How Space Technologies Accelerate Scientific Breakthroughs
[MUSIC] We're so grateful to be able to have our third Astrobiotechnology Hub event. When we started working in space, Alysson Muotri and I with our first ISSCOR Grant from NASA and ISS National Labs, we couldn't imagine what a strong community this is and how we work around the clock together to get really spectacular science done. It feels like art a lot of the time when we get our images and our data back. That's why we're having this meeting in the Museum of Contemporary Art. We've got to combine the art of science and medicine and think about what we're doing together. The great thing about the space community is we have to work together.
It's such a complex environment, but on the other hand, it also accelerates discovery, and they're completely new discoveries. Mr. Che at the back? He knows this. We have a number of people who have worked in space and will provide some interesting insights today. We're very fortunate to have our Vice Chancellor of Health Sciences, who works on pre-cancer and the genomic predisposition that a lot of us have to cancer. He's way ahead of his time, who's been working on this, leading the field. But most importantly, leading us into a whole new era of how we bring the best science to the clinic.
We're thrilled to have you here. We also have patient advocates here who will be involved in the first panel, who will tell us why it matters. Then Sheldon Morris will host that panel. Then we'll move over to the science panel, no pressure, people going to show us the latest and greatest from the results from space. We have Space Tango, NASA, KOSA, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Space Agency represented, ISS National Labs, Axiom, and Celestial Strategies represented.
Then we'll have a little closing remarks session with a Q&A. Everybody can answer questions and don't be shy about asking them because this is a new field, and then we'll move on to having a bit of a break before we get into the Medicine Informing Novel Discoveries event, a mind event where Alysson Muotri and I will talk about updates. We'll also have one of our top philanthropists speaking about why it matters to find the best science to get to the clinic, and then we'll end with a patient story as well. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Dr. John Carethers. Thank you so much for being here. [APPLAUSE] I just want to say thank you, Cat.
Isn't this such a wonderful setting? Do y'all agree? Well fantastic. [APPLAUSE] I have been here two years, I'm just as old as this year two-year milestone on this third annual Global Astro Technology Hub. It's great to be here with all of the partners that are working with our Stem Cell Institute and Cat Jamieson.
We take pride in hosting this event here at this contemporary Museum of Art, bringing all of you, our clinical experts, our space specialists, and of course, the research to tie it all together to make translational events happen and help patients. I know this happens here on Earth, but it also happens in low Earth orbit. I know that's part of this, but to benefit people here on Earth. I really want to thank our donor that Cat runs the institute, the T. Denny Sanford,
for his generosity in establishing the institute. But on behalf of Cat and Alysson, I extend a warm welcome to all of you participating here this meeting today. This significant milestone is one of our ongoing journeys here at UC San Diego, and it underscores our relationship with all of you. For Space tangle, Axiom, CR space, NASA cases and others.
I'll tell you, walking into this room, and I just casually met a few people who are so excited about learning what is going on here in San Diego in Sanford Stem Cell Institute, and how they can effectuate that for their futures and the future of patients. These partnerships pave the way for wonderful, groundbreaking research, and it has a positive impact on the lives. But we are an integrated health system here in San Diego and we see things going from bitch to bedside, maybe from space to bedside as well.
I want to mention that over the last year, particularly the Sanford Integrated Space Stem Cell Orbital Research or ISSCOR Center, Alysson's the director of that and Cat Jamieson flew payloads on CRS31 with Space Tango and AX3 with Axiom space, several research payloads and some of that work is coming back to affect our patients. Issues on microgravity, accelerated aging, the development and care of human organoids, as well as how its effects on cancer. I am thrilled that on this special occasion, we can delve into what Cat said the intersection of science and art and space exploration. I want all of you to engage in a thought provoking exchange with many of the sessions that you're going to have this afternoon, particularly with our patients and patient advocates and all of you in the room who are leading space experts to explore all the latest advancements that you can think of and hopefully implement in the near term future. Participation here adds great value not only to what the Stem Cell Institute and this partnership does, but again, to the value of patients for the future.
I want to thank you for your welcome, and I hope you have a wonderful seminar and discussion today. I think you'll find it well worth it in your time here. Thank you very much and thank you, Director Jamieson. [APPLAUSE] Hello. Sheldon Morris. I'm the Director of
the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center. What we do is we are doing those clinical trials for where we're trying to translate treatments for patients and right now we support about 37 different trials. That's why we are looking to you to bring some new treatments, new cures that are informed through research in low Earth orbit and beyond so that we can cure more patients because it's a new dimension. What we're going to do is bring up three of our patient advocates. Come on up, guys.
We've got Alex, Noah, and Justin. [APPLAUSE] These are the people why we do what we do basically, and why we want to bring future treatments to patients all across the world. I'm going to ask you guys to introduce yourselves and I'm going to have you tell us why you think it's important to have science in space or if that's too big a question, why science helps at all.
Go ahead. Start over here. Hi. I'm Noah Campillo. I'm a UCLA student. Last year, I took exercise courses and one of the people who taught them was always at the last push was like, we can do hard things. That's why you're here. You can do hard things.
I don't think space research is very easy, but it's doing tons of things for us and it's hard, but we can do hard things. I think that's very important to keep that in mind of everyone's doing hard things, patients, researchers, doctors, but it's all paying off. It ends in something good happening, so I think. Hi. I'm Alex Allen. I am a software engineer at an oncology company, and echoing what you said, I think I'm going to even take it one step further.
