Space meat
How 3D bioprinting works and why it is needed in space
Yaroslav Gorlov, "Snob"
In December 2018, the 3D bioprinter "Organ.Auth" printed human tissue in space for the first time. Then human cartilage tissue was chosen for the experiment, and this fall a bioprinter was used to print a small fragment of beef. The "snob" understands why it is important to print meat in space and how it is connected with the modeling of snowballs, donor organs and debts of Roscosmos.
Snowballs from living cells
Conventional 3D printers produce gel material in layers, while "Organ.Avt" operates with living cells "flying" in a magnetic field and combines them into full-fledged tissues. The mechanism of the bioprinter "Organ.Auth" resembles the modeling of a snowball: when we make snowballs, we act on the snow from several sides at once and form a ball, magnetic waves inside the printer also act on the cells to form a fragment of living tissue from them.
In terrestrial conditions, the connection of cells is hindered by gravity, which is not present in orbit in microgravity. Therefore, it is easier to print some structures in space than on Earth. For example, when layer-by-layer printing of tubular constructs (vessels or ureters) under the influence of gravity, they begin to "collapse", like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. So in this case, we can say that there is no gravity – no problem.
However, so far "Organ.Auth" can only print ellipses and tori ("bagels"). To create tubes, these "bagels" need to be pulled lengthwise, and to do this, acoustic waves must be added to the existing magnetic waves in the printer mechanism. Acoustic tweezers can also be used to move specific cells to create more complex shapes. However, this technology is more complicated than conventional acoustic waves, so for now it is used only in terrestrial conditions, because the necessary equipment is too bulky for the ISS. But it is possible to add an acoustic wave generator to the design in the near future, since this does not require major changes in the bioprinter. So the creation of tubular structures is possible in the near future.
Donor organs without donors
The initiator of the project was Alexander Ostrovsky, the founder and CEO of Invitro. According to him, initially the technology was intended to create donor organs for their subsequent transplantation and to solve the problem of their constant shortage. As Ostrovsky says, "we see queues for organ transplantation, in which people have been standing for years and often die without waiting."
With the help of a bioprinter, it has already been possible to create a viable thyroid gland and successfully transplant it to mice, in the future – the creation of other endocrine organs. Tests on mice show that even with the removal of the "original" gland, it is possible to fully restore its functions during transplantation, and successful experiments have also been conducted to restore the sex glands in mice. It is possible to print cartilage, skin and muscles, in the plans – tubular structures, for example, vessels and ureters.
However, it is unknown when exactly the technology of bioprinting of living tissues will enter our daily life. "Everyone expects the emergence of technologies in clinics to work with patients," says Yousef Hesuani, Managing Partner of 3D Bioprinting Solutions. "But passing regulatory barriers to work with patients is a long time, so for now we can only talk about preclinical trials." At the International Society of Biofacturing (ISBF) it is believed that the first printed organ will appear in circulation no earlier than 2030.
From space – on the table
In the course of working with the bioprinter "Organ.Auth" it turned out that it can be used to produce artificially cultured meat, and not minced meat, but full-fledged structured fibers. In a recent experiment, cow cells were used for bioprinting on board the ISS, and scientists managed to obtain a small fragment of muscle tissue – a few millimeters. This is the first experience of growing animal food in space, before that only experiments with plants were conducted. "A small piece for a person, but a big piece for the whole of humanity," Hesuani says ironically.
Muscle tissue collected from spheroids of bovine cells. Photo: 3D Bioprinting Solutions.
