Tissue-based models of the human heart are being sent to the International Space Station.
SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship is scheduled to launch Tuesday evening, carrying nearly 6,300 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station . But among the spacewalk equipment, vehicle hardware and fresh fruit for the crew, there will be several small devices that contain something a little more unusual: beating human heart tissue.
Studies suggest that the heart also undergoes cellular changes associated with aging during spaceflight. Therefore, this research is not only critical to future space exploration but could also lead to improved treatments for age-related heart dysfunction and disease on Earth, Devin Mair , a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University who's involved in Engineered Heart Tissues-2, said during a NASA news conference Tuesday.
Mair and his colleagues previously sent heart tissue to space in March 2020, and in that experiment, they observed signs that cells' mitochondria were malfunctioning, he said at the NASA news conference. Mitochondria provide power to cells and thus fuel the pumping of the heart, and their dysfunction has been tied to a variety of heart problems, including irregular heartbeat and heart failure.
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