aafter several delays, the long-awaited one first commercial spacewalk will launch later this summer as part of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission, propelling four civilian astronauts more than 450 miles above Earth. Among those eagerly awaiting the mission’s findings is Christopher Mason, a geneticist and computational biologist who studies the effects of space on the human body. He previously helped lead the NASA Twin study comparing physiological, molecular, and cognitive measures for astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly.
Last month, Mason and researchers from more than 100 institutions released the report Space omics and medical atlas, the largest collection of health data collected to date from astronauts and other civilians in space. The package, which consists of: 44 published articles, includes data from the Inspiration4 mission, the first fully civilian space orbit, the Twins Study, and others. Human space biology data from the Polaris Dawn mission, as well as from future lunar missions, is expected to be added to the repository.
Mason, a professor of genomics, physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and also a member of the scientific advisory board of Seer, a biotechnology company whose tools were used to study the data, spoke to STAT about the publication of the space flight atlas, creating a baseline for human health in space, and his thoughts on the ‘second space age’. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is “space omics”?
‘Space Omics’ covers everything from the way you measure astronauts and biology in space, to the ways you quantify what happens in space. When people say “-omics,” it’s just a broad term to define all kinds of technologies that look at cells, genes, and molecules. Genomics are all genes, transcriptomics are all transcripts, proteomics are all proteins. ‘Space omics’ are all those technologies, measurements and medical measurements that are carried out with astronauts before and when they return from space.
What is the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA)?
The Space Omics and Medical Atlas is the compendium of [data on] almost every astronaut we’ve ever measured anything in the last decade, including the Twins Study. It’s in atlas form, so people can ask questions about it, they can look at specific genes, and they can test some of their own hypotheses and compare them to their own data.
How much astronaut data does it have?
It includes 64 astronauts who have cytokine data, which isn’t a huge number, but it’s about 10% of everyone who’s ever been in space, so it’s actually quite large. Cytokines are a kind of metabolomics or proteomics measure, specifically proteins that come out when you’re stressed or inflamed. We can measure different cytokines and how they change during spaceflight. There are 13 astronauts in the atlas with transcriptome and genomics data. The atlas includes short missions, long missions, men and women.
But the most important thing is that it is also open. We have an open consent form. Anyone going into space is welcome to participate in the studies and contribute their data. It is the first edition of the atlas, but we want it to grow.
What is the use of the space flight atlas?
If you go to the doctor and have blood tests done and, for example, see how much glucose you have in your blood, you will always have a normal range. When you get your blood work, you want to know, ‘Am I normal? Am I high? Am I low? This is the first atlas of what a normal human body looks like in space. Before that we really had no statistics. We had individuals. We looked at one, two or four people. But this is the first time we can begin to say what a nominal range of blood, genes, proteins and cellular responses to being in space is. The atlas gives us that baseline.
How is the data in the Space Flight Atlas collected?
Some are through basic blood tests, like when people go to the doctor. Some come from things like Seer technology, or from sequencing tests, instruments built by Illumina and Element. We have used a large battery technology. It’s not just one tube of blood, we actually take about 14 tubes of blood.
What surprised you most about collecting and analyzing all this data?
One of the interesting things is the telomeres that we saw lengthening in the twin study, which we also saw with Inspiration4. The telomeres lengthen slightly, even within a few days of being in space. I was surprised how quickly that happened. We are seeing what we believe is a rapid response to radiation.
The most surprising thing was also how quickly we got the crew trained and ready to do science in space. The Inspiration4 crew, which was selected, trained and in space within five months of training, collected ultrasounds and blood tests and conducted microbiome tests. And they are all civilians.
You said the telomere lengthening was surprising. Why is that surprising, and why is that important to know?