It is too early to compare the global industrial livestock industry with the cultivation of "engineering" meat, because the number of products is incomparable (12 million tons of meat produced only in the USA, for example, in 2019, against a couple of millimeters of beef on the ISS). But we can say that in the future, the creation of artificial meat will have less impact on the environment than traditional animal husbandry. So, for the production of a kilogram of ordinary beef, 10-15 thousand liters of water are needed, for bioprinting meat, much less water is needed. In addition, modern animal husbandry is accompanied by greenhouse gas emissions and the killing of animals. The ethical side of the transition to the cultivation of artificial meat is discussed, for example, by representatives of the Ochakov Food Ingredients Plant (OKPI), which in September announced the creation of a cutlet from laboratory-grown beef. "From our point of view, the production of laboratory meat has the most significant ethical significance for modern society, since we can refuse to slaughter living creatures to obtain meat food," says the curator of the project, molecular pharmacologist Nikolai Shimanovsky.
The difference between growing meat using OKPI technology and bioprinting, firstly, is in the structure of the product (minced meat vs. muscle fibers), and secondly, the need for a nutrient medium. For bioprinting, cells need only water, and to create meat using the "terrestrial" method, a special medium is required, that is, a liquid that needs to be stored and delivered under special conditions.
"Ochakov Food Ingredients Plant" spent 900 thousand rubles on the production of one cutlet. Meat bioprinting technology is also expensive, but over time, conducting experiments with bioprinting is becoming cheaper, says Youssef Hesuani: "When it cost space money, we did it on earth, and when it cost earth money, we started doing it in space."
If, as the project participants say, someday the price of a kilogram of "engineering" meat really becomes comparable to the price of ordinary beef, a biotechnological novelty can get on the table of an ordinary consumer. But, of course, the easiest way will be to try the meat printed in space by the astronauts themselves, who will only have to heat the water surrounding the grown samples to cook them. However, the taste of such meat is likely to be different from ordinary beef, because it contains not only muscle tissue cells, but also connective and fatty tissues.
In the future, meat bioprinting technology can be used, for example, in space colonization programs of the Moon and Mars, as it makes it possible not to depend on terrestrial food sources: "These cells grow very well, you can send, relatively speaking, 100 cells, and astronauts will be able to get 100 million cells from them. They will grow these cells already in space and, accordingly, eat them," says Hesuani.
Radiation safety
Growing meat in space looks progressive, but experiments with food traditionally raise doubts. What about, for example, the effect of cosmic radiation on samples? Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, who conducted one of the experiments on board the ISS, guarantees that the radiation situation at the station is in order: "We always have passive dosimeters with us, which allow us to constantly monitor radiation. Besides, we fly under radiation belts." Radiation belts (Van Allen belts) are areas of the Earth's magnetic field that capture and hold charged particles of cosmic rays, so they are dangerous for living organisms. The lower boundary of the inner belt is located at an altitude of 4000 kilometers, and the height of the ISS orbit does not exceed 500 kilometers, so the radiation impact on the station is really not so great. Naturally, there are anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field with an increase in the radiation background, but for this purpose the station provides protection systems.
In active search
The 3D bioprinting project was developed jointly by Roscosmos, private companies (3D Bioprinting Solutions, Invitro) and foreign partners (live cow cells were provided by the Israeli company Aleph Farms). "This experiment led not only to the creation of a new technology, but also to the modification of the interaction of state–owned companies with private owners," says Youssef Hesuani. In the future, Roscosmos plans to "open the entrance to the industry for private businesses who want to work in space," with which the Skolkovo Foundation, which supports private cosmonautics, helps him. Specifically to simplify interaction, it is even planned to create an intermediary division between the state corporation and entrepreneurs.
The fact that Roscosmos is looking for new partners is quite natural. In 2018, it became known about the large debts of the corporation, in October of the same year, the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle crashed at the 114th second of the flight. The last (at the moment) flight of an American astronaut to the ISS using the Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled for spring 2020, and the existing contract with NASA has not been extended since 2011. Roscosmos needs money, and attracting private companies to joint space projects is one of the ways to get it.
Other project participants are also interested in new investments, who have seriously invested in the experiment and are waiting for it to pay off. The head of Invitro, Alexander Ostrovsky, considers the niche they occupy very promising: "By 2025, the biotechnology market should double and reach the level of $ 1 trillion."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru