Highway 101

Cancer Cures aboard the International Space Station?



Posted: Sunday, February 15, 2009

by Highway 101

Circling earth every 90 minutes at an orbit of 230 miles above the earth the international Space Station (ISS) may appear to many to be an extravagance which the world in recession cannot afford.  A recent court case relating to Columbia Shuttle disaster on Feb 1, 2003 was a reminder of the cancer cure work that was taking place on the STS-107 when it disintegrated and is also taking place on the ISS.  Remarkably one microgravity experiment on the shuttle survived the explosion and crash landed in a Texas parking lot.  The experiment was owned by Instrumentation Technology Associates (ITA) of Exton, Penn.  The ITA shuttle payload was designed to grow high quality crystals of urokinase an enzyme that plays a key role in cancer metastasis.   In the microgravity environment of the shuttle it is possible to grow crystals so large that scientists would be able to create a 3D molecular model which would enable mapping the precise structure of urokinase which would accelerate the development of drugs to inhibit cancer metastasis.  Sadly, although the ITA experiment survived the crash NASA bureaucracy prevented it being returned to the company in time to be able to use the results and so the company is suing for damages. It appears that as a result of the failure of the STS-107 experiment ITA were unable to raise funds to continue with these important cancer cure microgravity experiments.  It is assumed that the Shuttle microgravity experiments were, in the case of ITA, lower cost than trials conducted on the International Space Station. Medical experiments being conducted on the ISS include those by the University of South Florida on ovarian cancer cells nurtured in microgravity conditions.  It turns out that these are three-dimensional and much closer in true size and form to natural tumor cells found in cancer patients.

So why use the ISS? Some proteins form crystals perfectly on the ground whilst others form small, irregular crystals which are difficult to study and conceal how proteins are made. Some proteins won't form crystals at all on the ground.  The ISS microgravity environment enables crystals to float in their solutions akin to the way that astronauts float through the Space Station. In the gravity of Earth, the heavy crystals congregate into sediment, or simply sink, to the bottom of flasks and often stick together. This earth bound process sometimes results in small, cracked, poorly formed crystals and so space provides a more an ideal laboratory environment in which to coax information from these protein crystals.

The American Cancer Society has been funding research on the International Space Station for over a decade so doesn't it make sense that the 2009 US Government Stimulus Package should include generous funding for more cancer research in space. The American people trust the government to defend the country from foreign enemies yet there is an enemy that lies dormant within the body of every person on the planet, sleeper cancer cells which when awoken attempt to kill from within.

Isn't cancer just as devastating as an attack on the people of this country as conventional armed attack and one which we need the US government to use its enormous resources to conquer? We have conquered polio and smallpox so why not cancer?  Could the International Space Station be the very best place for scientists to work on a solution for eradicating cancer?
 Vince Waterson is VP of business development at Hawaii Pacific Teleport. He can be contacted at vwaterson@aol.com
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