This Treatment for Cancer is Out of this World - Initial studies in Micro-Gravity show a 80% reduction in cancer cells

[rcmaehl]

Alternative title: Scientists want to exile cancer patients to space
 

Disclaimer: I have been unable to read the white paper linked thanks to the amazing world of science journal paywalls. I will assume this is factual if they are using NASA's MSSF and any costs that come with, but we shall see.

 

Sources:
DW
New Atlas (quote source)
A Whitepaper (Warning: $58 paywall)

 

Summary:
Initial studies on cancer cells show a potential new treatment for cancer, zero-gravity. While not a full cure, it may be used in the future with existing treatments.

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

Quote

We’ve been sending humans to space for more than half a century now, but there is still so much to learn about how a low-gravity environment impacts our physiology. An Australian scientist has been looking into such matters and with early indications that space can kill off the majority of cancer cells without the need for drugs. There are quite a few studies that have been completed or are ongoing at the International Space Station that explore the effects of low-gravity on living organisms and human physiology. NASA has previously studied cellular changes of mice and mussels on the ISS and looked into how the microgravity environment can lead to vision impairment. The agency’s twin study,... comparing the biology of an identical twin who spent almost a year at the ISS with the other who did not, continues to be one of the more intriguing examples. Chou and his student Anthony Kirollos exposed ovarian, breast, nose and lung cancer cells to the micro-gravity simulator for a 24-hour period, and found that it caused 80 to 90 percent of them to die. “I have to clarify that microgravity does affect other cells, like bone cells, that is why astronauts lose bone,” Chou tells us. “But having said that, the different tissues and organs in the body respond differently, and it’s just that we found bone and cancers are super sensitive to the effects of microgravity.” Why this mechanical unloading effect hits cancer cells harder than most is one of the questions Chou hopes to shed some light on when he launches his experiment for the ISS next year. “Twenty-four hours before launch, we will introduce the cells into microfluidic devices, they will go up to the ISS and the experiment will be carried out for seven days, but won’t return until after 28 days at the ISS,” Chou says. “Then of course we will do analysis upon its return. But we also designed technologies to study them while they are alive on the ISS.” "I see what we are developing on working in conjunction with existing therapies and not replacing anything,“ Chou says. “What we hope is that it will increase efficiency of current drugs to give the patient an added advantage by disrupting the normal function of the cancer."

My Thoughts:
Well, this is one treatment that may not be coming to the US anytime soon. Then again, with the costs of current cancer treatments, it might actually be cheaper to send a cancer patient to space than to use traditional treatments and if so, it'd be interesting to see Insurance companies partly covering the cost of going on a short space vacation, just don't expect to bring much at $5000 per Kilogram.

[Bananasplit_00]

thats awesome, i wonder what this spells for longer human space travels though, if cancer dies from zero g then radiation from space might not be too bad? i mean, enough will still just outright murder you but maybe we dont need as extreme radiation shields as we believe we do now. Would make things a lot easier.

[Akira Shimazu]

while it may be reduced the develop of an cancer cell in Space. don't you think itll be much more relevant to spend funding for Medicine and drug for Anti-Cancer?

[rcmaehl]

Just now, Bananasplit_00 said:

thats awesome, i wonder what this spells for longer human space travels though, if cancer dies from zero g then radiation from space might not be too bad? i mean, enough will still just outright murder you but maybe we dont need as extreme radiation shields as we believe we do now. Would make things a lot easier.

Considering radiation in space is 2000 mSv. About 20-40 times the level required to develop cancer in the first place. I'm sure it wouldn't be good for you body to be exposed to that radiation.

[Bananasplit_00]

4 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Considering radiation in space is 2000 mSv. About 20-40 times the level required to develop cancer in the first place. I'm sure it wouldn't be good for you body to be exposed to that radiation.

im not saying we can cut radiation shielding to nothing, but perhaps we can use less to save on mass

[Akira Shimazu]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Considering radiation in space is 2000 mSv. About 20-40 times the level required to develop cancer in the first place. I'm sure it wouldn't be good for you body to be exposed to that radiation.

many thing need to be consider. not suit for medical treatment. especially in mass population

[Raytsou]

3 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Considering radiation in space is 2000 mSv. About 20-40 times the level required to develop cancer in the first place. I'm sure it wouldn't be good for you body to be exposed to that radiation.

I remember reading a paper a while ago showing that telomeres lengthen in space, which would reduce the chance of cancer in space. Whether that lengthening is enough to make cancer negligible is unknown

[DuckDodgers]

Somehow this effect was either known or speculated decades ago (1:20 mark):

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

@rcmaehl love the alt-title.

