T-Cell Mystery Shackles Space Travel
Note: The T Cells in Space blog continues to be updated throughout the month of September, 2006
View the Lab of Cell Growth's Immunosuppression in Space video
Even for outer space fanatics, reality must sometimes strike. From Buck Rogers to Battlestar Galactica, humans have shown the rather unearthly ability to race across the cosmos with little impact on their health other than the occasional phaser blast. What is an easily overlooked detail for screenwriters, however, can be a painful fact to real astronauts and shuttle pilots.
Just ask the Apollo astronauts, half of whom developed infections during their mission or soon after landing.
The truth, as Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD, director of the Laboratory of Cell Growth at the UCSF-affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, explains, is that extended space flight for humans is simply not going to be possible unless we solve a rather elementary problem. The human immune system, particularly its T cells, evolved in a gravity-drenched world. In the weightlessness of space, these white blood cells lose their punch in much the same way that they are compromised by HIV. Bottom line: Space travelers are very susceptible to infection. And sick is no way to go where no human has gone before.
Hughes-Fulford has spent years studying the problem and, in 1991, experienced the wonders of space shuttle travel firsthand as a payload specialist. Sadly, her last experiment was lost aboard the ill-fated Columbia, which broke apart upon reentry in 2003.
Fast-forward three years, and Hughes-Fulford and her colleagues are now headed to the Cosmodrome space-launch site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, for a new science mission operated by the European Space Agency. The goal: to send human T cells up to the International Space Station via a Soyuz spacecraft in an attempt to confirm whether the genes she suspects are inhibited by zero gravity are really turned off in space, as well as to identify new genes that may be involved in the T cells' lack of activation in space. NASA has funded the experiment.
Beginning the first weekend in September, Hughes-Fulford and her colleagues will be blogging from Kazakhstan. Keep up with the experiment's progress at "T Cells in Space."
To learn more about the experiment itself and the circumstances surrounding the space mission, visit Hughes-Fulford's "Lab of Cell Growth" site.
For more information on Hughes-Fulford and the goals of the mission, read the press release, "Scientist-Astronaut Sends T-Cells into Space."
Related links:
Immunosuppression in Space
"Scientist-Astronaut Sends T-Cells Into Space"
UCSF News Release, August 30, 2006 T Cells in Space Blog The Lab of Cell Growth (Hughes-Fulford's Lab) "Researchers Find a Potential Key to Human Immune Suppression in Space"
UCSF Today, October 13, 2005 "VA Research Heads for Space"
UCSF Today, January 13, 2003
View the Lab of Cell Growth's Immunosuppression in Space video
Even for outer space fanatics, reality must sometimes strike. From Buck Rogers to Battlestar Galactica, humans have shown the rather unearthly ability to race across the cosmos with little impact on their health other than the occasional phaser blast. What is an easily overlooked detail for screenwriters, however, can be a painful fact to real astronauts and shuttle pilots.
Just ask the Apollo astronauts, half of whom developed infections during their mission or soon after landing.
The truth, as Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD, director of the Laboratory of Cell Growth at the UCSF-affiliated San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, explains, is that extended space flight for humans is simply not going to be possible unless we solve a rather elementary problem. The human immune system, particularly its T cells, evolved in a gravity-drenched world. In the weightlessness of space, these white blood cells lose their punch in much the same way that they are compromised by HIV. Bottom line: Space travelers are very susceptible to infection. And sick is no way to go where no human has gone before.
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Hughes-Fulford (back row, second from left) and the Laboratory of Cell Growth Team |
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Immunosuppression in Space
"Scientist-Astronaut Sends T-Cells Into Space" UCSF News Release, August 30, 2006 T Cells in Space Blog The Lab of Cell Growth (Hughes-Fulford's Lab) "Researchers Find a Potential Key to Human Immune Suppression in Space"
UCSF Today, October 13, 2005 "VA Research Heads for Space"
UCSF Today, January 13, 2003