Five grants were awarded to study human physiology and disease onboard the International Space Station (ISS) www.iss-casis.org. Data from the research will feature organs-on-chips and will help scientists develop and advance novel technologies to improve human health on Earth.
The grants were awarded by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) www.iss-casis.org and NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) https://ncats.nih.gov.
The initial five projects are part of a four year collaboration by which NCATS will provide two years of initial funding for about $6 million to use tissue chip technology onboard the ISS National Laboratory.
The five NCATS grants will support:
- Research to find the link between infections and the health of the immune system that have been reported onboard space vehicles where exposure to microgravity negatively affects the immune system. The project will test engineered micro-physiological systems that model the airway and bone marrow
- Research to develop an automated platform and software to accelerate experimentation in space to study the brain-chip in microgravity, human physiology, and disease in space. The findings will help in studying human disease and drug discovery on Earth
- Research on a cartilage-bone-synovium joint tissue chip model to study the effect of space flight on musculoskeletal disease biology motivated by post traumatic osteoarthritis and bone loss. The effects of pharmacological agents to ameliorate bone and cartilage degeneration will be tested on Earth
- Research on the many space-related physiological changes resembling changes taking place during cellular aging, including defects in bone healing, loss of cardiovascular and neurological capacity, and altered immune function. The project will investigate the relationship between an individual’s immune aging and healing outcomes plus investigate the biology of aging
- Research to study how dehydration or diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure impair kidney function which can result in serious medical conditions. Researchers want to understand how microgravity and other factors affect kidney functions which could enable better treatments for proteinuria, osteoporosis, and kidney stones on Earth
For more information, go to https://ncats.nih.gov/tissuechip.