The Allergan Foundation Supports the Penn Orphan Disease Center Jump Start Program

Foteini Mourkioti, PhD, an assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and of Cell and Developmental Biology, and co-director of the Musculoskeletal Regeneration Program in the Penn Institute for Regenerative Medicine, is leading one of only four animal studies awarded a new research grant from NASA. The agency has awarded 15 grants for new space biology research designed to help achieve NASA’s goals under the Artemis lunar exploration program. Teams of investigators will use state-of-the-art genetic and other biological techniques to explore how life adapts and changes during spaceflight, and the results could help support human exploration of the Moon, and ultimately, Mars. Mourkioti’s work will investigate how space-flight-like conditions impact telomere length in muscle stem cells and how that impacts muscle atrophy.