Space travel could improve Huntington's disease? High school students contribute to study

The first animal sent into space was Laika, a dog dispatched on the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 in 1957. Electrodes transmitted the unwilling volunteer’s vital signs back to Earth and showed that the space dog died after her fourth orbit when her capsule overheated. Five months later, after thousands of orbits, the spacecraft fell back to earth and exploded with Laika’s remains inside.

Today, it isn’t necessary to send canines into space to add to scientific and medical knowledge. Nematodes – tiny roundworms – can be sent to the International Space Station as an animal model for human diseases for testing the effects of that environment. Research on nematodes – even carried out by high-school pupils, could benefit humanity.

The 21st century is likely to be the first century in which large-scale short- and long-term space missions become common. As a result, an ever-increasing body of research is focusing on understanding the effects of current and future space expeditions on human physiology in health and disease. Yet the complex experimental environment, the small number of participants, and the high cost of space missions are among the primary factors that hinder a better understanding of the impact of these space missions. 

Pupils at the Shehakim High School in Nahariya, led by their science teacher and mentor Tatyana Itkin and backed up scientifically by University of Haifa biologist Dr. Amir Sapir, have increased knowledge of the horrific inherited brain disorder Huntington’s disease. 

Their experiment earned them first place in the Ramon Spacelab – Israel’s leading educational program in the field of science – competing against 30 schools here in memory of fallen Columbia astronaut Ilan Ramon. Itkin declared that she was very confident that her pupils could win the Ramon Spacelab competition. 

High school students at the research level

An even more impressive feat was that it was the first time a study was published in a scientific journal in which high school pupils, researchers, and the Ramon Foundation were partners. Their study, which took six months to write, was recently published in Astrobiology – the most-cited peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the understanding of life’s origin, evolution, and space exploration biology – under the title “Exploiting the unique biology of Caenorhabditis elegans to launch neurodegeneration studies in space.”  

Huntington’s causes nerve cells (neurons) in parts of the brain to gradually break down and die. The incurable disease, which can affect movement, cognition (perception, awareness, thinking, and judgment) and mental health causes a varied decline over 10 to 30 years, attacking areas of the brain that help to control voluntary (intentional) movement. 

Among children, it usually results in death within 10 to 15 years after symptoms develop, while the depression linked with it can raise the risk of suicide. Huntington’s is not a primary neurodegenerative disease, but its mechanisms are similar to Alzheimer’s.

“If in the future it turns out that life in space does indeed increase the incidence of degenerative diseases, this will have far-reaching consequences for missions in space, especially those that [are] long-term,” Itkin said. “On the other hand, if the stay prevents the appearance of these diseases, an opening may be opened for innovative treatment of diseases, for example, by healing tourism to space.” 

Using the fascinating world of space, the Ramon Spacelab program aims to arouse pupils with curiosity and to motivate them to dream as far as possible, while using their own inherent personal and social potential.

Itkin, who came on aliyah with her family with the fall of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in 1990 after her parents were refused permission to leave for Israel, studied at the University of Haifa and Oranim College of Education for her bachelor’s and then her master’s degree. 

Oranim, located 20 minutes east of Haifa and named for the pine trees that grow on campus, is the largest and leading academic college of education in the north of Israel, catering to thousands of students – Jews and Arabs of all religions and socioeconomic backgrounds – enrolled in bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in education, teaching certification courses, and advanced career training. 

'Staying in school for two or three hours plus work at home'

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Itkin noted that half of the pupils who prepared and sent the experiment in a test tube and wrote the research study are also from families of FSU origin. “They decided to join the project at the end of seventh or eighth grades,” she said. “They were very motivated, staying in school for two or three hours plus work at home. It was a long process until they got the idea of using the C. elegans nematodes instead of cells. The tiny roundworms are less than half a millimeter in length and can’t be seen with the naked eye. A special microscope shows iridescent proteins inside.” 

The use of nematodes made it possible to develop a remote-control system for the stages of the experiment and to monitor the development of the disease while receiving real-time updates from the astronauts on the space station and synchronizing them with the tests in Sapir’s lab.

The worms are transparent, so it’s relatively easy to follow the development of neurodegenerative diseases inside. They can live without food for about six months – a situation that simulates, for example, waiting to be launched into space.

Sapir added that the original thought was studying the effects of space – which could include G (gravitational) forces at launch and upon landing, radiation, and weightlessness – on neurogenerative diseases in general, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. 

But they narrowed it down to Huntington’s disease because the nematodes were genetically prone to develop a degenerative disease similar to Huntington’s. The Ramon Foundation paid $50,000 to a private company that coordinates the shipments for dispatching and conducting onboard experiments. 

After proteins in the test tube were counted, the conclusion was that being in space could improve the condition of Huntington’s patients. Putting the nematodes in weightless conditions on earth worsened the situation, speeding up their decline, Itkin said.

The team, which included pupils Ksenia Unger, Yair Barak, Amit Yovel, Liya Stekolshchik, Linoy Ego, and Yana Aydinov, led by Sapir, Itkin, and biochemistry Prof. Yoram Gerchman, suggested that NASA or the private Space X company could conduct genetic tests on astronauts they are sending into space to see if they have a basis for neurodegenerative diseases that could develop much later. 

The high school pupils who conducted the research have already joined the Israel Defense Forces or will very soon. Liya, who was born here to parents who came from the FSU, said in an interview that in ninth grade, when her teacher suggested that she join the project and she joined the team, she knew nothing about nematodes, Huntington’s, or even much about space. 

“I liked astronomy and looking at the stars, but that’s about all. Tatyana was very supportive, and she encouraged us to work hard even when it was very difficult. We were as obligated to her as to the research,” said Liya, who next month will join the Israel Navy. 

Her aim became to help people with Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. When she and her classmates saw their names published in the journal, “we were in shock. It’s such a great honor!”

Sapir, who is the head of the University of Haifa’s Laboratory for Molecular Genetics of Aging and Metabolism, told the Post that he had been interested in space for many years because it reflected the effects of extreme environments. 

A bachelor’s degree biology graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he went on to a master’s and then a doctoral degree at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. After a first post-doctoral position at Haifa’s Technion – Institute of Technology, Sapir was a post-doctoral biology researcher at the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 2008 to 2014, where he published papers on nematodes on the ocean floor. “We also want to look for the roundworms in the Dead Sea,” he said. 

Clearing metabolism 

In his research, Sapir – who admitted that he would love to go to space – seeks to elucidate the genetic basis of metabolism, aging, and life in extreme environments. Today he focuses on understanding how impaired cholesterol metabolism leads to the development of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease – the three major medical challenges of our time.

“If you have a lab, you don’t have a supervisor anymore, so you can do what you like. I came across Tatyana and thought she could involve her high school pupils in a space project. Nematodes that were ‘identical twins’ with those sent into space were used as a control. Those at the space station – female hermaphrodites that also product sperm – were allowed to develop for three days and given 20 days to live. Then they were brought back to our lab,” Sapir recalled. 

“We want to repeat the experiment because scientists never do one experiment, which is like a taste,” he concluded. “The team made one small step forward; we want to validate, but we need funding. If we find that space conditions accelerate the disease, it won’t directly lead to treatment or a cure, but it increases our scientific knowledge.”