It's not every day I get to say, well, my medication was made in space, so take your aspirin. I'm going to take my space drugs, and I'm going to feel much better about myself. But no, the medication and the developments that are happening through the research that's happening in space is really relevant, but it also makes me feel very seen as a patient because it's not often when you have a rare disorder like I do, it's not often that you feel like you can explain what it is, or even you can share with other people how often it happens. With the research is happening in space right now and with all the work that's been done with NASA, it's really nice for me able to say, I have this and NASA is working on it. Thank you guys.
I'm Justin Graves. I guess, I have had a lot of medical history in my family, and that was one of the big things that got me started into this. Didn't really think about it too much. It just easy answer. I want to help people and I'm glad all of you do. Then this new step that we're taking in the space, all the advancements we can make, all the different people we can help and what's going to come in years, what we'll find out, what we'll learn, what else we'll be able to do.
Really excited about where this is going to all go and just all the benefits that can really come from this. Not just with the patients, just everyone being able to learn a bit more about it all, so thank you guys. Thank you so much. I think
we have at least another 10 minutes to talk, so I thought maybe you could ask, why did you guys decide that you want to step up and be a patient advocate. What drives you to do that? I guess, my biggest thing was I wanted to help other people. It's always been a passion for me. Like I said, when they asked me to be involved in this, it was just a quick answer, I didn't really think about it too much.
It was just I can help advance this and do a lot for the other people out there. That was a big thing that really got me to make that decision. Yes, it was several months after that, I really thought about everything else.
I guess, it may be a little risky, but if it's getting to trials with humans, figured had to be safe enough, so wanted to help everyone else out there. Thanks. From my side, I got my start in biotechnology more than 10 years ago, and I started at alumina working on the genetic sequencers there. For me, just like, I think, all of you, sometimes the work is really fun and sometimes it's really interesting, and sometimes it's really hard and really frustrating, and sometimes you can feel just ground down. But every time I got to hear a patient advocate speak, every time I got to see that I was actually making a difference, even that one meeting I wish I didn't have to go to every week.
Even that, if I got to see what a difference my work was doing, it made a huge difference for me. It made me want to go to work and it made me go to work with a smile and know that what I did mattered. When I got the chance after discovering I had a para genetic disorder after working in genetics for a while, when I got the chance to be a patient advocate for CAT, I jumped on it because if even one person in this audience feels like me and hearing a patient speak about how much better their life is because of you, if I can bring that to this group, then I've made a huge difference and I'm very happy. I was diagnosed when I was 16 and I started going through pediatrics and it was a lot of conversations even as a 16-year-old, where I was being talked about and not talked to through some of my doctors.
Then when I started seeing Dr. Jamieson, it was scary because I was being talked to and my mom was not answering all the questions for me. At that point, I realized how important it was to be included in your own care and that's why I am a patient advocate, especially pediatric patient advocate because it's so important to everyone to truly know what is happening to them and what their options are.
I think it's super important. That's also why in the future, I want to go into medicine as well, just so I know that are people who truly care about the patient and what is happening in their lives. Well, those are all very good reasons. I think another question I thought I had to ask is, if there's something that's happened in the past few years that you thought really stuck out as interesting or really important change in science relating to space or anything, what would that be. They really piqued your interest.
I'll take that one first. I get to come to a lot of these because I'm local, so I'm spoiled, but I got to attend one with Dr. Muotri and you talked about your tiny brains in space. I got to tell you, I was so excited about the tiny brains in space.
I was working on a clinical trial for Rett syndrome, and you spoke about what you were doing there. It never even occurred to me that maybe we could test Rett medication on, again, mini space brains. These are things that don't sound real to me as a software engineer working with clinicians, but I got to sit through an entire conversation.
I went back to work the next day just the happiest little clam telling everybody all about the guys. Did everyone know about these tiny space brains and how they're going to absolutely save all these children? Honestly, it was just so motivating for me. That was very exciting stuff.
For me, I think just coming to all of these as well, it's been super great to, year after year, see the developments in certain people's research and what those developments have going towards the future, and just really seeing this whole project grow and progress. Thank you. You've read in the news.
What was that question again? An advancement that you saw in the news or on a talk. Just myself was an incredible advancement to me. Everything that changed in my life with my seizures. I thought I was having it pretty good, pretty lucky, able to function and do a lot, obviously couldn't drive. I had to give up my dream career as being a scuba instructor, and so getting into something like this, I hope we're able to make those advancements, hopefully help some people. Scuba diving is a big thing to me.
I would love to see more people able to do that. That's got to be the biggest thing for me, is just how much it's helped everyone else in the advancements everyone's making. Well, thank you for that. Well, how about, is there any other thing you'd want to add or any other thing that you're marching orders for all these people, what they need to be doing? Oh, man. I guess it's really just get more people involved. That's what I would like to see, and so this isn't, at least in my mind, such a smaller group that's really working on this frontier.
Just bringing in some more awareness and interest to the rest of the people out there, whether they're in the field or not. Thanks. I think the industry has done an incredible job and this institute in particular has always made me feel really welcome and made me feel like I have a voice here as equal as everyone else, which as a patient, advocating for my own care is incredible. Then as a scientist in a different field, is exciting just to get to witness what's going on.
