“This stuff is huge. It’s going to be game-changing for NASA, and for medicine on Earth, and then beyond,” shares Dr. Lisa Carnell, NASA’s Director of the Biological and Physical Sciences Division. The “stuff” she’s talking about? Sending Organ Chips to space. Part of the Artemis II mission, which launched yesterday, the AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation is using human Organ Chips lined with the astronauts’ cells to study the effects of deep space on human health. For those who are unfamiliar, Organ Chips are microfluidic culture devices lined with living human cells that mimic organ-level functions. Scientists have prepared Bone Marrow Chips from the cells of Artemis II astronauts. Half of the chips were sent to space with the crew last night, while the other half remains on Earth. After the mission, Wyss Institute at Harvard University and Emulate, Inc. researchers will compare the two sets of Organ Chips to better understand the effects of radiation and microgravity on the body. We believe it’s going to be a game-changer for NASA because it will provide a tool to better prepare them to take care of people living and working in space in the future. We believe it's going to be a game-changer for medicine by providing information about how radiation and other agents that damage DNA, like cancer radiation therapy, impact blood cell formation. And beyond that, this work could form the basis for a method to understand personalized responses to deep space, allowing the creation of customized medical kits for future astronauts, especially those traveling beyond Earth’s magnetosphere (maybe even to Mars one day). I’m incredibly excited to see the project progress and proud to see this innovation travel so far from the lab and have a real-world impact. https://lnkd.in/ejHbtD6a