Abstract

Development of a Tissue Chip to Electrically Stimulate Human Muscle Myocytes in Microgravity to Study Muscle Wasting on Earth and in Space

Siobhan Malany, Associate Professor, University of Florida, Founder of Micro-gRx

The molecular basis of age-related muscle atrophy (Sarcopenia) is largely unknown in part because molecular changes accumulate in skeletal muscle over many years; Currently there are no approved therapeutics for Sarcopenia. We are interested in investigating physiological changes in primary muscle myocytes on the molecular and cellular induced in microgravity that could be exploited for the study of accelerated intrinsic muscle cell dysfunction mimicking age-related muscle weakness. We are planning for a fall 2020 launch to the ISS and are constructing microtissues of cells isolated from young, athletic and old, sedentary adults to be exposed to the environment of microgravity and subjected to an electrical stimulation regime as a more physiologically relevant model of muscle cell function. We plan to compare differential expressed atrogenes, fiber size and contraction rate between the cohorts in microgravity and ground controls. We will discuss development of the tissue chip and lessons learned from our first lab-on-chip experiment sent to the ISS in November 2018.