Science Friday - To Get Ready For Mars, NASA Studies How The Body Changes In Space

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

It’s no longer just the realm of science fiction: It’s possible that in our lifetimes, astronauts will go to Mars. NASA is doing a lot of technological preparation for this, but the key to the success of these missions will be the astronauts involved. As Mars space missions will require months or even years on the red planet, the agency wants to better understand how our bodies are affected by time in space.NASA recently launched the Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research, or CIPHER. This is a suite of 14 studies astronauts will undergo on the International Space Station, measuring everything from bone health to brain activity to vision changes.Joining Ira to talk about CIPHER and the hopes for health data collection is Dr. Cherie Oubre, CIPHER project scientist in NASA’s human research program based in Houston, Texas.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

How does the body change after time in space? There's isolation and confinement. There's the microgravity environment itself. And our scientists are taking all that into account. It's Thursday, January 11th, but would you look at that? Today is Science Friday. I'm SciFRI producer Kathleen Davis. We hear it from astronauts all the time.

Being in space aboard the International Space Station changes a lot of things in the body. from bone and muscle strength to mental health. As NASA prepares to visit Mars, the agency is launching a huge effort to better understand the physical changes that happen in space. We'll get to that conversation in just a bit, but first we're revisiting a chat from last year about how a certain type of mushroom could boost brain function.

If you're anything like me, you love a good mushroom, sauteed and a little butter on top of pasta, or pizza? Mm-mm. You know, for centuries, a special kind of mushroom has been used in Chinese medicine for improving memory, the lion's main mushroom. And now a study has confirmed

what herbalists have long said there are properties in the lion's main mushroom that build brain cells. Could the mushroom help protect against dementia and Alzheimer's? Joining me is the co-author of the study published in the Journal of Neurochemistry. Dr. Ramon Martinez Marmal

research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute based in Brisbane, Australia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you very much, Sarah. Nice to have you. So you isolated brain stimulating compounds. What exactly do these compounds do? First of all, we just put them on top of neurons, isolate neurons, from the brain of mice, and they start reacting so fast, and they start growing much more than in normal conditions.

And that was the first astonishing result that we got contacted by a company from Korea. And they had several compounds purified from this beautiful lion-main smart room. I had to Google that the first time. It's like, okay, let me see. I mean, I love mushroom, but they haven't heard about that before. Yeah. And that they sent them and we set up some basic experiments to check the basic neurotrophic activity. And the results from the day zero were amazing.

So you first tested it out in a petri dish, the compounds. Yes. And when you found the ones that you thought were really work, you then fed them to the mice. Yeah, that's right. And what happened? Well, the way it's done is we set up some experiments, some behavioral experiment, try to check their memory,

try to check their activity, if they were more active, less active, if they could remember a little bit more. So the way those experiments work is you put an animal in the middle of box with two objects. The animal just start moving around and then you change one of the objects, put the animal with a different one, and the animal they have to show more attraction for the new one. And this is a kind of classic behavioral test for recognition and remembering what is old and what is new. And what happens is that when we provide this compound, the animals show much more interest in the new objects.

And that's a clear proof of increasing in memory. Were you able to tell what was going on in the brains of these mice? Well, based on the inveter results, we found out that we were enhancing what we call neurotrophic activity. So neurotrophins, they are molecules that our brain cells release. And this happens usually during growth. When our brain is formed, there's a lot of release of this neurotrophic, and that's what make neurons grow and extend and reach their final targets.

They have to grow like very long distance. And they do that through signaling molecules and through what we call neurotrophins that enhance that growth. So we found out with in vitro experiments that these compounds were working through a kind of neurotrophic-like activity. So in how would you describe that in layman's terms? So it's kind of feeding the neural. So the neurons they have to grow, they have to feed themselves, and they secrete substances that they are going to make them grow faster.

Without those, the neurons don't grow. The brain do not develop. There's lots of neurodevelopmental disorders associated with the lack of these neurotrophins. So it's something that the neurons they produce kind of to feed themselves and to make them grow more. So the cool thing of the story is that somehow the compound that we isolate from mushrooms could mimic that activity. I'm I Refledo, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. So it mimics the activity of feeding the neurons and the neurons grow.

