Israeli hospital to join NASA, SpaceX mission to study microgravity's effects on diseases
Sheba Medical Center's ARC Digital Innovation Center is joining a NASA and SpaceX mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday for a study on the extreme conditions of space, Sheba announced on Wednesday.
The experiment, dubbed the ARC Space Lab, is the second of its kind from Sheba, which remains the only hospital in Israel carrying out studies in space.
How does microgravity impact diseases?
One of the major barriers facing humankind's continued expansion into outer space is the unknown effects of long-term space travel on the human body. Finding out how to help astronauts adapt to challenges they may face when off planet for extended periods of time is a natural and essential step forward for medical science.
For this experiment, Sheba will partner with the US firm SpaceTango to grow several bacterial species aboard the ISS using a specially designed Earth-controlled system. After growth under microgravity, the bacteria will be stabilized, frozen at -80°C and returned to Earth for molecular and transcriptional analysis and direct comparison to bacteria grown simultaneously in an identical lab setup on Earth.
It is known that space has an impact on bacteria. For example, astronauts are more likely to develop infections, theorized to be due to a combination of microgravity, radiation, stress, and changes in the human microbiome.
However, this goes both ways. In a previous ARC Space Lab study, it was found that bacteria in space are less likely to develop antibiotic resistance. This was a major discovery and went against the prevailing hypotheses of the time, and the findings of this study were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Microbiology Spectrum.
'We know that space conditions affect bacterial behavior, including how they grow, express genes, and acquire traits like antibiotic resistance or virulence,' Sheba Infectious Diseases Unit head Prof. Ohad Gal-Mor said in a statement.
'This experiment will allow us, for the first time, to systematically and molecularly map how the genetic expression profile of several pathogenic bacteria changes in space. The insights we gain will augment our understanding of infectious disease risks in space travel, and also expand our knowledge of gene regulation and bacterial physiology in general.'
Sheba ARC director Prof. Eyal Zimlichman added, 'To understand the limits of medicine, we sometimes need to go beyond the limits of Earth. Our experiment in space examines how bacterial behavior changes under extreme conditions and what that means for human health—not just for astronauts, but also here on Earth. This is part of ARC's mission to shape the future of medicine, wherever it's needed.'
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