February 22, 2001
UW receives $3.6 million for studies in new field of space medicine
University of Washington researchers are expected to receive $3.6 million over three years as part of a national consortium of institutions studying space medicine in hopes of someday sending men and women to Mars.
“We are excited to be part of a nationwide program dedicated to improving human health in space. We expect this work to provide important insights and treatments for those of us who will remain on Earth,” says Dr. Martin Kushmerick, a UW professor of radiology, bioengineering, physiology and biophysics, and head of the UW space medicine team. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) made the announcement of funding.
Kushmerick was named team leader for NSBRI’s new Integrated Human Function Team. As team leader, Kushmerick will manage scientists from five institutions working on six different projects to understand the human body’s response to long-duration space travel. Another researcher, Lawrence Crum of the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, has been named co-leader of a group investigating “Smart Medical Systems” needed to treat injuries and illnesses suffered by space travelers.
Investigating the human body’s
response to long-duration space travel
— Integrating Human Muscle Energetics and Mechanics. Investigator: Kushmerick.
Kushmerick will use a variety of measurements and technologies for analysis leading to an integration of human limb muscle function. Human limb muscle will provide an exemplar for the integrated human function team. The analysis and modeling of different cell types and tissues in the limb as a functional organ will provide enabling concepts and technology for larger scale modeling of the “digital human” and guide strategies for database and global computer system development.
This integrated understanding is essential to predict potential problems, simulate health conditions and plan adequate responses to situations that might occur. To develop modeling approaches to the body’s highly organized systems, initial research will focus on heart and skeletal muscle from the molecular to system level. Spin-offs of this and the following project ought to have a big impact on healing and sports medicine on earth.
— Cell and molecular biomechanics: cardiac and skeletal muscle. Investigator: P. Bryant Chase, Ph.D., research associate professor of radiology.
The goal is to produce a muscle cell model that will explain changes due to activity level and other factors that can then be integrated into computational models of human limb and heart. The essential molecular and subcellular components of the model will be identified and algorithms constructed based on experimental data obtained in a controlled environment. The muscle cell model will be one of the main building blocks for constructing a model of integrated human function because the cell is the basic unit of physiological organization.
— Ca+2 Homeostatis and Muscle Phenotype: Role of Cellular Energetics. Investigator: Robert Wiseman, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology.
This study will look at why astronauts lose muscle mass in space, and search for chemical explanations of why exercise only partly ameliorates this problem. The main approach will be to use information on changes in calcium ion, which triggers contraction and the mechanical response, to investigate whether that calcium ion also signals longer-term changes in muscle gene expression. If these mechanisms exist, the next step is to design more appropriate exercises in the absence of gravity which are designed to mimic the biochemical signals which occur on earth.
Investigating Smart Medical Systems for treating
injuries and illnesses in space
— High Intensity Focused Ultrasound for Mission-Critical Care. Investigator: Lawrence Crum, Ph.D., director of the Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Crum has been named co-team leader of a nationwide program to build medical machines that astronauts can take into space. His group is working on one of the most difficult medical conditions to treat, especially when operating facilities are not available — blunt abdominal trauma that results in internal bleeding. Crum and colleagues are developing plans for a medical device that focuses sound energy so it generates heat inside the body with pinpoint accuracy to cauterize bleeding or kill unwanted tissue such as tumors.
The NSBRI was established in 1997 through NASA to explore the health-related problems associated with long-duration space flight. The consortium of 12 research institutions includes the University of Washington, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Awards announced this week went to 86 projects at 67 institutions for projects addressing such things as bone loss, muscle weakening, cardiovascular changes, immunology and infection and nutrition.
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For more information:
Kushmerick, (206) 543-3762, 543-3037, kushmeri@u.washington.edu
Mike Bailey, Smart Medical Systems, (206) 685-8618, bailey@apl.washington.edu