 

On the cancer treatment front, there's still the most classic of issues: you can treat the cancer but you'll still kill the patient. I haven't seen many cancer patients that'd do well being blasted off in the a rocket.

 

However, the reason why it happens probably has more to do with reaction kinetics than anything special about micro-gravity. The cancer cells likely need the mechanical forces of gravity to maintain enough resources to survive. 

 

That said, if this does show out in testing results, it points to 2 things: 1) cancer risk for space travel goes pretty much away, which is great and 2) "Space Holidays" will be a thing for the wealthy with cancer issues. Considering NASA recently published a commercial price listing for experiments, 50 million might get you a month on the ISS. A lot more pleasant than a run of Chemo. 

[Raytsou]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

@rcmaehl

However, the reason why it happens probably has more to do with reaction kinetics than anything special about micro-gravity. The cancer cells likely need the mechanical forces of gravity to maintain enough resources to survive. 

What'd the logic behind this?

[Taf the Ghost]

16 minutes ago, Raytsou said:

What'd the logic behind this?

Complex organisms are made up of mostly pressure-based systems. Lessen the gravity and those systems operate differently. Cancer cells are "immortalized" cells of specific type that start a runaway life cycle. What it generally means is those cells run into the same issues that normal tissue does when faced with adverse situations. (This is part of why there isn't a "one size fits all" magic bullet for cancer and never will be.) We already know that the body has strange responses to micro-gravity because of the lack of multiple forces in the earth's atmosphere on the ground. Cancer cells are going to respond to changes as well.

 

In general, cancer cells are actually pretty fragile, but the problem is always targeting them. Killing them is easy; only killing them is hard. But, and this is always the case with cancer, there will be exceptions that love micro-gravity. Because there's always exceptions with cancers. Always.

[Beskamir]

At least the radiation therapy would be effectively free... once you get far enough from earth and don't shield yourself too much.

[TechyBen]

Blood vessels.

 

Like, 90% of "cancer treatment" stories, boil down to blood vessel distribution. If you eat/exercise/take medicine (or go to Zero G) anything that affects blood vessel size, it will effect cancer rates.

 

IIRC more blood vessels/larger vessels allow more food and oxygen to get to cancer, less prevents it from growing/spreading (as vessels also work as transportation when the cancer metastasis(spell?) ).

 

No magic. Just good diet and exercise (but check which type, as some types increase your bloodflow :P) .

[RedRound2]

Well, other than helping us understand how to tackle cancer cells (maybe?), I don't think space treatment is ever going to be a thing, just because any reduction in cancer cells will most likely be cancelled by the probability increase in chances of developing another cancer due to radiation exposure.

 

Plus, unless we can move from to a much more sustainable, cheaper way to get to space, and have space hotels for patients (not anytime in next 25 years, given that mass EV and renewable energy adoption is going to take more than that), I'd bet on CRISPER or some designer drug to propel us in the war against cancer.

[Guest]

On 9/12/2019 at 5:41 AM, Taf the Ghost said:

Complex organisms are made up of mostly pressure-based systems. Lessen the gravity and those systems operate differently. Cancer cells are "immortalized" cells of specific type that start a runaway life cycle. What it generally means is those cells run into the same issues that normal tissue does when faced with adverse situations. (This is part of why there isn't a "one size fits all" magic bullet for cancer and never will be.) We already know that the body has strange responses to micro-gravity because of the lack of multiple forces in the earth's atmosphere on the ground. Cancer cells are going to respond to changes as well.

 

In general, cancer cells are actually pretty fragile, but the problem is always targeting them. Killing them is easy; only killing them is hard. But, and this is always the case with cancer, there will be exceptions that love micro-gravity. Because there's always exceptions with cancers. Always.

Cancer cells are not exactly fragile. They are just fragile in different ways. They are not immortal so to say, but adapt.

[TechyBen]

3 minutes ago, floofer said:

Cancer cells are not exactly fragile. They are just fragile in different ways. They are not immortal so to say, but adapt.

Not really. They don't adapt. Where have you read/hear/seen that? Some are "immortal" in that they can be killed, but don't seem to age/die of old age.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

 

I think you are misunderstanding something. Taf was mostly correct in their description.

[Guest]

Just now, TechyBen said:

Not really. They don't adapt. Where have you read/hear/seen that? Some are "immortal" in that they can be killed, but don't seem to age/die of old age.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

 

I think you are misunderstanding something. Taf was mostly correct in their description.

