Organoids in Orbit

Organ and tissue models – organoids – grown in the lab as an assembly of their constituent cells or their precursors are a very popular and convenient means to study so many aspects of biomedicine. But to be reliably informative, organoids must be as true to the real thing as possible ... however that may be achieved? Glioblastoma (GBM) brain tumouroids grown on the International Space Station (bottom row) have been found to better recapitulate real life behaviour and biochemistry than their grounded counterparts (top). To better understand and treat the aggressive cancer GBM it may be possible to grow these mimics by recreating the necessary microgravity conditions of long-term space flight here on Earth.

Read the published research article here

Written by Lindsey Goff

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Image from work by Alice Burchett Darantiere and colleagues
• Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), October 2026