São Paulo
It started with a firefly. Instead of entering the pot where others of its kind were, the insect got stuck in the screw and was split in half by the lid. Suddenly, the animal’s head began to eat the abdomen, and several ideas lit up in the mind of the boy who was watching the scene.
“Doesn’t he know he’s eating himself? Doesn’t he know where he starts and ends?” thought Alysson Muotri. The firefly lantern in the vicinity of the family’s beach house, in Caraguatatuba (SP), did not work. But the issues at that time, in the early 1980s, led the boy to science and, in 2024, he will be able to enjoy millions of lights directly from the International Space Station (ISS).
Muotri should be the first Brazilian scientist in space, where since 2019 he has been sending so-called mini-brains – brain organoids created with so-called iPS cells (or induced pluripotent stem cells).
Starting from a skin sample, for example, scientists use special factors to make the cells “go back in time”, acquiring a versatility similar to that of embryonic stem cells. Then they employ substances that make the iPS cells specialize into neurons. Gradually, these neurons connect and form a three-dimensional structure that mimics in a simplified way the organization of the human cerebral cortex, hence the name “mini-brains”.
The organoids are built in the researcher’s laboratory, in California, and have been taken on missions to the ISS. The idea is to analyze how the brain develops and the neurological impact of microgravity.
“The expectation with the trip is very high”, says the researcher. “I believe that the cure for autism and Alzheimer’s may be in space. It will accelerate these discoveries and treatments.”
As the mini-brains have the same genetic material as the people who donated the skin sample or the baby tooth, it is expected that they will show the same developmental patterns as the original brains. This makes it possible to analyze variations in neurons over time and their impact on the development of dementia and ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) —and space accelerates this process.
Muotri points out, however, that when he talks about healing and treatment he is considering individuals with severe autism. “People with autism who live independently, work and have a family want inclusion, the freedom to be and think differently. I’m referring to those who need treatment, who have a range of comorbidities associated with autism.”
Because we are different?
A biologist from Unicamp (State University of Campinas) and a doctor in genetics from USP (University of São Paulo), Muotri embarked on neuroscience to try to understand what makes us human. Why, unlike fireflies, are we aware of our bodies? Why are we different from other species?
The first clues he found indicated that the answers lay in the sociability of human beings, and the scientist wanted to better understand how this social brain works. “As a geneticist, one way of looking at the issue is to look for examples where mutants show how something doesn’t work, to study how it doesn’t work to understand how it works,” he says.
Regarding sociability, these different profiles are found in people with ASD, who have a reduced capacity for social interaction, and in those with Williams syndrome, who are extremely sociable. Muotri then decided to study these two genetic conditions and took advantage of California characteristics to carry out the investigation.
“The George Bush administration had banned the use of embryonic stem cells and Arnold Schwarzenegger, then governor, rejected the ban and encouraged research.”
A father in the laboratory
Muotri was already working with TEA when he met the model Andrea Coimbra and her son, diagnosed with severe autism. The three became a family, and the scientist became a father.
“Ivan brought me a different perspective of what the spectrum is and the desire to help others”, evaluates the researcher, who started to look more actively for ways to alleviate the suffering of his son and other people with severe autism.
Muotri has intensified contact with families of children and adolescents with ASD –for him the most precious part of his work– and annually holds a meeting that brings together scientists, people with autism and family members.
In addition to his position at UCSD, the scientist is the founder of the biotechnology company Tismoo, dedicated to the health of people with neurological disorders, and in the most recent mission to the ISS, last year, he sent mini-brains derived from people with autism.
“The results were completely unexpected. We confirmed molecular pathways inside neurons that we suspected were involved with autism, but here on land we couldn’t find out, so it was transformative”, he says.
Mini brain aging challenge
Brain organoids make it possible to study neurodevelopment because they mimic brain construction from the earliest stages of the fetus to the equivalent of a few months after delivery. But stop there. “As much as we manage to let these organoids age in the laboratory for three, four years, they don’t acquire the characteristics of someone at that age, they become stagnant.”
When looking for ways to mature the mini-brains, the scientist approached space research, which indicated a faster aging of astronauts.
In April 2019, NASA (American space agency) published the changes observed after stay of an astronaut on the ISS and his twin on Earth. The work showed that premature aging was reversed, and Muotri disagreed with that conclusion.
For him, there had probably been a natural replacement of skin and blood cells, giving the impression that the effect was temporary. The brain, however, does not have this ability to regenerate, so the astronaut’s nerve cells would possibly remain older.
At first, nobody paid attention to this idea and the Brazilian couldn’t get funding to prove it. The way out was to pay for the study with his own savings and that’s how, still in 2019, he sent the first mini-brains into space.
With the proof that in orbit the brain organoids mature faster, partners emerged –including NASA itself– and new trips.
Why do Brazilian scientists go to space?
Traditionally, mini-brains are shipped to the ISS in a shoebox-sized container. Half corresponds to a battery for the microfluidic system to circulate and nourish the organoids and the other part contains the mini-brains.
This model is practical because the astronaut only needs to plug the box into a power source, but it is very limited from an experimentation point of view. Scientists on land do not have the ability to handle and analyze material in real time.
This limitation led Muotri to propose to NASA to train astronauts to manipulate the mini-brains. The proposal did not advance and was replaced by another option: going into space himself.
The scientist passed the physical and psychological tests and must undergo a six-month training to learn about the modules that make up the ISS and simulate the experiments he will carry out there.
“We believe that, in a single manned experiment, we will manage to carry out analyzes that would take up to ten years”, he says. “We hope to validate data that we found in other missions and discover what the mechanism of neuron aging is. If we succeed in this, we will be able to apply it to the study of dementia and brain rejuvenation”.
The project for the trip, scheduled for November 2024, was presented to President Lula and Minister Luciana Santos last month. According to Muotri, the initiative was well received and negotiations are underway with the government to provide resources and expand the partnership between the laboratory in California and researchers in Brazil. “It would be a dream to work ever closer with my Brazilian colleagues and help take their projects into space”.
2023-07-22 18:12:00
#Autism #Alzheimers #Brazilians #seek #answers #space #Science
