Lengthy waiting lists for life-saving organs would be a thing of the past if we created viable man-made alternatives. The first step is to successfully generate related cells that work together to form human tissue. In this quest, NASA and the Methuselah Foundation’s New Organ Alliance launched the NASA Vascular Tissue Challenge.

Participating teams, including Pierce Instruments and Kimera Labs, are being tasked with:

1. Producing metabolically functional human vascularized organ tissue 
2. Providing tissue that is at least .39 inches (1 centimeter) thick
3. Ensuring the tissue maintains an 85+% survival of required cells through a 30-day trial period

Models which emerge from this challenge will help accelerate breakthroughs in organ transplants, a field in which Kimera Labs, Kimera Society’s sister company, is deeply vested.

Generated tissue from the NASA Challenge could also be used in pharmaceutical testing and disease modeling, as well as for purposes of studying the effects of space travel on the human body.