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Made of soft plastic, the fabric chips have ports to provide nutrients and oxygen to the cells.
NASA plans to send small devices containing human cells in a 3D matrix – called tissue chips or organs on chips – to the International Space Station (ISS) to test their response to stress, drugs and genetic modifications.
Made of soft plastic, the fabric chips have ports and channels to provide nutrients and oxygen to the cells they contain.
The "Tissue Chips in Space" initiative aims to better understand the role of microgravity on human health and disease and to translate this understanding into an improvement in human health on Earth, NASA said.
"Spaceflight causes many significant changes in the human body," said Liz Warren, scientific program manager at the Center for the Advancement of Sciences in Space (CASIS) in the United States.
"We expect tissue fragments in space to behave like the body of an astronaut and undergo the same kind of rapid change," Warren said.
The US Space Agency is planning the investigations in collaboration with CASIS and the National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes for Health (NIH).
Many changes in the human body caused by microgravity resemble the onset and progression of diseases associated with aging on Earth, such as bone and muscle loss. But space-related changes occur much more quickly.
This means that scientists may be able to use fabric fragments in space to model changes that could take months or even years on Earth.
This first phase of Tissue Chips in Space includes five surveys. A survey on the aging of the immune system is planned for the launch of the SpaceX CRS-16 flight, scheduled for this year.
The other four, scheduled for launch on SpaceX CRS-17 or later flights, focus on lung host defense, the blood-brain barrier, musculoskeletal diseases and kidney function.
In addition, four more projects are expected to be launched in the summer of 2020, including two on artificial heart tissue to understand cardiovascular health, one on muscle wasting and another on intestinal inflammation.
Also called micro-physiological system, a tissue chip needs three main properties, according to Lucie Low, scientific program manager at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences in the United States.
"It must be in 3D, because humans are in 3D," she said.
"It has to have multiple types of cells, because an organ is made up of all types of tissues, it must also have microfluidic channels, because every tissue in your body has a vascular system to bring blood and nutrients and detritus" she added.
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