I think that we've done a great job as an industry of bringing in patient advocates. Now I would love to see next us become a patient collective in a way. We talked for five minutes and I have so much in common with these two, and just as a patient network, when you have a rare disorder or a disorder that is difficult to treat, it's so incredible to have connections, and so I think building a patient network that's not just tied to a provider, but tied to a community, I think that would be a really cool advancement for us.
This quarter, I started in a neurological research lab and every time I'm shadowing my lab manager, I'm asking questions about what happens if you do this to these cells or you do this to these organoids? It's always like, I don't know, that's a good question. We should try that. It made me realize how much more avenues that we could explore before I got into doing research or just studying anything. I thought, all of science is pretty much figured out. All of research figured out, everything is going. I would have to find a very specific niche to create something new. But really, there's something new everywhere.
If I were to say one thing is for everyone who's conducting research, for everyone who even has ideas towards research, there's so many more spots that we could fill and that has so many different types of ideas and open spaces that are ready to be filled. Expound, expand. Well, thank you, Noah, Justin, Alex. You are why we do what we do, so I'm so happy that you came today and gave us the message and gave us our marching orders. Cat, did you want to come up or who is next here? Thank you, Dr. Morris and Dr.
Carethers and Noah and Alex and Justin. Do you see why this place is so special? We have people that are undaunted by difficulty, even when they're faced with really tough circumstances for themselves. It's always this altruism, this bravery that we keep encountering in the clinic that drives us back to the lab.
As Larry Goldstein always has repeatedly taught me, the great science leads to great medicine. But if we don't know why we're doing what we're doing, it will go nowhere. We decided to start with why. Why we have a unique opportunity to get things right here and to get things right together? We've got a vice chancellor who is undaunted by difficulty.
Thank you, Dr. Carethers. I also wanted to echo the words of Alicia Keys, DEI is a gift. It's not a weakness, having diversity, having differences of opinion, particularly when it comes to science because there are a lot of holes to fill, and to be able to work in diverse environments with people that come from different walks of life, this is our strength, and having people have agency as Sandra always reminds me of that you get to choose. Build things that we would actually take if we find we're in a difficult position. Now that you're becoming researchers with us, you're going to help develop this path forward in the most unusual places in that space.
Because the people you'll see from our Space industry, from NASA have always had to work in tough environments. Paul, yes, from SpaceX, Elena from SpaceX is here. They don't give up because it's hard. We do it because it's hard, because no one else will do it, because no one will ask the tough questions and we are in a very fortunate environment here where we're allowed to ask the tough questions. We don't have to be the cool kids all the time. I'm almost never a cool kid, and that would be cool if I were a cool kid, but we're allowed to ask the really perplexing, challenging questions and have a collective.
Have a collective of patient advocates who have become researchers clearly, but also have a collective of scientists, physicians, administrators, everyone working together to make sure we get the right answers. Remember, Space is an accelerating environment, and it's accelerating because you have rocket scientists, they're pretty smart. But you have people who work together to find new biology in Space that really helps us answer tough questions on the ground. With that, I'd like to invite our panelists up here. We've got Twyman Clements, who's here from Space Tango. Thanks. Come on up, Twyman.
I'll have everybody come and sit on the stage. Everybody can give a little bit of a talk just for a few minutes to frame the conversation. Please join us Twyman. Twyman is the CEO of Space Tango. We always love the name, so we had to work with Twyman. We've been working together well since 2020.
We've got Sylvain Costes, who works on radiation biology, and has had a long career at NASA. Thank you, Sylvain. We've got Imed Gallouzi who also speaks French because he spent a number of years as a professor at McGill in Montreal. [FOREIGN] Then we've got Davide Marotta. Thank you for being here.
He's our friend at ISS National Labs and ensures that all of our science has the right rigor, reliability, and reproduce ability to fly because it's a big deal to fly these experiments and get them done. We've got Pinar Mesci who actually we've known for a long time because she trained with Alysson Muotri and has taken off in her illustrious career with Axiom, and we're just thrilled to keep working with you, Pinar. Thank you for being here. Then Jana Stoudemire who started all of this. Jana has led the way to get back to Noah's point, we do things even if they're hard, maybe because they're hard because nobody else will take on these challenges. Cancer is hard, Rett syndrome is hard.
Aging is hard. [LAUGHTER] We had a little shindig last night. I was feeling like I need an antiaging strategy this morning.
If anybody has something, please step up. We have people that are working incredibly hard together. That collective idea, Alex, thank you, we will take you up on that.
Noah, we will be as brave as you are about finding the holes because there are many in science, but also in the clinic. Justin, thank you for taking on the risk of being on a clinical trial. You led the way there. This kind of bravery, we have to match. We have to match in science.
ISS National Labs, NASA gave us Velcro. They gave us advanced materials that allow our phones to work. They gave us all technologies that will determine how we do quantum computing. There's so much more to learn and we are a global hub, so we're really thrilled to have the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia represented. Imed, thank you for being here. He is the mentor for Rayyanah, who is the 600th person to reach the ISS National Labs and she'd never seen a launch back to bravery, Noah, before she'd been in it.
That's a little above and beyond, literally. But she is an incredible astronaut. I'd like to start by asking everybody to introduce themselves.
We'll start with Sylvain because he's just closer to me and we'll just give you a little introduction, then we'll go around. Hello, everyone. My name is Sylvain Costes. I'm the former data officer for Space Bio and Physical Science at NASA headquarters and I was also the project manager for Open Science for many years. I also have a lab called the Radiation Biophysics Lab, and you'll hear a bit more about this letter. Hello, everyone. My name is Davide Marotta.
