Lung cancer, which accounts for 19% of all cancers, shows a high mortality rate. In 2015, 8.8 million people died from cancer; the most common cause of cancer death was lung cancer, which caused 1.69 million deaths1,2. Additionally, in the United States, approximately 113,000 men and 103,000 women were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014, and 156,000 people died from this disease3. Among patients diagnosed with lung cancer, only 21% do not show metastasis and 50% cannot undergo surgical operation because of cancer metastasis. A total of 70% of lung cancer patients die within one year and 87% die within five years.
Therefore the study of the process of cancer initiation, growth and progression in altered gravity is of utmost importance considering the health status of researchers visiting in space and future scope of space tourism. Microgravity affects various cells in the body differently; however, the mechanisms of such effects are not understood completely. Therefore, it is imperative to explore various physiological and biochemical processes, particularly those which can influence the process of carcinogenesis. If the changes in physiological or biochemical processes do not revert back to normalcy even after returning from the space to earth, it may lead to various aberrations and morphological changes during the life span.
After just one day in zero gravity conditions, researchers found over 80% of cancer cells died in a trial. Now, their plan is to send them to space. The initial results confirm earlier findings from German researchers. But There are a number of health risks that come with going to space. Aside from the increased exposure to solar radiation and cosmic rays, there are the notable effects that microgravity can have on human physiology. these go beyond muscle and bone degeneration and include diminished organ function, eyesight, and even changes at the genetic level.
A lot of people around me started getting cancer, and that really motivated me to investigate cancer cells,” Joshua Chou, he also said he was prompted to test how cancer cells behave at zero-gravity following his previous research on how to prevent bone loss in space.
“There’s no way we can develop a silver bullet cure for cancer because everyone’s cancer is different and people react differently,” he said. “But what I really wanted to know was: is there something these cancers have in common? That’s why I put them in the microgravity device.”
Chou’s initial findings showed a radical effect.
“We took four different types of cancer cells from different parts of the body — breast, ovary, lungs and nose — and put them in a microgravity condition. And what we found was that in 24 hours, 80 to 90% of these cancer cells actually died,” Chou said.
Together with one of his students, Anthony Kirollos, Chou plans to send cancer cells to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020.
“We want to see if it is actually microgravity that’s having an affect on the cell, or could it be other things in space — like solar radiation?” he said. But such an endeavor is no easy task, Chou points out.
“We’ve had to develop a lot of these technologies ourselves,” he said. “The engineering is already challenging, but actually keeping the cells alive and retrieving them from space will be really difficult.”
The next step, which will be happening early next year, will involve the team sending their experiment to the ISS aboard a specially-designed space module (SpaceX will be providing launch services). Chou and his colleagues will spend the duration of the experiment (seven days) on the ground, where they will monitor the experiment’s progress and conduct live-cell imaging via data feeds.
Once the experiment is complete, the cells will be frozen for their return trip to Earth, whereupon Chou and his colleagues will examine them for genetic changes. If the results aboard the ISS confirm what Chou and his team found in the lab, he hopes that they will be able to develop new treatments that can have the same effect as microgravity and neutralize cancer cells’ ability to sense each other.
Ideally, these treatments would not constitute a cure but could supplement existing anti-cancer medical regimens. Combined with drugs and chemotherapy, treatments arising from this research would effectively slow the spread of cancer in the human body, thereby making conventional treatments more effective and shorter-lived (and less costly too).
