NASA to send living organs-on-chips to space for experiments

In order to understand more about how humans response to stress, drugs and genetic changes in space, NASA is planning to send tiny devices containing living tissues and organ chips to International Space Station (ISS).

US Space agency NASA has announced that it’s planning to send small devices carrying human cells in a 3D matrix, dubbed tissue chips or organs-on-chips, to ISS for microgravity experiments that will help them observe how the cells react to drugs, stress and genetic changes.

The tissue chips, being sent under the ‘Tissue Chips in Space’ initiative, have been made up of flexible plastic and contain ports and channels for providing nutrients and oxygen to the cells inside them.

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According to NASA, the initiative seeks to better understand the role of microgravity on human health and disease and also to translate that understanding to improved human health on Earth.

“Spaceflight causes many significant changes in the human body. We expect tissue chips in space to behave much like an astronaut’s body, experiencing the same kind of rapid change,” said one of the researchers Liz Warren.

The first phase of this initiative includes five investigations. The first investigation of immune system ageing is planned for launch scheduled this year. Whereas, the other four include lung host defense, the blood-brain barrier, musculoskeletal disease and kidney function.

Apart from Tissue Chips in Space, four other projects are also scheduled for launch in 2020, which include two on engineered heart tissue for understanding cardiovascular health, one on gut inflammation, and one of muscle easting.

Moreover, these tissue chips can help in development of new drugs. Also, they might help scientists to be able to use tissue chips in space in order to monitor changes that might take months or years to happen on Earth, since space-related changes occur much faster; and also test possible countermeasures and therapies for them.

“It’s like taking a little bit of you, putting it into a pot and looking at how your cells respond to different stresses, different drugs, different genetics and using that to predict what they would do in your body,” said researcher Lucie Low.