Vascular Tissue Challenge

Produce viable thick-tissue assays that can be used to advance research both on earth and the ISS National Laboratory.

Vascularization is one of the great challenges that tissue engineering faces in order to achieve sizeable tissue and organ substitutes that contain living cells. ...tissue or organ substitutes in which any dimension, such as thickness, exceeds 400 μm need to be vascularized to ensure cellular survival.

1. The VTC was such a success that the Methuselah Foundation established a Tissues on a Chip prize and conversations have been initiated with NASA SMD, NIH NCATS, FDA, and BARDA.

2. As a result of the VTC, the Heinlein Trust established the Heinlein Institute to support worthy efforts like the VTC. The Heinlein Institute was one of the sponsors of the 2019 VTC Workshops.

3. At least one confirmed and another possible business developed and significantly evolved via the VTC. The Rice University Team led by Dr. Jordan Miller and in collaboration with funding provided through the Methuselah Foundation established a new business whose valuation yielded a significant return on investment (10X) just over the past three years. David Gobel, CEO of the Methuselah Foundation, has the details and presented this at the Commercial Space Telecon hosted by the NASA Ames Space Portal.

4. Video trials worked exceptionally well. In fact, the consensus was that the judges could see more detail more clearly than they would have been able to in person. The recordings of the trial were available to resolve any issues and the lessons learned by the teams were invaluable.

5. The ISS National Lab through the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) offered a companion prize to the winners of the VTC to fly their investigation on the ISS with the hope that the superior techniques developed through the VTC will yield even better results when gravity is removed. Wake Forest has developed proposals for this purpose and submitted them to ISS National Lab and to the ISS InSpace Production Applications NRA. As these are live procurements, no further details will be available until after the procurement period in April 2022.

6. The relationships developed with other government agencies, especially DoD, DARPA, VA, NIH and NSF are leading to other NASA collaborations among the ISS National Lab, Human Research Program, and the Science Mission Directorate Biological and Physical Sciences Division, Translational Sciences.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.