I'm the program director for Space Biomanufacturing at the ISS National Lab. I'm a scientist. I used to work at the bench with stem cells and brain organoids. I have full payloads, trying to understand near the generation, and space was helping us and that one brought me here on the other side of science, on the dark side in space.
Hello everyone. My name is Pinar Mesci. I'm the senior program manager of In-Space Manufacturing at Axiom Space, and similar to David, we actually had a pretty similar parallel paths and I'm very happy to be now coming full circle, starting with Alysson and then working with Jana, Twyman, Shelby and then now coming to the Axiom on the other side, helping with the science. Hi, everybody. Imed Gallouzi. I'm from King Abdullah University Science Technology. It's at Saudi Arabia. I'll tell you a little bit more about it later.
I'm an RNA binding protein expert. I've been doing this for 30 years, but also an aspiring astrobiologist. I will tell you, and because of Rayyanah joined my lab few months ago to do her PhD, hoping to send her back to space with her own experiment, and I'll tell you more what's in the plan. My name's Twyman Clements. I am the cofounder and president of Space Tango, and what we do is we take ideas like those being generated here, Dr. Jamieson, Dr. Muotri and many others and we implement them in spacecraft, the International Space Station or any other spacecraft like that.
I'm not a scientist, but I've worked with many. I'm a trained engineer, and just how we take those ideas and operate them in zero gravity and sometimes four or 5Gs when it's launching or when it's coming home so that we can deliver good science and move the state of the art and the work that our customers are doing forward. I've had the honor to work with many of the people on this stage and in this crowd, so thank you, including Jana. Hey, exactly. I'm Jana Stoudemire. I currently transitioned from Axiom recently, but have had a long career in space.
As Twyman said, I've had an opportunity to work with Space Tango directly, also ISS National Lab. Prior to that, I was part of the biotech community here in San Diego, and my transition to space was really because I can see where we still have challenges that we can't answer here on Earth. When you talked about asking the questions and there's, they're all answered, far from it. But for me, the innovation, when I would hear someone talk about innovation here on the ground, there's nothing like changing your whole perspective on science.
One of the most rewarding things for me in getting to work with all of the teams that are here, and Alysson, our first experiment that went to the International Space Station was fantastic because not only were there results that were unexpected, but that change in the perspective of your science and how you ask questions of that really is what keeps me very motivated to keep doing this. Pleased to be here today. We're going to make this very interactive. We'll go around with a microphone and make sure that everybody can ask questions because this is an unusual opportunity to ask really tough questions just because it's fun, [LAUGHTER] but also because you may come up with things that we haven't thought of.
We've been living in this space literally and figuratively for a few years and maybe Alex says something and she goes, wait a minute, what about genomics in space. But we have lots of opportunities to really just pitch in and ask questions. I'll start with the same question to every single person and start with Sylvain just because he's closest. Why space? What have you learned in space that's different from on the ground? Why should we work in such an extreme environment? That's a tough question. There's some changes
in space that are really interesting. Space seems to be acting like an accelerator of aging. You heard about the telomere story where actually it looks like we are getting younger, but that's an artifact from the rest of the data, which really suggests actually we are aging in space, very fast.
Mitochondria seems to be the hub that actually is responding to this change. The combination of microgravity and radiation together is really interesting. The microgravity actually is really confusing because you see this reactive oxygen species being released in the tissue and people are still looking at, is it changes in the cytoplasmic structure that physical force that really is triggering this effect. On top of it, you have the radiation. For instance, for stem cell in the breast, if you have a signal of radiation will induce self renewing signals, which means that your stem cells will be more active to self renew instead of doing asymmetric division, and that's something you're going to see in space more than on the ground.
That's been shown with radiation. The big question is, when you bring microgravity and radiation together, you really are now exploring something that is impossible to see here. It's just not possible.
The other thing is on organoid, you're really benefiting from this structure where you don't need cell and suspension grow very well in space because they're in the natural environment. I think there's a lot of opportunities. I think organ growing is going to be another huge thing in space.
Whoever can take advantage of this when you're in a baby, an embryo, you are in this environment. I think there's so many opportunities with space that I think haven't been explored too much yet. 3D.
Right. No yet. All the above. [LAUGHTER] I like you brought up the pregnancy because one professor of mine back in Sicily used to say the same. It's like being in space. [LAUGHTER] Also, microgravity is an accelerator of condition and accelerator of innovation. Everything that we are studying microgravity happened faster. For us, it is very important because we have patients here on Earth.
We don't have two years, three years to wait for a new drive. We need new solutions and we need it now. I want to add this to what Sylvain said.
I'm just going to echo a little bit. I completely agree with both of you and just add on that. There's a lot of processes that we are doing, innovative technologies like stem cells, for instance, we are all using them, but then there's still hurdles in them.
Space can be a way to make the process better. For us this is some of the work that we're doing with Dr. Aaron Sharma, who is also here. The syntocinon team, cellular reprogramming, can we improve that? If we do, we might be able to do all these cellular therapies for instance, in a much faster pace.
But it's also to try to find how we can make some of the products that we cannot make as perfectly possible as we can on the ground. Earlier I saw [inaudible] from Auxilium. They actually just sent a bioprinter as well, and they successfully bioprinted eight medical devices during a record time. These are the types of things that we can do in microgravity that we're not necessarily able to do here on Earth. There's many more examples, but I didn't want to harm the whole conversation.
For me, it's a simple but also hard question to answer for somebody who's new in this. I discovered space when Rayyanah approached me with the question, can we do PhD? The timing came that Saudi Arabia and the Saudi space agency has a really now big push to create microgravity research in Saudi Arabia. Building on that, my interest as a scientist has been for the last 25 years is muscle and muscle formation, muscle development, but also muscle wasting. I mean, when astronauts go to space, very fast, they start losing their muscle mass. But then when they come back, also fast, few weeks later they recover.
The question I'm asking and hopefully we can address, what are the mechanism that really make our cells lose muscle fast but also recover. Can we apply this to diseases like sarcopenia or cancer induced muscle wasting? In fact, if I put my kid brain and science fiction, can we use, for example, in the future, hospitals in space where we send sarcopenic patients that space can reprogram their satellite cells and then they come back, maybe they can recover the muscle, they're loss. A question to be answered, experiment to be done. That's what drives me and really pushed me to do this.
I think the Why space, you'd answer like we do with many of our customers, which is space and zero gravity are interrelated but different concepts. We're going to space to achieve zero gravity environment and that's removing one of the four fundamental forces of the universe, the strong and weak nuclear forces, which are pretty chaotic if you're messing with electromagnetism and then gravity and that changes density, settling, hydrostatic pressure, other things like that. That's what we walk through with our customers is what of your process does those change, and how do we look through that? The Why space is really looking at what changes in the physics and how that affects a process or a signaling in biological systems or big thing in materials is that you don't get convective heat flow, so you can have very laminar reactions at very high temperatures next to each other. That's the why space in the pitch we give with our customers.
I'm going to take it just a little bit differently because you've heard about why space from a science perspective. But why space and why now, we're really building on a decade of results of what's been done on the ISS. A lot of that has been looking at human health and trying to understand human health for future exploration. But what we found is that there's a lot to the benefit to life on Earth in the science, just like Kart was mentioning about our cell phones, we touch space every day with your cell phone, but you're probably not even thinking about that when you do. There's a lot of products, my favorite is the ear thermometer that we all use, but that came from space because there was no other way to take temperature.
But when you think about the opportunities that we have to leverage that science and understanding to benefit to life on Earth, the ISS is a one of a kind scientific facility. There's more coming. There's Axiom Space building a space station, there's Starlab that's building a space station. There's vehicles like Dream Chaser that can help to get us up there. SpaceX, fantastic already gives us access to that environment.
But the future is a transition from the ISS that hopefully is even better and gives us more opportunity. We talked about the benefits of humanity or benefits of space for humanity on Earth. What about the benefits of space just for space? What about understanding whether or not we're going to occupy Mars? As I saw when we were at a restaurant with Paul and Elena at Starbase. Is that going to be possible? What are your thoughts because it sounds like we can't simulate microgravity.
What can we do to develop countermeasures for microgravity radiation, especially as we get beyond the Earth's orbit closer to cislunar environments and then beyond? Is this something that's humanly possible? Are we going to have to turn to Alex and understand how we can have an AI driven algorithm to have our thoughts embedded in a computer? Living on moon and Mars, ultra gravity, I think there's going to be a lot of challenges with this and we know that SpaceX has a very big agenda. They want to colonize Mars. I think the division I was at NASA will play a big role there because space biology is going to be essential to understand how you're going to grow plants. We can't bring everything to Mars for sure.
There's going to be challenges in terms of communications. There's about a 30 minute delay between anything that happens on Mars and when you can talk to them. Basically, we're going to have self driving lab, we're going to probably AI doctors that's going to help the patient and a lot of this work is happening right now. We're using large language models to try to curate information about medical activities, medical actions. I think it will be possible, but it's going to take a bit of time and moon is great because we're going to be able to experiment a lot of this concept on the moon first.
That's why you probably heard from NASA moon first, March 2nd. I think it's going to be really important that we try moon. Now, one thing, bring it back to Earth, I think our planet is becoming very difficult to live in, as you can see, the dryness and everything. I think some of the things we're learning from living in extreme environment will also applicable directly to us on Earth.
I think this is the other thing that we need to remember remind people is that whatever we're going to do in space we have some true application. Being able to deploy very structure that can be very resilient on Earth, going to be essential something like the fire we just had, where you put these people, is there any structure we can leverage? It's not only health, it's also the entire logistic that comes with living in space. I think it's going to be really exciting.
Let me say that ISS National Lab main goal is space for Earth. Our goal is terrestrial benefits. But if I think space for space, well, all the biomedical R&D we are doing on board the station, all the bioprinting, regenerative medicine, the avenues of automation and reprogramming for stem cells in space.
That will be all beneficial for deep space exploration where one of the major difficulties is going to be the distance from Earth. Like, hey, I need a batch of stem cell, in eight months you will have it. We need to have something on board on the base camp on Mars that able to fully produce program, your stem cells, so you can feed your bioprinting machine for example and have your liver ready for the people living the.
I mean, yes it's going to be really important to become self sustained. Also if we think of it from a medical point of view, being able to look at all times if you have any type of condition, some of the accrue health types of experiments, I think, like the ones that Doctor Jamieson has been pioneering with axiom space over the first three axiom private astronaut missions, but also in the next one in AX4. I think those are going to be very important in the future as well, especially with the distance and being far away from Earth and all the resources that we have here. Thank you. I think this remind me discussions we had a few months ago and I've been asking to Aaron and Alysson some provocative questions. Technically, I think I believe is space probably adaptation to space and technologically, we will solve it with time with AI and with all the technology. But the question we have is around our biology or how human can adapt in space, can we reproduce in space if we are going to colonize Mars? That's a question needs to be addressed.
I asked this question many times. I don't know whether anybody know that the answer to that. We don't know. Through probably brain organoid, what Alysson is developing, we can solve a problem of adaptation and aging, probably find solution. But for example, if you send human to Mars, probably it's better that they produce there to build the colony.
Is it feasible? That's my question, not an answer. Well, I think just answering it from a capability perspective, there are studies beginning and some have been done on the ISS that use human models or other subsystems or other organ models to see how those are affected right now in low Earth orbit, which under the Van Allen belt, you're not getting as much radiation. But there are studies planned for longer duration on the ISS or some of those organs, and then some of those starting to go to translunar injection as well as trans martian injection.
I think they'll start there with those models before they start sending the full people. I would just say, I didn't think 10 years ago that we would have the type of access that we have to microgravity. When I think 10 years forward to what it's going to look like to go to moon or Mars, it's probably not an eight month delay.
It's probably going to be a quicker rocket. It's probably going to be capabilities will be developed by advanced materials that will develop in space that will give us less delay in those communications. But it's going to be a make it don't take it opportunity as well for the science.
I think that's going to very important. When I think about even now, so everyone just saw this was a historic week because we had Firefly Ghost rider landed on the moon, which is the second payload that's been landed on the moon. The first payload was intuitive machines that made it up there, and I think everybody remembers tipped a little bit when it got up there, which was interesting to think that it actually even landed because right before that landing, they lost all communication and control of the vehicle.
It's a huge success, even though it was seen as well, it tipped over when it got there. The other thing you heard was the payloads only work for two weeks, as if that was a disappointment. A lunar day is two weeks and the lunar night is two weeks, and the lunar night is way too cold.
No payloads have been built yet that can even survive the lunar night. We have work to do just to understand how to be on the moon, let alone how to go further to Mars. That's what we can do. With all the science
that we're doing right now, that's how we're going to get there. As Twyman said, DISS is a stepping stone. We need to maximize the use of DISS to understand how we can tackle those problems for the time left. I was thinking as Jane was talking and Twyman as well. If you like HG Wells, he wrote a book in 1910. He was the first science fiction writer and it was called The Man in the Moon they discover a compound called Cavite which is a metal they've synthesized explosively actually, that covers the rocket ship so they can get to the moon.
It's antigravity. Then they were able to use that they knew at that time that the moon had about one-sixth Earth's gravity and they knew that it was very cold on one side of the moon. But their question from the aliens to them when they got there to the moon was, why don't you guys all look the same? We all look the same, and that's why we can do stuff. We're going to take you to our fearless leader who has all the ideas, and we imagine you have the same on Earth.
They say, Well, we tried that and it didn't work out so well. It's an interesting book about the importance of different views in science. You see, we all have a different opinion. I have many opinions, but as you can hear. But I think what we need to hear is Sheldon was alluding to this, what is the AHA moment when you say, Silva, we could never have done this with simulated microgravity? We could never have made X this algorithm on Earth without space informing us. We could have never made a product because it is an astrobiotechnology hub reunion.
What is the value proposition for people here who are in biotech or high tech, what do you think is one thing where you think I could never have done that on Earth or understood that on Earth? Well, I guess I was thinking what you were saying and I may be a bit off-topic, but one thing that happened recently and I don't know if this data are out yet. I hope I'm not releasing something that is not supposed to be released yet. But anyway, one advantage of microgravity is you can use centrifuge, and so you can use centrifuge to simulate a different type of gravity in space. What's been interesting recently and I don't want to give too much info, but let's just say that what was recently discovered is that by doing this experiment that can only be done in space where you have zero-G or micro-G they discover change at the cellular level.
There's a magic number, let me just say that Mars and moon will be very different in the impact on life because we see that when you have tulle gravity, you see these very strong reactive oxygen species in the cells. Then when you start increasing the gravity, it's happening around the gravity of Mars, we start seeing now the benefit that we see on Earth. There is this magic point that we're still looking for and I think it's going to be depending on the phenotype you're looking for.
That's one phenotype, reactive oxygen species. But that study actually has looked at a lot of different things with animals being centrifuge in space. Something you can't do here. It's impossible. But it's called gravity as a continuum.
What are the changes through this 0 - 2 g? What is the soft spots? Because that's going to be critical. Maybe living on moon is going to be extremely difficult on the body and Mars may not be so bad. This is very important for information for us to know any exploration beyond Mars, if we want to do exoplanet. Let's follow up on that point because you mentioned the cells that get reactive oxygen species also have enhanced cell renewal because they have symmetric divisions rather than asymmetric division. That could be an advantage for stem cell regeneration.
Self-renewal means the capacity to regenerate yourself or clone yourself. A stem cell, you can enhance a good stem cell population. Of course, the other side is you can enhance a bad stem cell population. But what are your thoughts about that? Because you mentioned that earlier.
Aging is actually probably something else that really links really well with space. I'm fascinated with all this work on pyrobiosis and work that I got my PG in Berkeley, Pyrobosis was a big topic there. But the concept of dormant stem cells and how you wake them up. I'm wondering if space could be one place where we could really try to tackle the aging question and talking about application on Earth. I think this is going to be huge. If we can find countermeasures as you were asking earlier, countermeasure we're going to find in space are going to be pretty much countermeasure for aging.
