Russian cosmonauts were the first in the world to conduct a unique experiment
How nice it is to read the news that Russia was the first to reach the top in science, and not records for increasing the number of oligarchs per capita!
On December 11, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, working on the ISS, previously trained to work on a bioprinter, carried out experimental printing of living tissue for the first time in the world. The pioneers among artificial organs in space were human cartilage tissue and the mouse thyroid gland.
The experiment could have started a month and a half earlier, if not for the accident of the Soyuz FG rocket with the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft, which occurred on October 11.
Soyuz MS-10 carried the first bioprinter into orbit, which, interestingly, survived along with the crew thanks to the emergency rescue system.
The organizer of the experiment is the 3D Bioprinting Solutions laboratory, owned by the private Russian company Invitro. The same laboratory, together with the Roscosmos state corporation, developed the Organaut bioprinter over the course of two years, which was delivered to the ISS on December 3 by the Soyuz MS-11 manned spacecraft.
What is unique about the experiment?
This was not just the world's first printing of living organs in space. This was the testing of new technologies for printing cellular material in zero gravity conditions. The magnetic bioprinter formed and grew living tissues without the use of a substrate, scaffold or tags made of magnetic nanoparticles, but directly in the air, using the principle of magnetic levitation. A new technology for three-dimensional printing of living tissue in microgravity conditions was developed by scientists from the Joint Institute of High Temperatures of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Printing living organs in microgravity conditions became possible thanks to a series of unique studies on the formation of spatially ordered structures using a non-uniform magnetic field, carried out from 2010 to 2017 at the Coulomb Crystal installation in the Russian segment of the ISS.
Who needs it and why?
According to the managing partner of the Invitro company, Yusef Khesuani, during long and distant space flights, new, previously unseen human diseases may be discovered or even arise.
“For bacteria, microgravity is a lot of stress. They form biofilms quite quickly and become resistant to antibiotics. This leads us to believe that new diseases may arise on long-distance missions because the microbiome may behave differently. We have already gone through this in the history of mankind. You know that scurvy as a disease was discovered during long ship voyages. In deep space, it is quite possible that we will discover new diseases,” Khesuani explained the essence of the experiment at a press conference in Moscow.
Bioprinters based on new technology will be able to create various biological structures that can be used, for example, to assess the adverse effects of space radiation on the health of astronauts during long-term space missions. Also, according to the authors, in the future this technology will be able to restore the function of damaged tissues and organs.
In addition, the new technology of biofabrication in zero gravity has more immediate tasks. For example, in the treatment of cancer.
Yusuf Khesuani also said that the unbreakable position of the Roscosmos management almost forced Invitro to turn to NASA for help. We were talking about the conditions of the experiment. Roscosmos offered to either conduct an experiment in space, either quickly, but for money, or for free, but wait in line for eight years.
Representatives of the company negotiated with colleagues from Stanford University and learned that in the United States, biofabrication experiments have the highest priority and NASA undertakes to organize them not only quickly, but in some cases for free.
In the end, the parties agreed on partial payment for the Invitro experiment with the delivery of equipment to the ISS at the expense of Roscosmos.
The Americans have planned to deliver the bioprinter to their segment of the ISS in February next year, despite the fact that the Russian experiment has already been carried out.
On December 20, samples of living materials printed in space will return to Earth by the descent module of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft, after which scientists will conduct their initial analysis and evaluate the quality of assembly and the behavior of artificial living samples in terrestrial conditions. The research results will be reported in early 2019.
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