Biosciences: Radiation Biophysics Laboratory Completes 3 Week-long Irradiation Run at NASA Space Radiation Laboratory

December 2019

Dr. Egle Cekanaviciute (USRA), Dr. Eloise Pariset (USRA) and Sherina Malkani (Blue Marble) from the Radiation Biophysics Laboratory, working on a project led by Dr. Sylvain Costes (NASA), have just completed a successful 3 week-long irradiation run at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in Brookhaven, NY. This work completes a series of three irradiation runs at NSRL to generate the largest, to the best of our knowledge, dataset of human immune cells exposed to space-relevant ionizing radiation. The project aims to better understand genomic associations of human sensitivity to space radiation based on correlations between cellular responses to irradiation and whole genome sequencing. A subset of these samples are being analyzed for circulating exosome and cytokine secretion, as potential radiation biomarkers, supported by a postdoctoral award to Dr Pariset by the Translational Institute for Space Health (TRISH). In addition to human immune cells, human brain-on-a-chip setups were irradiated, as part of Dr. Costes’ ARIA grant and Dr. Cekanaviciute’s Human Research Program (HRP) New Investigator grant to study human blood-brain barrier and central nervous system responses to ionizing radiation.