New biomarker database designed to improve the health of astronauts could also be useful for Earthlings

As space travel becomes more common, an international team of researchers has developed a new biomarker tool to help improve the growing field of aerospace medicine and astronaut health.

Dr. Guy Trudel (professor at the Faculty of Medicine), Odette Laneuville (associate professor, Faculty of Science and director of Biomedical Sciences) and Dr. Martin Pelchat (associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology) are among the contributors to an international study led by Eliah Overbey of Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of Austin.

Published today Natureit introduces the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), a database containing integrated data and sample repositories from a wide range of space missions, including SpaceX and NASA.

Space travel creates cellular, molecular and physiological shifts in astronauts. SOMA is expected to provide much-needed biomedical profiling that can help unravel the short- and long-term health impacts of spaceflight. This will provide the necessary health monitoring, risk mitigation and baseline data for countermeasures for upcoming lunar, Mars and exploration missions. It is intended to keep astronauts and space travelers alive and healthy.

It may also have an intended application here on Earth.

“This marks a breakthrough in the study of human adaptation and life in space. Because many of the changes seen in astronauts in space resemble those of people lying motionless in bed, these studies may be clinically relevant. The data is therefore important for future space travel.” while also providing a link to people on Earth with limited mobility or who are bedridden before their rehabilitation,” says Dr. Trudel, a rehabilitation physician and researcher at the Ottawa Hospital who has focused on space travel and its effects on the human immune system. .

Highlights of the study:

• The Atlas contains comprehensive molecular and physiological profiles spanning genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and microbiome datasets, revealing some consistent features across missions.
• Samples were taken before the flight, during, after the flight and during the recovery period.
• A comprehensive profile of the physiological changes of the I4 crew (29, 38, 42, 51 years) and 13 unique types of biospecimen samples were collected and processed.
• 2,911 samples were stored and more than 1,000 samples were processed for sequencing, imaging and biochemical analysis, creating the first-ever aerospace medicine biobank.
• The SOMA resource represents a more than tenfold increase in the total publicly available human space omics data.

“The University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Science and the Ottawa Hospital’s Bone and Joint Research laboratory have a long history of contributions and successes in the study of human adaptation to space. They also involve students from various programs , providing a unique learning experience in both bone and joint health, and in the rapidly developing field of aerospace medicine,” adds Dr. To Trudel.