Loma Linda University is one of four schools that will share a $28.4 million research program to determine how astronauts stand up to radiation in space.
Teams of researchers from Loma Linda, the University of Texas, New York University and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. will supervise and conduct the studies over a five-year period beginning in January.
"It shows that we're in the forefront of research," Loma Linda's university relations director, Richard Weismeyer, said after learning that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had named the Seventh-day Adventist institution to do the study along with three other prestigious institutions.
A study that will be led by Loma Linda will receive about $7.7 million of the federal grant money, Gregory A. Nelson, a radiation medicine professor at Loma Linda, said. Nelson will direct a dozen researchers from his school, as well as researchers from UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Francisco and Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland.
Loma Linda will get about $3 million and the other four universities that are participating in the study will split the remaining $4.7 million.
NASA sponsors research at two facilities that can artificially produce cosmic radiation. High-powered groups of atoms are stripped of their electrons in a particle accelerator at the Brookhaven laboratory in New York. Lower-powered protons are produced at the $85 million proton beam therapy facility used to treat cancer patients at Loma Linda University Medical Center.
Both of those facilities will be used to expose mice during the upcoming study to simulate conditions astronauts face in space.
The study will allow NASA to tell astronauts what health risks they face, especially if they undertake missions to the moon or Mars, where they will spend long periods of time outside Earth's protective magnetic field, Nelson said. Policy-makers and astronauts can then assess the benefits of space travel against the health risks.
"NASA's Human Research Program provides knowledge and technologies to improve health and performance during space exploration," the space agency wrote in a news release. "The program also develops possible countermeasures for problems experienced during space travel."
Loma Linda University has been testing protective materials used in making helmets and space suits for astronauts for several years.
By November, Loma Linda scientists expect to complete a six-year study for NASA that found a potential threat of memory loss from exposure of the brain to cosmic rays, including bursts of radiation from the sun.
"Now we will be following on to what we learned in that study," Nelson said.
He said the Loma Linda-led team will try to determine how much cosmic radiation, and for how long, an astronaut can tolerate without serious health risks.
Earlier studies have shown potential memory loss as a result of exposure to space radiation, he said, and a tendency among astronauts to develop cataracts as much as a decade sooner than the regular population.
"One of the questions we are asking," Nelson said, "is whether, if you are going to have some degenerative disease like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, you will get those diseases 10 years sooner if you are irradiated."
Brain cells in mice have continued to mutate 18 months after being exposed to radiation, he said. Just how much and how long humans can expect such changes in the body after space travel will be part of the study.
It's enough to make Nelson think twice about going into space.
"Would I put myself up there, for example?" Nelson asked.
"I would have to look long and hard at it."
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