Deena Najjar

Jun 11, 2024 | nature.com | Eliah G. Overbey |JangKeun Kim |Braden T. Tierney |Jiwoon Park |Deena Najjar |Remi Klotz | +30 more

AbstractSpaceflight induces molecular, cellular, and physiological shifts in astronauts and poses myriad biomedical challenges to the human body, which are becoming increasingly relevant as more humans venture into space1-6. Yet, current frameworks for aerospace medicine are nascent and lag far behind advancements in precision medicine on Earth, underscoring the need for rapid development of space medicine databases, tools, and protocols.

Jun 11, 2024 | nature.com | Christopher Mason |James Green |Jordan Baechle |Mathias Basner |Susan Bailey |Joseph Borg | +34 more

AbstractThe recent acceleration of commercial, private and multi-national spaceflight has created an unprecedented level of activity in low Earth orbit, concomitant with the largest-ever number of crewed missions entering space and preparations for exploration-class (lasting longer than one year) missions. Such rapid advancement into space from many new companies, countries and space-related entities has enabled a ‘second space age’.

Jun 11, 2024 | nature.com | JangKeun Kim |Eliah G. Overbey |Richa Batra |Annalise Schweickart |Deena Najjar |Cem Meydan | +6 more

AbstractAs spaceflight becomes more common with commercial crews, blood-based measures of crew health can guide both astronaut biomedicine and countermeasures. By profiling plasma proteins, metabolites, and extracellular vesicles/particles (EVPs) from the SpaceX Inspiration4 crew, we generated “spaceflight secretome profiles,” which showed significant differences in coagulation, oxidative stress, and brain-enriched proteins.

Jun 10, 2024 | nature.com | Eliah G. Overbey |JangKeun Kim |Braden T. Tierney |Remi Klotz |Irina Matei |Bader Shirah | +2 more

AbstractThe SpaceX Inspiration4 mission provided a unique opportunity to study the impact of spaceflight on the human body. Biospecimen samples were collected from four crew members longitudinally before (Launch: L-92, L-44, L-3 days), during (Flight Day: FD1, FD2, FD3), and after (Return: R + 1, R + 45, R + 82, R + 194 days) spaceflight, spanning a total of 289 days across 2021-2022.

Jun 10, 2024 | nature.com | JangKeun Kim |Eliah G. Overbey |Deena Najjar |Jiwoon Park |Cem Meydan |Joseph Borg | +3 more

AbstractMaintenance of astronaut health during spaceflight will require monitoring and potentially modulating their microbiomes. However, documenting microbial shifts during spaceflight has been difficult due to mission constraints that lead to limited sampling and profiling. Here we executed a six-month longitudinal study to quantify the high-resolution human microbiome response to three days in orbit for four individuals.