cells and place it in brain-shaped containers. With models of the human organ, they will investigate the effect of microgravity on its growth and development, in order to develop containers for neurodegenerative diseases in the future.

The biotechnology startup Axonis is testing a new technique for resea Phone Number List rching diseases such as Altzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy or dementia. His team of scientists seeks to reproduce the effects in three-dimensional structures composed of brain cells and observe their behavior in real time.

To advance these investigations, they will send a shipment to the ISS with the cultured cells and their respective containers to be assembled in zero gravity. Through a series of experiments, they will check whether three-dimensional brain models develop and mature better on Earth or in microgravity conditions.

Axonis does not consider itself a space technology company. If its brain models are planned to arrive with the astronauts, it is because the startup won a competition sponsored by the Boeing company and the MassChallenge business accelerator. The award consisted of a research grant and the opportunity to plan research using ISS facilities .

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The technology they propose immediately attracted attention. The researchers are not working on the usual brain organoids made from stem cells. This technique, clarifies scientific director Shane Hegarty, requires too many months invested in the cultivation of protocerebrums that, in most cases, do not reach the necessary maturity to become useful.



Instead they propose a kind of filling a sphere with human brain cells programmed to self-assemble. The external structure makes the cultures brain-shaped and function similar to one. The hypothetical consecration of the technique involves the rapid and efficient production of brain models based on human cells. There are no individuals involved in the process except the donor of the original cells. The ethical implications of damaging brains with neuronal diseases would be left behind.

“The US Food and Drug Administration has decided that human data is preferable to animal data, so in the future we could see more and more approvals based on non-animal disease models (…) This experiment could help with that, as it uses engineered human tissue rather than rodent models," Shane Hegarty explained.

Samples containing the Axonis material were launched Aug. 1 on NASA's resupply mission along with other experiments. During the coming weeks, the inhabitants of the International Space Station will work on the possible foundations of neuromedicine of the future.