WASHINGTON - The results of John Glenn's historic 1998 space shuttle mission are providing new insights into how drugs produced in the microgravity of space can combat such earthly medical woes as cancerous tumors or help alleviate the ravages of bone cancer, researchers say.
Space researchers participated Thursday and Friday in a symposium, sponsored by NASA and the National Institutes of Aging (NIA), to sketch out the results of the STS 95 mission that flew in October 1998. NIA is an arm of the larger National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland.
"It was a very, very productive mission," said Arnauld Nicogossian, NASA associate administrator of the Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications.
In one presentation, scientists with the University of Colorado at Boulder said that production of an antibiotic -- actinomycin D, an anti-cancer therapeutic -- was 75 percent higher in space than in ground-control experiments. David Klaus, associate director of research, detailed that finding for the BioServe Space Technologies Center at the university.
Klaus said past tests of antibiotic-making hardware on spaceflights were not as productive. Modification of the equipment "appears to have made a difference," he said, adding that up to a 20-fold increase in antibiotic production was realized on the STS 95 flight. The antibiotic production tests were performed under a collaborative effort between BioServe and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, in Wallingford, Connecticut.
Space Shuttle Discoverys flight some 14 months ago sparked worldwide attention due to the presence of 77-year-old, astronaut-turned-U.S. Senator John Glenn as a member of the crew. There were seven members total.
Some 88 experiments from government, university and private groups were on board during the nine-day flight.
Findings specific to Glenns space hop were to be discussed at the National Institutes of Health on Friday. "To the extent possible within the laws governing disclosure of such research, health and physiology results on the crew will be presented," stated a NASA handout from Thursday's opening session of the symposium.
The STS 95 crew deserves much credit for the missions science output, Nicogossian said. But it was Glenns involvement in the mission that helped establish a much closer relationship between NASA and the NIH.
Other biomedical results stemming from the STS 95 flight included a protein crystal-growth study done by Instrumentation Technology Associates of Exton, Pennsylvania.
That research showed that "microgravity does good things," said John Cassanto, president of the firm. He said his companys equipment on the shuttle yielded quality protein crystals for better design of a drug that could help alleviate the pain from bone cancer.
"It would be a new tool in the arsenal for doctors," Cassanto said.
Also pointing to highly promising results from the shuttle mission was Dennis Morrison, life science researcher at NASAs Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas. He described a process to create unique microcapsules in microgravity that can carry multiple cancer treatment drugs. Doctors who aim to target tumors in a person's body could use such microcapsules on Earth.
Experiments flown on STS 95 and follow-on space missions might lead to the creation of an anti-tumor drug delivery technique -- one that attacks a cancer site without affecting surrounding healthy cells, while reducing unwanted side effects in cancer patients, Morrison said.
Mark Uhran, NASA director for Space Utilization and Product Development, said the Discovery flight made full use of the spaceplane and its crew. The richness of the shuttle results foreshadows ways that long-duration research on the International Space Station will prove even more beneficial, he said.
Many scientists view the space station as a future mainstay in furthering studies, not only in the life and biological sciences, but for commercial medical products as well.
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