From the bench to exploration medicine: NASA life sciences translational research for human exploration and habitation missions

Abstract

NASA’s Space Biology and Human Research Program entities have recently spearheaded communications both internally and externally to coordinate the agency’s translational research efforts. In this paper, we strongly advocate for translational research at NASA, provide recent examples of NASA sponsored early-stage translational research, and discuss options for a path forward. Our overall objective is to help in stimulating a collaborative research across multiple disciplines and entities that, working together, will more effectively and more rapidly achieve NASA’s goals for human spaceflight.

Comparative transcriptomics indicate changes in cell wall organization and stress response in seedlings during spaceflight

“…Sharing raw data among investigative teams studying Arabidopsis has become common due to large open data sets accessible through TAIR and similar databases. In an effort to maximize collaborations, NASA has built an open bioinformatics‐driven platform entitled GeneLab (Alwood et al, 2017), which brings together NASA space life science research ‐omics data from the diverse research programs of ISS and NASA. GeneLab (https://genelab.nasa.gov) will facilitate additional bioinformatics analyses of diverse spaceflight studies to help improve our understanding of how plants and other biological systems respond to the challenges of spaceflight.…”

The Influence of Radiation on Bone and Bone Cells—Differential Effects on Osteoclasts and Osteoblasts

“…Therefore, a direct comparison between the low LET IR that is commonly used for medical applications and the high LET IR that astronauts are exposed to in space is not feasible, as high and low LET have different physical and biological properties [ 87 , 88 ]. Cosmic radiation has numerous negative effects on the human body during space travel, with the most prominent ones being a significant increase in the individual cancer risk, cardiovascular deconditioning, changes in the immune system and also alterations in bone homeostasis, and consequently in a loss of bone mass [ 89 , 90 ]. In addition, microgravity in space further promotes bone loss, making the space environment especially deleterious for the skeletal system and bone [ 91 ].…”

Ergonomic Challenges for Astronauts during Space Travel and the Need for Space Medicine

“…We will have capitalized on the potential of a commercial return on the development of medicines in space not solely for space travel but for mankind on Earth [75,133]. We will have used the battery of 'omics' technologies [63,64,71,72,74,134] to pre-screen and select astronauts whose health status and predisposition to disease is exquisitely understood [90,134] and for whom the best possible survival outcome is predicted.…”