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Why Is NASA Funding Cool Biotech Stuff?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 13, 2016
Filed under
Why Is NASA Funding Cool Biotech Stuff?

NASA Centennial Challenges Vascular Tissue Challenge
“The Vascular Tissue Challenge is open and teams that wish to compete may now register. Centennial Challenges is a program of prize competitions to stimulate innovation in technologies of interest and value to NASA and the nation. The Vascular Tissue Challenge is a prize competition with a $500,000 prize purse for teams that can successfully create thick, human vascularized organ tissue in an in vitro environment while maintaining metabolic functionality similar to their in vivo functionality throughout a 30-day survival period. NASA is providing the prize purse. The Methuselah Foundation’s New Organ Alliance is the Allied Organization managing the competition.”
Keith’s 12 June note: I sent NASA STMD AA Steve Jurczyk, NASA PAO, and HEOMD an email inquiry on this Challenge asking: “Can you tell me why NASA is providing $500,000 in award money for a competition to “create thick, human vascularized organ tissue in an in vitro environment while maintaining metabolic functionality similar to their in vivo functionality throughout a 30-day survival period”?
According to this partner organization link referenced by this notice: “Specifically, innovations may enable the growth of de novo tissues and organs on orbit which may address the risks related to traumatic bodily injury, improve general crew health, and enhance crew performance on future, long-duration missions.”
That said, is there an existing NASA mission/medical/safety requirement for ISS or NASA’s human spaceflight activities to develop such a capability in space – or on Earth? If so can you provide me with the specific justification and the expected specific application of technology developed from the results of this challenge? When is this capability planned for implementation in space? Is NASA’s participation in the topic of this specific challenge reflected in existing NASA plans for human health and countermeasures research? If there is no specific plan to implement this technology on space missions, can you explain why NASA is spending half a million dollars on research that is clearly much more relevant to NIH’s or DoD’s respective research portfolios? How (specifically) is this line of research “of interest and value to NASA”? This research has a clear overlap with the biotech research being conducted by the ISS National Laboratory. Is CASIS involved in this challenge?
As a biologist and former NASA life science division employee I am both intrigued and puzzled by this announcement.”

Keith’s 13 June update: By coincidence CASIS announced yet another cool biotech challenge today. Organs-on-chips have broad utility on Earth and in space – within and outside of space research. Cool, cutting-edge stuff, yes? But the rest of NASA (most notably NASA’s Centennial Challenges) makes no reference to the CASIS biotech challenge announcement – and CASIS makes no announcement of the STMD Vascular Tissue Challenge. And NASA HEOMD does not mention either despite obvious linkages to human health and disease. So I forwarded this to the folks at STMD and HEOMD and asked if there is an agency-wide strategic plan that governs things like this. i.e. who does what – and why.
CASIS Announces $1 Million In Grant Awards For Organs-On-Chips Challenge
“The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) announced it has awarded $1 million in grant funding to two research entities stemming from its 3D Microphysiological Systems for Organs-On-Chips Grand Challenge. CASIS is the organization tasked with managing and promoting research onboard the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory.”
Keith’s 13 June update: Here’s the response I got from Sarah Ramsey at NASA PAO:

“Thanks for your questions about the Vascular Tissue Challenge. NASA’s long term interests include the use of vascularized tissues for the study of environmental effects (like radiation) and testing of potential mitigation strategies needed for long term deep space missions. The challenge could potentially advance research on human physiology, fundamental space biology, and medicine taking place both on the Earth and the ISS National Laboratory. Research has demonstrated potential enabling benefits of microgravity on tissue engineering technologies. Specifically, new technology innovations may enable the growth of de novo tissues and organs in orbit which may address the risks related to traumatic bodily injury, improve general crew health, and enhance crew performance on future, long-duration spaceflight missions.
One goal for this challenge is to begin to expand the knowledge of the potential enabling benefits of spaceflight on tissue engineering. Another goal is to use the tissues developed from this challenge to support human exploration of space as well as to investigate the potential role of microgravity to develop larger and more medically useful engineered tissues for terrestrial as well as NASA benefit. Teams are asked to create a spaceflight experiment concept to draw the connection between spaceflight research opportunities and the laboratories who may be interested in future experiments on the International Space Station National Laboratory. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) will be using these concepts to evaluate teams that may receive an additional award to actually take an experiment that would advance their research in tissue engineering to the space station. Here’s the news release we sent out today on the challenge: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-challenge-aims-to-grow-human-tissue-to-aid-in-deep-space-exploration

