Poster for Transcriptomic Analysis of the Response of hiPSC-derived Cardiac Progenitors to Microgravity

Abstract The cellular response to microgravity has been studied extensively, but the effects of space microgravity on human cardiac progenitors are not well understood. To address this gap in knowledge, we conducted a study to evaluate the impact of space microgravity on the mRNA expression of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiac progenitors. Cardiac progenitors were cultured for 3 weeks on the International Space Station (ISS), and their growth, differentiation and mRNA expression were compared to those of space 1G and ground cultures. Our findings indicate that microgravity cultures showed an increased expression of growth and proliferation markers compared to 1G cultures, improved ATP binding, and increased cytosol and cytoskeleton activity. These results suggest that space microgravity can enhance the growth and proliferation of hiPSC-cardiomyocytes. Other resources Code and Data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14567481. Poster: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14568348. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14567570.