This is something very attractive to many of us because aging is not a very pleasant experience, I have to say. That would be my take on this. Nice. Well, I'm going to add one thing there because I love what you're saying. I think when you mentioned earlier about the collective for patients, we do the same thing in this community.
We want the collective of all the data. Because obviously, muscle cells are different from brain cells are different from heart cells. When you say stem cells, that's a big category. As we try to put more emphasis on how we do work, how we look at different body systems, what are those mechanisms that are happening? I think that's how we're going to really break through this. That's why it's important.
Gene Lab, which is the NASA repository for all of this data has started to really try to collect and put their arms around some of the more recent data that come from CAT and from Alysson. A Ron, who's in the room, and see if we can see the trends and see if we can start to pick some things out. That collective approach is what's going to really help us answer those questions.
I want to add something there being at the National Lab, I have the privilege to see all the different proposals, all the different projects from bioprinting to cancer stem cells to brain organoids, you name it. We have it. When I started, say wait, this is too much even for me, I had to navigate all this amount of data. At two moments the first one when I sent the project I was working with, I start to see pathways that we were not really observing on those brain organized or nerves, they say wait a minute. Does this work really work? Because I was the first skeptic of person.
I need to be honest with you. I remember I said, we can try, but I don't know. I say, wait a minute.
This is the future. I really saw the value of this. The second when I start to work at the ISS National Lab and I saw all the amount of data and converging pathways and collectivities, that's why now I'm an advocate, let's say for building the national network of innovation hubs from the West Coast to East Coast, we need to work together because as a ISS National Lab, I cannot disclose the data of that group to the other group, but we need the researcher to be in the same room and talk together. That's extremely important to accelerate innovation.
I just wanted to add, actually, it's also important to be able to repeat experiments because one thing that has been, I think, lacking, and Doctor Gulzi and we were talking about it a lot because we're asking questions. Has anyone done that? Yes, probably, but has it been published? Not necessarily because a lot of people do one of experiment, and it's often not enough to publish. Then it becomes really important to build that database like Jana was saying with Gene Lab, trying to find common pathways like David was just mentioning and being able to go up there more often to be able to build upon that. SpaceX, thank you so much. Of those fights.
But, I think that's one part that is really important as well, to be able to repeat your experiments to see if we can go up there a little bit more often to build on that. I think in terms of the Aha moment, I will answer in terms of a use case or scientifically because the experts are up here in the crowd. I think from a perspective that we have in terms of building equipment that enable this type of work, it's what Pinar is saying here. Really even up to today, we're getting drips of information. We're getting directional knowledge.
We're not getting the amount of data and repeatability that we need to really stand and justify whether it's whomever pharmaceutical or anything else like that. That's one of the big things that our side of the industry, both in terms of building the equipment as well as the launch opportunities, just so that the time between new data and the repeatability is really a part of the side of the equation a company like us has really got to solve with others. But we've just got to create a lot more data, a lot more repeatability. Imed, I just wanted to take it back to you. All this is fascinating. As I told you, I'm a new came.
But what I'm concluding and from my readings, my discussion with many of you is really this adaptation capability from space to earth and back. For example, the reactive oxygen species and the gravity. What's the connection for cellar rejuvenation? What's the application. Can we, and this is really to me an open possibility to really treat diseases and even probably trigger rejuvenation, just by going to space and come back, can we rejuvenate our cells, our muscle? Space promote aging in space based on our criteria, our biomarker that we use. But when they come back, cognition is recovered, muscle is recovered, et cetera. That's a lesson that adaptation mechanism can be used for our benefit that's probably what we can tap into in the future.
That is getting back to your magic point, Silver. You may not necessarily have to go into space, but we can find the pathways that are activated in space that affect muscle regeneration and how to see if we can jump start it on Earth. But what we discovered thanks to working with Axiom and our Sanford Stem Cell Institute ISSCOR Center is that not everything is worse in space, some things are better.
We found some of the astronauts activated this primordial very regenerative blood stem cell population, and it had to do with time and space. There may be a sweet spot where space is not a bad thing. For tumors, they proliferate quickly, but on the other hand, they proliferate quickly, so maybe an opportunity to enhance sensitivity of certain tumors to therapies and to discover new therapies.
In terms of the muscle regeneration Pat, have you discovered anything that could help with the sarcopenia loss or the loss of muscle? What I'm hoping with Rayyanah that we can design experiment and hopefully with your help in both area. One is on muscle regeneration and probably send satellite cells from patients from sarcopenic patients and see whether they can be reprogrammed, come back, do they recover because one of the problem of muscle wasting and sarcopenia is satellite cells in muscle don't enter the regenerative process easily. They have difficulty. Can we reprogram that? For aging, for example, with Alysson, now we're asking question about senescence.
Does gravity induce senescence and that can be play with recovery and rejuvenation whether gravity can trigger possibility to rejuvenate when they come back to Earth. That's really something we would like to explore. If I can say something, probably my dream with Rayyanah is we prepare the experiment, we design them well with you guys and send Rayyanah to space station or another module that is available, does her experiment and use that for her own PhD. My understanding, she will be probably the first scientist who does that does own experiment in space and defend her PhD using that.
That's probably to address these questions. You hate to be on that PhD panel. Exactly. Can I ask a question.
