Scientists have discovered a wild treatment that they say could protect astronauts from the copious amounts of space radiation they'd be exposed to during trips into deep space.
In an effort to find new ways to protect cancer patients from the many side effects of radiation therapy, a group of researchers found that a protein from tardigrades — tiny, practically indestructible "water bears" that have been known to survive the hostile vacuum of space — may be the answer.
The protein was previously identified as helping tardigrades survive some of the most extreme conditions on Earth — and yes, even space.
Now, a team led by Harvard Medical School instructor and MIT visiting scientist Ameya Kirtane used messenger RNA encoding to inject the protein into mice. As detailed in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, the team found that their technique generated sufficient protein to protect the mice's DNA from radiation-induced damage.
The same method, they hope, could eventually be used in human cancer patients.
"Radiation can be very helpful for many tumors, but we also recognize that the side effects can be limiting," MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Giovanni Traverso in a statement. "There’s an unmet need with respect to helping patients mitigate the risk of damaging adjacent tissue."
The side effects of radiation treatment can be brutal, from mouth sores to rectal bleeding. Scientists have come up with drugs that reduce this damage, but only to a degree.
In search for a better option, the researchers drew inspiration from tardigrades and their incredible survival ability. A suppressor protein, dubbed Dsup, helps to protect the tardigrades' DNA from radiation-induced damage by binding to it.
According to MIT, this protein allows the tiny creatures to survive doses 2,000 to 3,000 times higher than what humans can tolerate.
By delivering this protein through messenger RNA encoding, the team found that the Dsup protein was expressed successfully in the colon and mouth tissues in mice, two areas that are susceptible to radiation-induced damage in human cancer patients.
"One of the strengths of our approach is that we are using a messenger RNA, which just temporarily expresses the protein, so it’s considered far safer than something like DNA, which may be incorporated into the cells’ genome," Kirtane explained.
Apart from helping cancer patients during radiation therapy, the researchers suggest it could also help patients receiving chemotherapy.
It could even help astronauts from suffering radiation damage, since long voyages through space, such as a trip to Mars, would expose future space travelers to dangerous levels of cosmic radiation.
"Another possible application would be to help prevent radiation damage in astronauts in space," MIT enthused in the statement.
More on tardigrades: Scientists Propose Sending Small Creatures to Neighboring Star Systems
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