Developing cancer treatments in space

CU Boulder leading effort with CU Anschutz, Mayo Clinic to use microgravity to grow stem cells

The University of Colorado Boulder is leading a $3.3 million project to advance stem cell research in low Earth orbit.

NASA has awarded the university’s BioServe Space Technologies a three-year grant to study the use of microgravity to grow hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). The cells, which will come from umbilical cord blood or bone marrow, show potential to treat serious medical conditions including blood cancers that require bone marrow transplants, fatal blood disorders, severe immune diseases, and certain autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

“The field of bio-regenerative medicine is rapidly expanding, and there is enormous potential to treat a broad set of diseases and organ failure,” said Louis Stodieck, BioServe’s chief scientist and a research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “Microgravity offers us the opportunity to try to mimic the human body in a way you can’t in a cell culture dish or bioreactor here on Earth.”

Collaborating with BioServe on the research are ClinImmune Cell and Gene Therapy at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, Mayo Clinic, and RheumaGen, a company that grew out of research at CU Anschutz.

Read the full article: Colorado.edu