DNA damage response and Radiosensitivity of immune cells from subjects undergoing confinement in the NASA Human Exploration Research Analog

• Applicant: Dr. María Moreno-Villanueva, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 264295709

Psychological and sociological effects of space flight are important to successfully achieve the goals of especially long-duration missions. Psychiatric problems such as anxiety or depression have been reported during space flights. Irritability, fatigue, concentration difficulties and sleep problems are symptoms experienced by some astronauts during a mission. Many studies confirm that psychological stress not only influences mind and behavior but also body functions. Therefore it is a need of developing strategies to counteract the detrimental psychological effects during space missions. The NASA Flight Analogs Project (FAP) conducts research utilizing ground-based facilities that provide scenarios and environments analogous to those anticipated for exploration missions. The Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) represents an analog for simulation of isolation, confinement and remote conditions of mission exploration scenarios. HERA aims at investigating team performance and cooperation, reaction to stress, signs of early depression, anxiety and anger and their impact on human health. HERA is a collaborative project involving experts in different fields. Not only psychological but also clinical biomarkers of stress, e.g. adrenaline will be measured. It is known that stress hormones induce DNA strand breaks thus, within this project, my tasks will be to determine the level of DNA strand breaks as well as expression of genes (before, during and after each four Missions) involved in DNA damage response in immune cells obtained from HERA subjects. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the cells to ex vivo radiation (before, during and after each four Missions) will be also assessed.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Honglu Wu, Ph.D.