Axiom Space’s civilian launch to space station gives UCF scientists shot to study effect on eyes, brains
This week all eyes will be on the Axiom Space civilian crew rocketing up to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center, but University of Central Florida researchers will be more interested in the eyes, and other organs, of the four space travelers when they return to Earth.
UCF Lake Nona Medical Center professors are collaborating with Israeli researchers to better understand the human body in a microgravity environment by studying the four space participants, three of which paid for the flight and one of which is a former NASA astronaut. The quartet are set to blast off Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center hitching a ride on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, which has been contracted by Axiom Space making its first trip to the ISS on a 10-day mission.
The studies could lead to huge leaps in space travel and medicinal knowledge bases, but for UCF the studies open an even larger opportunity for research and a nexus between its medical school and the Space Coast. The details are still being worked out, but UCF’s Medical Center has arranged a partnership with Axiom supporting human research studies in future flights including Axiom 2 next year, said Amoy Fraser, the UCF manager of clinical research.
“As the closest medical school to the Space Coast, we are optimally positioned to support these studies. And I think we’ll have a very fruitful partnership going forward,” she said.
The heart of UCF’s study is focused on changes to the astronauts’ eyes and brains.
The latter stands uniquely as the first human study of a microgravity environment’s effect on the “blood-brain barrier,” or the coated protection around a brain that filters out harmful toxins carried in the bloodstream, which is good, said Dr. Ali Rizvi, one of the main investigators in the study and a UCF professor.
“However, it also has a limitation because if we are to deliver certain medications that need to reach the central nervous system — in order to treat degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia — we are unable to do so because of this natural barrier,” he said.
Early evidence in animal testing shows the blood barrier can be changed in microgravity or zero-gravity environments, creating larger pores in the barrier and allowing for treatments to have a greater effect in combating neural disease.
The Axiom crew members, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy and Eytan Stibbe, along with veteran commander Michael LópezAlegría, were all tested prior to the flight, undergoing physical screenings, MRIs, blood pressure examinations and blood tests measuring the concentration of blood-brain-barrier proteins. Those results will be compared to a second wave of tests the lab will perform on all four of them at some point after their return.
“I think that with this information we can build on that in future studies,” Rizvi said. “I hope then to use this change to our advantage in the future with substances that might benefit actual patients who have suffered from chronic diseases of the central nervous system.”
Additionally, another group of Lake Nona UCF scientists performed their own screening of the astronauts specifically examining their eyes. What they’re interested in is how space travel and a microgravity environment may affect the structure of their eyes in a phenomenon known as “spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome,” or SANS.
“So what happens is our body leaves Earth, right? We end up going 250 miles into orbit, and the effect of gravity is very different,” said UCF professor and main investigator Dr. Mehul Patel. “The theory of SANS is that there’s fluid shifts that occur throughout our body. And this affects how our brain functions. This affects how our organs function, and this affects how our eyes and visual pathway functions.”
To the untrained, that may sound odd, but the SANS phenomenon doesn’t appear as unusual when you consider how physiology on Earth was molded by gravity over millions of years. Changing one factor will likely change the other, said Dr. Gal Antman, an ophthalmologist, and main investigator on the project collaborating from Rabin Medical Center in Israel.
“This means that not only the eyes are involved, but pretty much every organ system in the body changes because of displace flight,” Antman said.
SANS studies have occurred before, but what makes UCF and Rabin Medical Center’s collaboration unique is the tools they’ll be using. New imaging devices will enable researchers to see the structure of the eyes, the blood flow and how space flight might change them. Even during a short time in space changes could make differences in glasses prescriptions, Patel said. A longer example would include NASA astronaut Scott Kelly who experienced weaker vision after spending
a year in space between 2015 and 2016.
It remains to be seen if any large changes will occur, but if there are microscopic changes, Antman and Patel are hoping to catch them since understanding this phenomenon will govern how future space travel occurs.
“This is one of the exciting parts of doing the study, we’re going to be able to see microscopic changes, perhaps, for the first time ever, in someone that has left Earth and is returning 10 days later,” Patel said.