I don’t need Wikipedia I have a degree thank you. Taf is also right.

[TechyBen]

3 minutes ago, floofer said:

I don’t need Wikipedia I have a degree thank you. Taf is also right.

Ok. Sorry. How are they adapting?

[edit]

Like, they used the correct word : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortalised_cell_line

[Guest]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

Ok. Sorry. How are they adapting?

Don’t be sorry. Questioning and proving people wrong is important.

 

Cancer cells are essentially cells which have bypassed certain checks to persist in the body, this is done primary by degradation of their genome. This is usually kept in check. This allows the cell to keep growing and become immortal as Taf says. However this makes them vulnerable via certain targets, as different proteins are expressed as a result of the mutations that occur due to this genomic instability, hence fragile (especially amenable are highly proliferating tumours).

 

so, these cells, because they are highly proliferating and have a high degree of genomic instability often mutate at a high rate, essentially a rate of evolution - although not really. 
 

this means the cancer cell can mutate to evade the immune system, and adapt to certain environments - metastasis is typical example, although my favourite will be secretion of VEGF and other cytokines to effectively walk off the tumour cells and evade the immune system by a wall of collagen deposition. 
 

So it’s a little late for me so I do apologise. However you can really think of cancer cells of a highly differentiated population of cells, with cancer stem cells. These cells are immortal, but highly adaptive due to constant proliferation and these disabled cell checks. 

[TechyBen]

Yeah. "Some" are immortal lines is very much a different answer to "no they are not".

Thanks for the clarification on what you meant by adapt. As, of cause, the short term vs long term is very different for cancer cells. So it was a bit off seeing is described as adapting. Lol. (But yes, in the short term, they have good survival rates).

[Guest]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

Yeah. "Some" are immortal lines is very much a different answer to "no they are not".

Thanks for the clarification on what you meant by adapt. As, of cause, the short term vs long term is very different for cancer cells. So it was a bit off seeing is described as adapting. Lol. (But yes, in the short term, they have good survival rates).

I suppose what I should have said is that it depends on the driver mutation. Some cancers are more highly proliferating due to different driver mutations, and perhaps more easily treatable (Wilm’s Tumour). 
 

Many malignancies have multiple lines in the sense the cancer stem cells give rise to these lines through separate driver mutations. So when you target treatment for a specific tumour and see remission, often you have killed off one line, however the cancer stem cells are different and much harder to target due to slow turnover. 
 

Cancers are in there nature quite diverse, due to their mechanism. I’d be hesitant to suggest rates of survival depending on body site. 

[TechyBen]

26 minutes ago, floofer said:

I suppose what I should have said is that it depends on the driver mutation. Some cancers are more highly proliferating due to different driver mutations, and perhaps more easily treatable (Wilm’s Tumour). 
 

Many malignancies have multiple lines in the sense the cancer stem cells give rise to these lines through separate driver mutations. So when you target treatment for a specific tumour and see remission, often you have killed off one line, however the cancer stem cells are different and much harder to target due to slow turnover. 
 

Cancers are in there nature quite diverse, due to their mechanism. I’d be hesitant to suggest rates of survival depending on body site. 

Averages vs specifics.

Exercise is good for you on average. Specific people may find it harmful or more helpful.

"Cancer" is a massive average word. So yes. Some specific ones, have specific helpful treatments. Others, may even be opposites.

 

I guess that's the problem here. "Low g for cancer" headline does not mention what types of cancer.

[Trik'Stari]

All I can say is that pancreatic cancer took my mother. In a way that was, so very, very..... It took every shred of dignity from her before the end.

 

 

Fuck cancer. Any and all forms of it. I would gladly pay anything to eradicate this disease from our species.

 

I hate cancer more than I hate communists. Those of you who know me will understand how deep this hatred runs.

 

FUCK CANCER.

[CarlBar]

On 9/11/2019 at 2:42 PM, Bananasplit_00 said:

im not saying we can cut radiation shielding to nothing, but perhaps we can use less to save on mass

 

I recommend reading this page, it starts on the danger of meteors to a space colony but goes on about the radiation. Space radiation is a lot more complex, and dangerous, than people tend to assume.

 

https://space.nss.org/colonies-in-space-chapter-12-the-shell-of-the-torus/

[Eaglerino]

On 9/11/2019 at 7:40 AM, rcmaehl said:

Considering radiation in space is 2000 mSv. About 20-40 times the level required to develop cancer in the first place. I'm sure it wouldn't be good for you body to be exposed to that radiation.

you really think NASA hasn't thought of that since the 1960s