NASA began testing human culture and development of organs on the ISS space station

NASA's partial culture and development test is expected to last a month and is being carried out by researchers from the University of Zurich and NASA astronauts.

There are many things that astronauts want to see firsthand in outer space. One of them is scientific research projects on ISS. There are quite a few interesting projects out there now, and one of them is to see if bodies can grow in a zero-gravity environment.

NASA began testing human culture and development of organs on the ISS space station Picture 1

Just last week, scientists sent human stem cells to the ISS space station via the SpaxeX Dragon spacecraft. These stem cells will be the basis for researchers to soon develop human tissue in outer space.

Organ transplant in outer space?

Scientists hope the experiment will be successful and they will be able to obtain bone tissue, cartilage and many other organs in the human body. If that happens, it will be an extremely important step for humans as we can create implants right out of space, enabling extraterrestrial exploration to become safer.

The reason scientists want to develop human body parts in space because they want to take advantage of the zero gravity environment as a tool. Cara Thiel, a research team member at the University of Zurich, says that using zero-gravity media, human stem cells can grow in three dimensions. But when on Earth, these cells can only grow as a single layer structure.

NASA began testing human culture and development of organs on the ISS space station Picture 2

The astronauts on the ISS will try to develop stem cells in a mobile mini lab sent aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft last week.

The experiment is expected to last for 1 month and is monitored daily. If all goes well, the experiment will be moved to larger scale. From there, NASA can use this process to create implants from a patient's cell.

In addition, it can create organ-like materials, serve other medical experiments, and minimize animal use in drug trials.

Professor Ullrich, the principal researcher, is looking forward to this experiment as many experiments both on Earth and in Space show that cells in microgravity can grow without limit. space and constitute complex 3-dimensional combinations.

Refer to Interestingengineering