tissueengineeringscienceinspace

[tissueengineeringscienceinspace]

Organs-in-chips in Space: Modelling disease millions of miles from Earth

“Organs in chips” or “tissue chips” are a very recent invention using microliters of cells to test how our own organs will react to specific environments or chemicals. Typically, the chip is designed around one type of cell or organ that is placed into one holding chamber within the chip. Another holding chamber is reserved for the solution or molecule being tested. Scientists and engineers use this technology to learn more about things that cannot be tested normally on the human body like drug delivery, cell toxicity, or zero gravity!

Now, we have an exciting time for tissue engineering in space--testing these organs-in-chips technology on the ISS! The ISS and NIH are working together to bring this technology to model human diseases and test potential drug use for Astronauts in space!

While this news is may sound very interesting, there might be a small part of you that asks: Why do we need to do this? What is so special about astronauts that they need to test for drug use or diseases in space?

The answer is due to the zero gravity. We don’t know what the lack of gravity does to our bodies, so by putting organs-in-a-chip in space, we can learn more about what diseases or drugs are more or less effective in this novel environment. And no other place can give us exactly this same experience except by testing it in space! (note: We do have simulated microgravity that we can use to test, but it does not completely recapitulate what it is like to be in space.)

There are currently nine funded projects for this initiative starting this year all based around some of the parts of the body or some of the most common diseases during spaceflight. They are:

Blood Brain Barrier

Immunosenescence [The gradual deterioration of the immune system as people age]

Cardiac Dysfunction

Lung Infection

Post-Traumatic Osteoarthritis

Kidney Stone Formation

Gut Inflammation

Engineered Heart Tissues

Sarcopenia [Loss of muscle mass due to age]

Hopefully this next step in science in space will teach us a lot about what happens to our bodies in space!

If you are interested in learning more, check out this paper to get an in-depth understanding of this amazing work.