“Before long-term space travel is a reality, scientists must solve a hurdle of biology: Our bodies break down in space.

Some 40% of the human body by weight is skeletal muscle—the kind that moves limbs and joints and holds the body upright. Strong and resilient, this tissue repairs quickly. 

But 250 miles above the Earth’s surface, in the reduced gravity of the International Space Station, astronauts’ muscles get weaker. To study the phenomenon, a team at Stanford School of Medicine grew human muscle cells in a laboratory on Earth and then launched the samples to the ISS, where astronauts tended to them for a week.

Growing in enclosed chambers, supported on scaffolds made of collagen, the space cells formed shorter muscle fibers than cells in identical conditions on Earth. The changes in biology were similar to those in a disorder linked to age called sarcopenia in which muscles weaken and waste away.

…

Huang and team were able to show that they could ward off some of the biological changes triggered by microgravity with either of two drugs known to help tissue repair.”

From Wall Street Journal.