Growing human tissue to aid deep space exploration

The Vascular Tissue Challenge offers a $500,000 prize to be divided among the first three teams that successfully create thick, metabolically functional, human-vascularised organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment.

The challenge was announced as part of the White House Organ Summit, which highlighted efforts to improve outcomes for individuals waiting for organ transplants and support for living donors. It has been set up by NASA, in partnership with the Methuselah Foundation’s New Organ Alliance, as a way of advancing the field of bioengineering.

“The outcome of this challenge has the potential to revolutionise health care on Earth and could become part of an important set of tools used to minimise the negative effects of deep space on our future explorers,” explained Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington.

The vascularised, thick-tissue models resulting from the challenge will function as organ analogues that can be used to study deep space environmental effects, such as radiation. Studying these effects will help create ways to mitigate the negative effects of space travel on humans during long-duration, deep-space missions.

On Earth, meanwhile, the vascularised tissue could be used in pharmaceutical testing or disease modelling. The challenge also could accelerate new research and development in the field of organ transplants.

“Once the ‘vascularisation limit’ is solved, via the NASA Vascular Tissue Challenge, there inevitably will be an historic advance in progress and commercialisation of tissue engineering applications to everyone’s benefit,” said Methuselah Foundation CEO Dave Gobel.

Competitors must produce vascularised tissue that is more than 1 cm in thickness and maintains more than 85% survival of the required cells throughout a 30-day trial period. Teams must demonstrate three successful trials, with at least a 75% success rate, to win an award. In addition to the trials, teams also must submit a proposal that details how they would further advance some aspect of their research through a microgravity experiment that could be conducted in the US National Laboratory on the International Space Station.

For more information about the challenge and to register, visit https://neworgan.org/vtc-prize.php.