Can space help heal hearts? ISS study charts new path for stem cell therapy

Emory University stem-cell biologist Chunhui Xu is looking to space for a new way to mend damaged hearts on Earth. Her team is using the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab to test if the near-weightless environment of microgravity can make heart cells divide faster and survive longer, a novel approach borrowed from cancer researchers who noticed tumors grow more aggressively in orbit. The research aims to overcome a fundamental challenge: once cardiac muscle dies, it barely regrows. This reality leaves many end-stage heart-failure patients facing long transplant waits.

Results from the research were recently featured in Biomaterials and highlighted in Upward, the official magazine of the ISS National Lab.

This quest for regenerative approaches has historically remained elusive, as heart disease has topped U.S. mortality tables for over a century. In 2022 alone, it claimed roughly 702,880 American lives, accounting for about one in five deaths, according to CDC.

Xu, a pioneer who helped invent a widely used feeder-free stem-cell culture method and whose papers have logged more than 12,000 citations, saw potential in these microgravity effects. Ground simulations backed the hunch: heart cells grown in a clinostat proliferated 1.5 times faster than 3-D cultures on Earth and four times faster than standard 2-D dishes, while also looking purer and more mature. That early signal persuaded NASA and the ISS National Lab to fly two experiments: one tracked how stem cells differentiate into cardiomyocytes, and the other examined how those cells mature into tissue-like structures.

For the first flight, Xu’s team used Redwire’s Multi-use Variable-gravity Platform. Twin centrifuges let astronauts culture a true 1 gram control on orbit, meaning launch stress and ISS conditions were identical for both sets of samples; gravity was the only dial turned. “The MVP’s ability to provide a 1 gram control in space is important because gravity really is the only difference between the samples,” Redwire VP Rich Boling said.

Xu says the goal is to generate sturdier, more abundant graft cells “with improved survival when transplanted into damaged heart tissue,” according to an ISS National Lab release. The team hopes the approach may one day reverse heart damage, but that remains hypothesis territory until controlled trials show transplanted, microgravity-primed cells actually rebuild myocardium.

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Filed Under: Cell & gene therapy

 

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