Assessment of three types of spaceflight hardware for tissue culture studies: Comparison of skeletal tissue growth and differentiation

Abstract

Three different types of spaceflight hardware, the BioProcessing Module (BPM), the Materials Dispersion Apparatus (MDA), and the Fluid Processing Apparatus (FPA), were assessed for their ability to support pre-metatarsal growth and differentiation in experiments conducted on five space shuttle flights. BPM-cultured pre-metatarsal tissue showed no difference in flight and ground control lengths. Flight and ground controls cultured in the MDA grew 135 μm and 141 μm, respectively, in an 11 day experiment. Only five control rods and three flight rods mineralized. In another MDA experiment, pre-metatarsals were cultured at 4 °C (277K) or 20 °C (293K) for the 16 day mission, then cultured an additional 16 days in laboratory dishes at 37 °C (310K). The 20 °C (293K) cultures died post-flight. The 4 °C (277K) flight pre-metatarsals grew 417 μm more than the 4 °C (277K) ground controls post-flight. In 5 and 6 day experiments done in FPAs, flight rods grew longer than ground control rods. In a 14 day experiment, ground control and flight rods also expanded in length, but there was no difference between them. The pre-metatarsals cultured in the FPAs did not mineralize, or terminally differentiate. These experiments demonstrate, that while supporting pre-metatarsal growth in length, the three types of hardware are not suitable to support routine differentiation.