Astronaut Biomarkers

Spaceflight induces drastic molecular, cellular, and physiological shifts in astronauts and poses myriad biomedical challenges to the human body, which are becoming increasingly critical as more humans venture into space. Yet, current frameworks for aerospace medicine are nascent and lag far behind advancements in precision medicine on Earth, underscoring the need for rapid development of space medicine databases, tools, and protocols. 

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These astronaut biomarkers are compiled into the Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA), an integrated data and sample repository for clinical, cellular, and multi-omic research profiles from a diverse range of missions, including the SpaceX Inspiration4, Polaris Dawn, Axiom-2, NASA Twins Study, and JAXA missions. The SOMA resource, available through several interactive online portals, represents a >10-fold increase in total publicly available space omics data, with matched samples available from the Cornell Aerospace Medicine Biobank. The Atlas includes extensive molecular and physiological profiles encompassing genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and microbiome data sets, which reveal some consistent features across missions, including cytokine shifts, telomere elongation, and gene expression changes, as well as mission-specific molecular responses. Leveraging the datasets, tools, and resources in SOMA can help accelerate precision aerospace medicine, bringing needed health monitoring, risk mitigation, and personalized countermeasures for pending lunar, Mars, and exploration-class missions.

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SOMA Webpage: https://soma.weill.cornell.edu/