Case study update: Cartilage cells in weightlessness

Researchers at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts used a BINDER CO₂ incubator to study how cartilage cells respond to altered gravity.

Cartilage cells in weightlessness

How do cartilage cells respond to altered gravity? Researchers at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts investigated this question in 2019 during parabolic flights of the European Space Agency ESA. A BINDER CO₂ incubator CB 170 was used to cultivate and prepare the cells. Several scientific publications with the results are now available.

Researchers from Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in front of an Airbus A310

How do cells respond to altered gravity?

Cartilage cells are constantly exposed to mechanical loads. However, how they sense such forces and respond to them is not yet fully understood.

In the project COW – Cartilage ExpOsed to Weightlessness, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts therefore investigated whether important structures in cartilage cells change under varying gravity conditions.

The specially developed flight hardware made it possible to fix the cell samples at different points in time during the parabolic flight. (Source see below)

Controlled conditions with BINDER

For the experiments, the cells had to be cultivated and prepared under reproducible conditions. For this, the research team used a BINDER CO₂ incubator CB 170.

For the ESA parabolic flight campaign, the incubator was transported to Bordeaux. There, the cells remained under controlled culture conditions until shortly before the flight, before being transferred to the specially developed flight hardware (image on the left).

The incubator also played a role in preliminary experiments: a random positioning machine was operated inside the CB 170 to simulate certain effects of microgravity over several days.

Fluorescence microscopy images of the tubulin structure
of cartilage cells before and during the parabolic flight (Source see below)

31 parabolas in microgravity and hypergravity

During the ESA parabolic flight campaign, an Airbus A310 flew 31 parabolas. The cell samples were alternately exposed to short phases of hypergravity and microgravity.

Samples were fixed at different points in time and then analysed. The initial focus was on tubulin and vimentin, two components of the cytoskeleton.

What did the studies show?

The first publication appeared in Microgravity Science and Technology in 2020. The researchers found no significant changes in the tubulin and vimentin structures examined during the parabolic flight.

The research was then continued, and two further publications followed in 2022. Among other things, they examined the calcium balance and the membrane potential of the cartilage cells. These parameters also remained unchanged during short phases of altered gravity.

This allowed the researchers to further narrow down the possible mechanisms by which cartilage cells respond to mechanical loads.

BINDER in the scientific publications

BINDER is explicitly acknowledged for supporting the research project both in the 2020 publication and in the 2022 study published in Acta Astronautica.
The CB 170 itself was not the subject of the investigation. Its task was to provide the cells with stable and reproducible culture conditions during preparation.

The original 2019 case study: Case Study Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Image sources:

Flight hardware in the aircraft: Wuest, S. L. et al. (2020), Microtubules and Vimentin Fiber Stability during Parabolic Flights, Microgravity Science and Technology 32, 921–933, Fig. 4, CC BY 4.0.

Tubulin staining of the cartilage cells: Wuest, S. L. et al. (2020), Microtubules and Vimentin Fiber Stability during Parabolic Flights, Microgravity Science and Technology 32, 921–933, Fig. 6, CC BY 4.0.

Licence: Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons