One of the main problems of space exploration is not so much the lack of oxygen and food (all this is successfully synthesized and grown on the same ISS today), but space radiation. The background radiation of ionizing radiation outside the protecting magnetosphere is hundreds of times higher than on the surface of our planet. And the tissue that is most exposed to cosmic radiation is the nervous tissue of the brain, which decays extremely quickly. But recently, a drug has been invented to help deal with brain cell damage.
Often, people who have been in space for a long time have cognitive disorders and a number of other neurological abnormalities. It is with these manifestations that scientists from the University of California at San Francisco decided to fight. They decided to use the experimental drug PLX5622, which is currently in clinical trials as an anti-cancer agent. The principle of action of PLX5622 is to block the CSF1R receptor, which causes the activation of damage to nerve tissue in radiation injury.
On the basis of one of the NASA laboratories, namely the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory in New York, experts studied a group of mice. They were irradiated with radiation comparable to the cosmic level, and then divided into two groups. One received PLX5622 for 15 days, and the other remained untreated. As a result, after 90 days, the second group, left without medication, began to show long-term effects of radiation, such as impaired cognitive functions, disorders of the nervous system and perception, while the first group remained completely healthy.
In the course of further experiments, it turned out that in the brain tissue of diseased rodents, a large number of activated immunocytes (microglia) of the nervous system were found, as well as the destruction of a large number of synapses. Thus, it has been suggested that PLX5622 inhibits microglia activity without causing damage to brain cells. But the biggest pole of the drug is that it protects the brain tissue even after quite a long time after the course of treatment, which means it is quite suitable for long-term space missions.
Vladimir Kuznetsov
