An Australian-led research project will study how cancer cells can handle the final frontier.
Cancer research is set to go interstellar later this year with University of Adelaide preparing to send cancer cells into space in a groundbreaking experiment.
Living cancer cells will be sent to space in a suborbital rocket to find new information on how cancer develops and survives under extreme conditions.
Dr Nirmal Robinson from the Centre for Cancer Biology and SAHMRI’s Blood Cancer program will lead the project studying how cancer cells behave in the weightless conditions of space.
Launching from a rocket in Sweden, the research mission will only last 10-12 minutes with scientists hoping that the microgravity environment will reveal biological behaviours too difficult to observe on Earth.
This project is funded by the state government via the South Australian Space Collaboration and Innovation Fund and is being led in partnership with Cambrian Defence & Space and Blue Dwarf Space.
The Swedish Space Corporation is coordinating the launch in collaboration with the Adelaide researchers.
“Cancer cells live under enormous stress,” said Dr Robinson.
“In a tumour, cells are competing for nutrients and oxygen, and many die in that environment. Yet a small number of cells adapt and survive. Those are the cells that can become aggressive, spread through the body and resist treatment.
“Even when chemotherapy kills 99% of tumour cells, there can be a single cell that survives and becomes even more dangerous.
“If we can understand the mechanisms that allow those cells to adapt, we may be able to develop better ways to target them.”
The space-bound cells will be exposed to microgravity for several minutes before the rocket descends back to Earth.
Upon recovery, the samples will be rapidly frozen and transported to Adelaide to begin the analysis of gene activity and protein expression.
“We want to see how the cells respond to microgravity – whether they multiply more readily, whether they experience different stress responses or whether certain biological pathways are activated,” Dr Robinson said.
“This project is Australia’s first dedicated microgravity cancer research mission designed to establish a repeatable, sovereign access pathway for biomedical experiments in space.”
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This project comes as part of Dr Robinson’s extensive research into how cancer cells responded to extreme stress and how some cells develop immunity to chemotherapy or metastasise.
Eliminating the effects of gravity in the experiment is expected to prompt unique cell behaviour.
Under normal conditions, cancer cells grow in flat layers due to gravity, with microgravity expected to allow the cells to float freely and form three-dimensional clusters that more closely resemble human tissue.
“When gravity is removed, cells no longer experience sedimentation and many of the mechanical forces present on Earth,” Dr Robinson said.
“That means they often grow differently – sometimes forming structures that look more like real tumours or tissues.
“It gives us a clearer window into how these cells behave.”
This mission is being pushed as a groundbreaking pathway to allow for more Australian researchers to conduct experiments in space.
