A UC San Diego professor has been selected to be part of the Igniting Innovation program with the International Space Station National Laboratory.
The lab, in partnership with NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences division, jointly announced the selection of five projects through the inaugural Igniting Innovation solicitation for cancer and other disease-related research and technology development.
The projects, revealed at the annual ISS Research and Development Conference in Boston, will attempt to harness the unique microgravity environment to advance cancer research to benefit patients.
Dr. Catriona Jamieson of UCSD proposed using patient-derived tumor organoids to study accelerated cancer development in microgravity and identify new therapeutic targets.
After cancer treatment, cancer stem cells can remain in the body. These cells self-renew, evade the immune system and develop resistance, resulting in their ability to spread. Jamieson’s team will observe the rate of cancer stem cell growth in space, where cancer cells can grow more quickly, to test whether blocking a specific enzyme prevents cancer stem cell growth.
The results could lead to new treatments that target evasive cancer stem cells to prevent cancer recurrence. The UCSD team already has launched multiple investigations to the ISS through private astronaut missions and NASA-sponsored missions.
The National Cancer Institute estimates that more than 2 million cases of cancer will be diagnosed in 2024, and more than 600,000 people will die from the disease.
Cancer and other disease-related research on the space station is critical not only to the space station National Lab and NASA and also part of the Biden-Harris administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative.
Through Igniting Innovating, more than $7 million in total funding is being awarded. The other recipients include Arun Sharma, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cassian Yee, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; Shay Soker, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and Mari Anne Snow, Eascra Biotech,
“Through this inaugural Igniting Innovation research announcement, the ISS National Lab and NASA focused funding efforts to specifically target cancer through space-based research, and we look forward to working with the selected projects as they push the boundaries of research and innovation to develop more effective therapeutics for those impacted by this devastating disease,” said Ray Lugo, chief executive officer for the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space which manages the ISS National Lab.