My response:
“Thanks but with all due respect you have simply expanded upon what is in the materials that I cited. I asked for “specific” requirements, justifications, applications, dates, etc. Also: these “goals” you mention – can you cite the NASA plan/document/requirement that they come from? I also asked why this is not being done by NIH or DoD.
Is there an agency-wide plan that guides the selection of these topics for Challenges? If so, can you provide me with a copy of that plan? If there is not an agency wide plan can you provide me with the STMD plan that is used to guide the selection of these Challenges? How does NASA decide what it needs and when it needs it? How does NASA make certain that there is not duplication of efforts?
When I helped manage life science activities such as this at NASA we had a plan – with a title, revision page, table of contents, timelines, roles and responsibilities, requirements, traceability matrix, goals/objectives etc. (Again) is there such a publication/document that guides NASA’s life science-related challenges – among directorates and field centers – and how they relate to overall NASA biomedical, crew health, space biology, and biotech applications? “

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

8 responses to “Why Is NASA Funding Cool Biotech Stuff?”

  1. Noob says:
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    There are numerous adverse health effects from microgravity and not enough test subjects (Astronauts) to study these issues in depth. Growing tissue models for study in space is one way to bypass this bottleneck and advance our understanding of these health effects, enabling us to develop the countermeasures needed to allow people to thrive in space indefinitely.

    Cells grown in a Petris dish grow in flat sheets and don’t behave like cells growing invivo and will not stay differentiated for long making long term effects difficult to study. Cells grown in gels can grow in 3D but nutrient transport in gels is poor and cells starve or stew in their own wastes before the cultures can get very large or very old. Cells grown in drop towers and wave tanks have good nutrient mixing but the cell cultures suffer from high shear environments which limits culture sizes.

    Growing cells in zero g has many similarities to cells growing in your body and avoids many of the issues limiting cell growth in terrestrial labs. But without vascularization, the cells in the middle of a tissue culture starve. For NASA to make any substantial progress studying the physiological effects of long duration exposure to zero g, high radiation, etc. they need a breakthrough in vascularization.

    • kcowing says:
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      No mention is made of microgravity, bioreactors, etc. Nor is any mention made of access to space to conduct research. So, as interesting as it may be, one would think that some research led by NIH (or DoD) would make more sense. But, given the lack of detail from NASA on this, that is not clear. Hence my questions. Lets see if they answer them – or not.

    • fcrary says:
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      You are describing the space-related applications of this work. I believe Keith’s point was that _NASA_ as part of their call for proposals, should have done so. When NASA solicits proposals for research, they are expected (and possibly required) to explain why the research is relevant to their chartered responsibilities. Letting people guess or figure it out for themselves means they aren’t quite living up to their job. It also means there is something lacking in terms of openness.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      “Growing cells in zero g has many similarities to cells growing in your body and avoids many of the issues limiting cell growth in terrestrial labs.”

      It’s not clear to me that this is the case. Cells in our bodies are growing in 1-G, not 0-G. Cells in our body (except for blood cells) are not free floating, they are firmly attached.

  2. Steve Harrington says:
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    I think the idea is to grow organs in zero gee, but in order to do that, first you must get as far as possible on earth. When organs grow naturally they grow along with the rest of the body and the interaction guides the growth. You can’t grow a heart or a liver out of cells in gravity, but if you could grow one in space that would be a killer app. Still it has a low probability, so big funding is not warranted.

    • Daniel Woodard says:
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      There is no physiologic reason I am aware of that it would be harder to grow an organ in gravity than in space. Once cells grow together into a tissue they are not floating freely in the media, even in 0-G, since they are firmly attached — to each other.

    • rktsci says:
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      Actually, you can grow organs out of stem cells in gravity. http://www.nature.com/news/

      Since this was written in 2013, they have grown cow hearts and implanted them in a cow, where alongside the original heart, it beat and pumped blood. They are also working on the same techniques for kidneys and lungs.

  3. Daniel Woodard says:
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    This is a prize rather than a solicitation for proposals for funded research. That pretty much limits it to organizations that already have the resources. It is administered by a private foundation
    (https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
    under a Space Act agreement with NASA.
    some information about the Centennial Challanges is here;
    https://www.nasa.gov/sites/

    The prize is awarded for doing the cell culture sucessfully in normal gravity, not in weightlessness. This seems reasonable since life functions normally in Earth’s gravity. What isn’t clear to me is the required cell density. In a membrane cartridge the cell volume might be <50% of total volume. Would this qualify?

    The only requirement related to spaceflight is a discussion of a possible future application: “In addition to the in- vitro trials, teams must also submit a Spaceflight Experiment Concept that details how they would further advance some aspect of their tissue vascularization research through a microgravity experiment that could be conducted in the U.S. National Laboratory (ISS-NL) onboard the International Space Station.”