To carry out cancer research, the orbit seems an unlikely place, instead on the International Space Station there are conditions that may favor certain biological research, in particular microgravity.

The problem in cancer research is given by the way cellular structures develop. In a human body growth occurs within support structures made of proteins and carbohydrates that allow normal organs and tumors to form three-dimensional structures. In a laboratory, however, the cells grow on a flat surface, multiplying in sheet-like structures.

The problem is that different cell structures have different behaviors. Therefore, researchers need to grow tumors in the laboratory as accurately as possible for their studies to show what are really the effects of genetic changes on cell development.

To solve this problem, various methods have been devised but none exactly reproduces the behavior of a tumor within a human body. Instead, in an environment where the gravity is non-existent or very low, cells aggregate into three-dimensional structures in a manner more similar than those created with the methods available on the surface of the Earth.

The idea is far from new. Recently, Professor Jeanne Becker of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston published an article that traces forty years of cell biology research in a microgravity environment that starts from the first experiments on Skylab in the ’70s.

Over the years, several biological experiments were performed on the Space Shuttles but also on Russian spacecraft and in recent years other ones have been carried out on the International Space Station. The accumulated results have allowed to obtain new information about some of the mechanisms of cancer cell development such as those related to cytokines, proteins that mediate and regulate immunity and inflammation.

The cell structures grown in microgravity are three-dimensional but don’t have blood vessels so at their center cells tend to die from lack of nourishment. This may at first seem like a problem but according to Professor Jeanne Becker the same thing happens in certain tumors, therefore that’s actually positive for the research.

Although the techniques to grow three-dimensional structures on Earth are improving, the data obtained in microgravity are an important contribution to cancer research. The International Space Station is currently the only place where they can carry out continuous research of this type, one of the many cases in which its utility is known only to a small minority.

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