The knowledge of how cancer cells engage with one another within three-dimensional structures will be improved by studies like D(MG)2 conducted aboard the International Space Station.
In order to better understand how to diffuse midline glioma spreads in microgravity, researchers from The Institute of Cancer Research are sending samples of the disease to the International Space Station. The majority of patients with diffuse midline glioma, a deadly and aggressive brain tumour that most frequently affects children, pass away within 18 months of their diagnosis.
Because the cancer is in sensitive areas of the brain, surgery is typically not an option, and chemotherapy has little impact. The only available treatment, radiotherapy, is only applied as a preventive measure. Karen Armstrong, the deceased US astronaut Neil Armstrong's daughter and the first person to set foot on the moon in 1969, was one of the disease's victims.
The D(MG)2 study's principal investigator, Chris Jones, is an instructor of Childhood Cancer Biology at The Institute of Cancer Research in London. He said: "Moreover, survival rates for patients with diffuse midline glioma have not shifted significantly since Neil Armstrong's daughter passed away from the condition in the 1960s. But over the past 15 years, a change in our knowledge of the biology behind these tumours' complexity has occurred, and finally, exciting novel therapies are going through the clinical trial stage."
The knowledge of how cancer cells engage with one another within three-dimensional structures will be improved by studies like D(MG)2 conducted aboard the International Space Station. These studies should also generate fresh concepts for halting tumour growth that we can apply back in the lab.
The scientists anticipate that their 3D cultures will be able to grow much larger in microgravity than they could on Earth, enabling them to study the interactions of cancer cells using much larger models. The UK government has contributed £1.2 million to the study.
British scientists and astronauts are using the International Space Station to conduct studies in nutrition, energy, and biomedicine, according to George Freeman, minister of state at the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology. The £2.6 million project funding will support scientists in the UK in their work to better explain the biomedical methods of getting older and develop ways of avoiding brain tumours in young patients.
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