Yes, this growing of neurons is something that happens naturally when we are growing. But when we reach my age, when we get older, that activity start to stop. So the challenge of neuroscience has been to try to promote this growing activity, even in those periods where this is stopped. Like, for example, thinking this may be useful for dementia, this may be useful after stroke, for example, to promote this growth of new neurons. That's why when we found this activity, we start thinking ahead, like,

okay, this is going to be good for in the future, maybe for Alzheimer, maybe for stroke, maybe for other diseases. When could we see this tested out in people? It sounds so promising here. Yeah, it's already happening in Korea. So we were collaborating with two universities in South Korea, and they already have started having clinical trials in healthy people first to check for this neotrophic activity.

I mean, this has been talked about an herbal medicine, right, in folklore and people have been using this for years, eating these mushrooms believing it improves memory, you think you have justified those beliefs now? Well, based on our data, yes, if we purify that compound from the same mushrooms and it has some positive effects on growing neurons and enhancing memory, yes, but I think this is always the same. So there are lots of belief in traditional medicine, not from China, but from many other countries. And it's simply there's not enough research behind to try to purify those molecules and then know what's going on.

Do you know in humans how many mushrooms people could be eating? Because I know when this gets out and we talk about this, there's going to be a run-on this mushroom. The price is going to skyrocket, right? Yeah. So we don't know. So from the mushroom to the purified compound, I don't know how many of these compound came from one mushroom.

If you eat one mushroom, I don't know how much of this compound is going to reach your brain, which was the second cool thing. So this is a lipophilic molecule, well diluted in lipids, all our cells, the membrane of our cells, what separate our cells in the whole body from the outside is a lipid bilayer. And one of the cells that have more membranes are the neurons. The amount of membrane that they have is huge and it's amazing. plus the brain is covered by a membrane called the blood brain barrier that prevents and isolate the brain from the exterior. And I'm calling the exterior from the inside of our body. It's very hard from the blood to reach anything inside of the brain.

And that's the challenging thing for pharmacies to make molecules that can effectively pass through. this blood-brain barrier and reach the inside of the neurons. And the cool thing is that that molecule is liposolibal, so that could go through this barrier and reach the inside of the brain very fast. And that was the second cool thing, that why we were so interested in this specific molecule. Well, we will keep in touch. Is that okay to find out how this is progressing?

Yeah, of course. Definitely. Thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. And thank you very much for calling. Dr. Ramon Martinez Marmel, research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute based in Brisbane, Australia. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. You know, it's no longer just an idea in science fiction. It is possible that in our lifetimes, astronauts will go to Mars. NASA is doing a lot of preparation for this, of course. And besides the fancy new hardware, the agency also wants to better understand

how our bodies are affected by time and space. We have heard, anecdotally about this from astronauts over the years. Here's astronaut Mark Kelly talking about his experiences returning to Earth after a long period of time on the International Space Station. Well, your body has to readjust, even from a short duration flight. Two days after you get back, you're incredibly sore. It's kind of like if you've never lifted weights before and then you went and did a bunch of squats, you know, with a lot of weight. Kind of feel like that a couple days later. Your neurovastibular system is a little messed up, especially the first day. People have a habit as they turn corners of running into walls, so you can't drive a car for a while.

So your body has to go through this readjustment phase. And I think to get back to 100%, it's typically about as much time as you were in space is the recovery time. Astronaut Mark Kelly on the show back in 2015. NASA recently launched the complement of integrated protocols for, human exploration research more easily called Cipher. This is a suite of studies astronauts will undergo on the International Space Station, measuring everything from their bone health to brain function. Joining me to give us the scoop on Cipher is my guest, Sherry O'Brie,

Cipher Project Scientist in NASA's Human Research Program based in Houston, Texas. Welcome to Science Friday. Well, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Nice to have you. You know, I wasn't kidding when I said there was a suite of studies that make up Cipher. Just how many are we talking about here? Yeah, so there's 14 studies, 14 different investigations that are part of Cipher. Wow. That's a pretty long list. Are there any that you particularly are interested in getting data on? Yeah, so the unique part of Cipher itself is that it looks across the whole human system. So the studies go from behavioral health to physiology, to cardiovascular fitness, vision changes. So it's a wealth of information. So I don't know

that I could pick just one, but really the whole of it and looking at the data to understand how those humans respond to space is probably the most exciting part. Sounds cool. We've had astronauts on the show before, like the twins Scott and Mark Kelly, for example, who have told us, anecdotally, how space seems to affect them physically, like their immune systems changed, as did their mental health. Are we going to actually collect formal data about these things? Exactly. That's the whole goal of cipher, is really to characterize how that body changes in response to spaceflight and understand where we need to provide some assistance and help for those longer duration missions. So those immune changes, how do those change, and what can we do

to help that crew for those missions? Now, I know that astronauts were already doing a lot of tests on their bodies while up on the space station. How much of Cipher is just building on the normal physicals that astronauts do and how much is new? Yeah, that's a great question. What we're doing is we're kind of leveraging all that normal medical data that's captured during the spaceflight operations, and we're sharing that data as much as possible to minimize what the crew needs to do, but maximize the amount of information we're getting back and can analyze to have a better understanding.

And those tests just won't stop. when astronauts land back on Earth, right? Talk me through how some tests will continue when they are back home. Yeah, that's a really exciting piece. For Cipher itself, it happens immediately when they come back to Earth. We look at some of the neurovestibular changes and how the crew can function right when they come back to Earth. And then we follow that progression as they return to Earth

and get back to normal and kind of get their land legs after coming back from space. Now, I know the project has recently launched. What are the first studies being done? Yeah, so right now, as part of Cipher, we're doing lots of different investigations this week, in particular, they're doing some blood draws that will give us some more insight

into things like bone remodeling and immune status and nutritional status, those types of things. So as we go through, we're going to continue to gather more and more data. One of the categories for study is vision, not something that first comes to mind for me when I think about astronauts. How does space change eyesight? Yeah, so that's great. Those low gravity conditions kind of shift some of those body fluids more towards the head. And some of this, that's a big area of research on how that shift causes potential changes in vision. So some crew have come back and had some changes in vision. And so what they're looking at is understanding

what changes in the eye, similar to what you already get done when you go to the doctor and have an OCT or imaging of your eye. Does it revert back to normal once an astronaut is on land? Yeah, they are tracking astronauts and looking. Several do. Some have some long-term things that they're following, but they don't have clear answers yet. Now, one of the things we always wonder about is some of the things you learn in science, and in particular through Cipher, could it be translated to health problems for us normal folks. Yeah, that's great. A lot of what Cipher does can be translated to the ground. Great example are the bone measures. When crew go in flight, they're not loading their bones like they do on the ground. So they'll lose a little bit of that bone mass, which is translated to

some of the things you see on the ground, like patients that have bone loss or osteoporosis. And the data collected in Cipher will be based on astronauts' time on the space station, but presumably, you'll want this data to inform possible trips to Mars, right? But what if the conditions are different? Yeah, and the conditions will be different, but there's going to be things that are consistent across those. There's isolation and confinement. There's the microgravity environment itself.

And our scientists are taking all that into account as they look at their data and extrapolate to those future missions. How long of a duration are you hoping to study? presumably changes in exercise, for example, will be different after three months versus, say, a year. Exactly. Yeah. So Cipher is fairly unique, and then it wants to look at the duration of change. So we're looking at some short duration subjects, the three to six weeks, and then six month, which is that normal mission that we have, up to a year. So we can create that curve and really understand how the body's changing. Yeah, because a trip to Mars is going to take more than a year, right?

Exactly, yeah. So we're going to have to really understand how the trajectory is and make some assumptions going forward. You know, it's almost a cliche at this point that in movies about space, at some point an astronaut has a mental health crisis. Well, this is no doubt dramatized, right? I'm sure astronaut mental health is a big deal. Is part of Cypher studying that also? Exactly. Yeah, Cypher really looks to understand different aspects of behavior and functional changes. A great one is some cognitive tests to understand how crew changed throughout a flight to be able to do simple tasks on orbit. And when can we expect to get the first batch of data back from Cipher? That's exciting. We're all waiting to get more and more information. As these

tests are happening, we're getting several pieces of data back during the mission. And the scientists are excitedly taking those and starting to take a look at that. Hopefully we'll have much, much more data coming back fairly soon. I know we have crew that are coming home in the spring and we'll try to put that data together and we'll get that out to the public as soon as we can. Exciting. That's about all the time we have for now. I want to thank you for tech and have to be with us today. Thank you for having me. Very exciting. Sherry Aubrey, Cipher Project Scientist and NASA's Human Research Program based in Houston, Texas. That's all the time that we have for now. A lot of folks help make the show happen, including

Ariel Zich. Santiago Flores. Dee Petersmith. Full of Samares. And many more. Tomorrow, we'll break down the biggest science stories of the week. But for now, I'm SciFRI producer

Kathleen Davis. Thanks for listening.