It’s surprising because of the speed at which it happens. I thought it would take more than a few days. It also appears to be somewhat dose dependent. Like many of the changes we saw, telomeres lengthened a little, but not as much as if you had been in space for a month. We see some evidence that the cells in the body are measuring the dose of their time in space, if you will. When you think about a dose of a drug, if you take a lot of something, it will affect you more than if you take a little. We’re starting to see that there’s a somewhat dose-dependent effect: the more time you spend in space, we think you’ll see these changes. Telomeres will lengthen the longer they stay in space. The cytokines that we see change will undergo a greater change the longer you stay in the space.
What does that mean? Is this cause for concern?
Telomeres are actually the caps at the end of your chromosomes that keep your DNA intact. They normally shrink as you get older, so the fact that they stay in space longer is a sign of youth and longevity. But it’s not like the fountain of youth is in space. It just goes to show that there is a surprising feature that we are now seeing in almost every shift, which is telomere lengthening.
It doesn’t mean you’ll live forever if you go to space. It just means that the body has a response to the radiation that is similar to what you might do if you have a really strong workout where your muscles are sore for a day, but then the muscles are built up. We think it’s called hormesis, which is a strain on the body, but may have some function. It could be a good thing, for a short burst of radiation.
One of your articles discusses “space dermatology.” What was that about?
For the first time ever, we performed skin biopsies for the Inspiration4 crew just before and just after their mission, about a month before and then within three days of landing.
We could see the inflammation in the skin. Scott Kelly had reported that he had a rash when he returned from space. Many astronauts report rashes and discomfort in the skin, so it is something that is talked about a lot. But this was the first time we had to do a biopsy to see what changes. And we can see different immune cells moving and moving closer to the skin. The structure of the skin is almost a little different and there is inflammation.
What does the atlas tell us could be areas of concern when it comes to placing people in space or space travel?
The good thing is that we don’t see any red flags or show stoppers saying that civilians and crews shouldn’t go to space. More than 95% of the genes and proteins that changed returned to normal. The vast majority of molecular and cellular changes in the body return to baseline fairly quickly within about a month. But one of the things we saw was intriguing: we see evidence that there may be stress on the brain that is probably on the blood-brain barrier. It’s not necessarily bad. It’s just different from what we see on Earth. It’s something we’ll just keep an eye on to see.
How do you see the Space Flight Atlas being used for future lunar missions?
I’ve talked to a number of people who are currently training to go to the moon. Some astronauts will participate in some of the same studies. The goal would be to add all of this so that the atlas continues to expand.
The moon radiation will be much higher because you don’t have the protection of the magnetosphere or the Van Allen belts. We expect the radiation absorbed on the way to the moon to be significantly higher.
We think that if some of the changes are really linear – we see a little bit of change in a few days and a lot more in a few months – you could accelerate some of these changes if you go to the moon. a much harsher environment with more radiation. That helps us discover which genes could be targeted by drugs as countermeasures, and what you could use for radioprotection. The changes that have occurred in blood testing will help us identify where we might be able to target for countermeasures.
What role do the SOMA studies play regarding pharmaceuticals in space?
We sequenced the whole genome for the crews and created a pharmacogenomic report. We see that some genes that regulate drug metabolism also change in space. … It’s the beginning of pharmacogenomic work for astronauts. We do this for patients on Earth, but now we’re starting to do this for astronauts too. It is convenient, because then you do not have to take every medication with you. You can only take those that you know will work for your genome.
What further research do we need to better understand the long-term health effects of space travel on the human body?
The simplest thing is more data, because we only have 64 astronauts total for one measure and we have a handful of other astronauts for these other broad measures. We also need to collect more data on men versus women.
We see some evidence that females may recover more quickly from spaceflight, which is interesting. But we don’t yet have the statistical power to know that for sure. We’re in the early stages of seeing interesting trends, but now we need to really validate them across multiple missions.
What is your most important message for the general public?
Space is open! It’s still expensive, but the space seems safe for regular people. They can receive an education, they can contribute to science. They can donate samples, tissues, blood, sweat and tears – literally – to our research. It’s a second space age!