April 9, 2020

Posted: April 9, 2020

Updated: 5:22 PM

KUSI Newsroom

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) UC San Diego and Space Tango receive NASA award to develop first dedicated stem cell research laboratory within the International Space Station.

UCSDs website reports, A three-year, nearly $5 million award from NASA will allow researchers at the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at UC San Diego Health, Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine and their partners at Space Tango to develop a new integrated space stem cell orbital research laboratory within the International Space Station (ISS) and launch three collaborative research projects within it.

Stem cells self-renew, generating more stem cells, and specialize into tissue-specific cells, such as blood, brain and liver cells, making them ideal for biological studies far from Earths resources. The goal of the new effort is to leverage microgravity and these unique properties of stem cells to better understand how space flight affects the human body. The studies will also inform how aging, degenerative diseases, cancers and other conditions develop in a setting with increased exposure to ionizing radiation and pro-inflammatory factors. The findings from these studies may speed the development of new therapeutics for a broad array of degenerative diseases on Earth.

Dr. Catriona Jamieson, the lead researcher on this NASA award story, visited KUSI News to tell us all about it.

For more information, click here.

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UC San Diego to advance stem cell therapies in new space station lab - - KUSI