Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
UCLA scientists researching bone-loss prevention strategies are set to begin trail that will ultimately see rodents sent up to the International Space Station.
The research team said they hope their work will lead to better treatment strategies for osteoporosis, more efficient methods of bone repair and ways to prevent bone loss during lengthy space travel.
With grant funding provided by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the UCLA study will focus on the efficacy of a molecule called NELL-1 in causing stem cells to trigger bone growth and halt bone degeneration.
“NELL-1 holds tremendous hope, not only for preventing bone loss but one day even restoring healthy bone,” said team member Dr. Kang Ting, a professor in dentistry at UCLA. “For patients who are bed-bound and suffering from bone loss, it could be life-changing.”
The UCLA team will mostly be responsible for performing ground-based rodent trials of NELL-1, while NASA and CASIS will take responsibility for trials conducted aboard the ISS.
“A group of 40 rodents will be sent to the International Space Station US National Laboratory onboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule, where they will live for two months in a microgravity environment during the first ever test of NELL-1 in space,” said Julie Robinson, NASA’s chief scientist for the International Space Station program at the Johnson Space Center.
The space-based studies will enable the examination of NELL-1 in way that would not be possible on Earth, the researchers said.
“Besides testing the limits of NELL-1’s robust bone-producing effects, this mission will provide new insights about bone biology and could uncover important clues for curing diseases such as osteoporosis,” said Ben Wu, a professor of bioengineering at UCLA.
The new UCLA study comes as NASA is also getting set to perform another bone health study involving tiny millimeter-long roundworms known as Caenorhabditis elegans.
That experiment calls for ISS crew members to raise the worms in microgravity, along with a different batch in a centrifuge set to model Earth’s gravity. This will allow a direct contrast of the effects of different gravity levels on the worms in orbit.
Another experiment being performed by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) calls for astronauts on the ISS to cultivate four different generations of the worm, specimens of which will come back to Earth in the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in January.
“The astronauts will cultivate multiple generations of the organism, so we can examine the organisms in different states of development,” said Atsushi Higashitani, principal investigator for both investigations with Tohoku University in Japan. “Our studies will help clarify how and why these changes to health take place in microgravity and determine if the adaptations to space are transmitted from one cell generation to another without changing the basic DNA of an organism.”
“Then, we can investigate if those effects could be treated with different medicines or therapies,” he added.
C. elegans grown in each study will be compared to other worm grown in Japan, the researchers noted.
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments