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A Chip off the Old Block -- presented by Science@NASA The expression “chip off the old block” has taken on new meaning.

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Scientists are using cells and tissue from the human body to create living 3D versions of human organs within see-through structures.

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These innovative ‘tissue chips,’ about the size of a thumb-drive,

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hold great promise for improving drug testing, researching diseases, personalizing medical treatment, and more.

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A few will soon be headed to the International Space Station (ISS),

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through a collaboration between the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the ISS National Laboratory, in partnership with NASA.

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Tissue chips can host different cell and tissue types and mimic the intricate biological functions

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and responses of full-sized human organs such as the lungs, liver, and heart.

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Cells grown in tissue chips behave more like cells of a real organ than do cells grown in static cell culture dishes.

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That’s partly because the chips can be interwoven with miniscule channels

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lined with thousands of living human cells through which air, blood, nutrients, medications, and the like can flow.

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Researchers can even introduce a disease like cancer into a tissue chip to study disease progression.

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The space station is especially well-suited to advance research in this technology.

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Lucie Low is the Scientific Program Manager for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at NIH.

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“Microgravity causes changes in human physiology that directly translate to disease pathology here on Earth.

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In a couple of weeks in microgravity, we can model something that might take 10 or 15 years here on Earth

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to become even clinically relevant. So we can start understanding and uncovering disease pathologies much faster.”

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Other tissue-chip-in-space study areas include respiratory system immune response, kidney function,

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blood brain barrier, musculoskeletal diseases such as osteoporosis, and immune system aging.

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Insights from these studies could help researchers understand diseases better, design treatments, and streamline testing of new candidate drugs.

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In the future, tissue chips could also advance precision medicine -- customized health care

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with disease treatment and prevention that takes into account a patient’s genes, environment, and body.

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Every individual reacts differently to cancers, genetic disorders, and infections.

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“Using tissue chips is a way to understand, in a tightly controllable model system, exactly what's happening to a specific person.”

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“We could use tissue chips to pinpoint what it is about a particular group

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that's making their cancers act in a particular way towards a particular drug,

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or what kind of drug might be more useful for one population than another.”

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Scientists are even working on a ‘human-on-a-chip,’

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in which tissue chips for various organs will be linked together to mimic whole body physiology.

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Researchers could then test potential effects of a substance like a drug across the entire body before testing in humans.

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“Essentially you throw all these cells together and provide them with the nutrients they need to ‘do their thing.’

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It’s literally like taking a little bit of you, putting it into a ‘home away from home,’

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letting the cells chat with each other, and looking at how they respond to different stresses and different drugs.”

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Science truth can be stranger than science fiction.

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To learn about science being performed on the space station, go to www.nasa.gov/iss-science

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For more on scientific advancements both on and off Earth, visit science.nasa.gov.