Can you imagine that the defense comes from [inaudible]? That's true. Imagine that. Also, I want to introduce one provocatory point here. We're talking about aging senescence, but also what about maturation? It's not necessarily the same as aging. Can we harness that as well? Just think about. Yeah. Directed differentiation. Oh, Janet.
Well, this conversation is fascinating because I'm just thinking as you're talking about Rayyanah going up and doing her thesis work, she probably should take her own cells and then we'll take her crew samples and we'll compare her cells in the dish? Cat and I have talked about this many times because I think the connection between crew health, long duration missions, exploration, and what we're doing at a cellular level are very important. That's why the Sanford, ISSCOR team looks at crew samples as well as tumor organoids, brain organoids, making those connections. I think that's the power of really helping us to understand what it's like to live in that environment. I would just add that when you think about living and working in space, you hear a lot about, it's so hard on astronauts and it is.
The truth is, they have a lot that happens to their bodies. But in some ways, it's no different than terrestrial commercial fishermen or commercial divers they go for six months in extreme conditions or people who work in the Antarctic. They do it for short periods of time, and then they take a break, and space is probably the same thing.
I don't know that we're ready to completely live off planet. But as we learn to understand, 600 people plus, have been on the ISS. They're all pretty healthy, and they go back multiple times. The other piece of this is that we can not only figure out benefit to life on Earth, but how do we tolerate those extreme environments as we go. I just wanted to say one thing.
There are operational efficiencies that you really bring into play when it comes to these experiments and you can develop new technologies or accelerate the development of technologies on Earth because of space. I'm trying to bring it down back to ground so that when we're in our clinics, we can say, Emmet and Rayyanah discovered that in space and now our patients don't have muscle waste. We can apply that small molecule inhibitor. What tangible products because we're talking about biotechnology. We've also got these stem and fitness and Space Medicine center represented here.
Thank you, Tatiana, for being here. She's looking at the better side of aging and centenarians and liver. What is a tangible product? We know Red Wire is here and is doing protein crystallization space. We saw Keytruda protein crystal structure resolved with PD1, it's target in space. That's a multibillion dollar product. Let's get crass. Let's talk about money.
We're spending a lot of money in space to come up with erudite solutions to things that may be problems in the future in space. We're saying there's going to be benefit to humanity on the ground. What's the most tangible benefit monetarily? Where's the business case here? I'll take that. [LAUGHTER] When I'm asked this question because right now it is very expensive to go to space, and it's also not frequent. In fact, to our SpaceX friends, when Starship goes up, I'd love to catch a riot on that every week dragon that's going up so that we can get more access to space.
But the truth is, you can make novel products and compounds. You can do things process-wise. Keytruda is a great example of reprogramming stem cells. That all seems far-fetched right now because the cost of launch and the accessibility of space is hard. As that changes and we can make things in space that we can't make here on Earth, that paradigm is going to shift.
I like to use an example that I think everyone in this room will be familiar. CAR T therapy, when it first came out, people said, no, too expensive, can't do that, can't use your patient's own cells. I was part of a tissue engineering company here in San Diego, and we thought, if you didn't have a cell bank that you could just use for every patient, you could never make money with that model. When CAR T therapy hit and all of a sudden, it saved someone's life, a whole industry figured out how to make it, distribute it and even pay for it as an insurer. Space is no different.
When we have that big breakthrough, we're not talking about incremental difference. It's a paradigm shift. It has to be something we really can't do here, or else don't do it in space, because it is going to be more expensive.
But when we find those opportunities to do things that we couldn't do here and logistics chain catches up to us, it's going to turn into a commercial space economy that's going to be pretty robust. Thanks, Jana. I just wanted to add to that point, Jana, when we think about products that we can make in space that might be very costly, it's also maybe we don't need to do the whole process in space either.
It really depends on which part of the process is really going to benefit from being made in space. Making products, small volume, high value type products will probably be the first ones and the ones that we should go after, and those will be, to Jana's point, all the worth doing in space. We've done experiments in space together with cancer. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Of course. This was actually on my slide.
I wanted to bring that up as well. With Dr. Jamieson's lab, we have done three axiom private astronaut missions, and in each one of them, we actually did many firsts. I'm very happy. To look forward for the next one.
Actually, during the first X1 mission, we looked at the colorectal cancer and leukemia tumor organoids. For the first time, we used the microscope on the ISS dubbed Kermit, which is basically a cans microscope that you guys also have at the Sanford consortium, during the second axiom private astronaut mission AX2, we actually did the first drug treatment on breast cancer tumor organoids, triple negative breast cancer. That was quite something to see because basically, Dr. Jamieson, during the first AX1 mission and the AX2, she had shown that the tumors were growing much faster in microgravity, in fact, were growing three times more, compared to the ones on the ground. But even in that auxiliary environment, the drug that they are currently developing, Vexinib, was able to inhibit the growth of those and actually deactivate the pathway that they're interested in, ADR one. Then in AX3 was also eye-opening because it's funny because when the astronauts are doing these experiments in space, typically, Jessica Pam and I will be at Lidose facilities, who are basically managing the microscope on the International Space Station.
We'll be there in the middle of the night and on a Zoom call with Dr. Jamieson and Jana, and everyone trying to look at these images live in the middle of the night. What we have seen during AX3 was not only repeating the experiments to see if we can obtain the same results,
2025-05-07 23:33
