Brain cells are orbiting Earth tonight, hunting clues to Alzheimer's

Somewhere above the Earth, in the quiet of the International Space Station, brain cells and tiny lab-grown brain organoids from Saudi Arabia's KAUST university are floating weightless — deliberately. The two experiments, SSA-1 and SSA-2, rode a SpaceX resupply mission to the station to establish a baseline: how do healthy brain cells behave without gravity, before patient-derived cells are sent up to study Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis? The programme brings together KAUST, the Saudi Space Agency, NASA, Axiom Space and the National Stem Cell Foundation, and the samples are the first of their kind from the Middle East. Overseeing the microgravity work is Rayyanah Barnawi — the first Saudi woman astronaut, who flew in 2023 and is now a KAUST doctoral candidate. Microgravity, she says, 'potentially provides a fast lane for drug discovery.' The results are months away; the cells are already up there.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation