Better Cancer Treatments May Follow Research In Outer Space

Image Caption: Dr. Dennis Morrison poses with the Microencapsulation Electrostatic Processing System flight hardware that was used on the International Space Station to produce microcapsules for cancer treatment delivery. Credit: NASA

Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Although a necessary evil for a vast amount of people, systemic cancer treatment is an invasive procedure with devastating side effects.

People undergoing cancer treatment often experience nausea, immune suppression, hair loss and organ failure. All of this is endured with the hope of exterminating the cancerous tissues in the body. If a treatment were developed to specifically target the cancerous tissue instead of treating the patients entire body, it would provide a welcome alternative to using toxic levels of chemotherapy and radiation. Quality of life for patients with cancer would drastically improve with such treatments.

Fascinatingly, the research for such therapy began in space and could soon provide such treatment options here on Earth.

Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), there is the unique opportunity to study substances in a microgravity environment. Currently there is a particular amount of research that has made substantial advancements in cancer therapy. This process is known as microencapsulation and provides the ability to create tiny, liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons which contain particular mixtures of concentrated anti-tumor drugs. With the use of specialized needles, a doctor can inject the micro-balloons, also called microcapsules, into specific treatment sites within a cancer patient. New targeted therapy similar to this could revolutionize cancer treatment delivery.

In order to develop this type of technology, it was necessary to utilize the microgravity environment aboard the space station to understand microencapsulation before the experiments could be performed on Earth. Dennis Morrison, PhD, retired NASA principal investigator of the Microencapsulation Electrostatic Processing System-II (MEPS-II) study and current vice president and director for microencapsulation research and development at NuVue Therapeutics, Inc., explained, The technique that we have for making these microcapsules could not be done on the ground, because the different densities of the liquids would layer, but in space, since there is not sedimentation due to gravity, everything goes spherical.

Using a mixture of 80 percent water and 20 percent oil, the MEPS operations in microgravity were successful in uniting the two liquids in a way incapable of production on the Earth. In the unique conditions of space, the liquid-filled microcapsules spontaneously formed into spherical, tiny liquid-filled bubbles that were encased with a thin, semi-permeable outer membrane.

Since each molecule on a liquids surface in space is pulled with equal tension by its neighbors, the surface tension causes liquids to form into spheres. This MEPS-II system effectively allowed liquids to combine in a bubble shape that let the fluids interface instead of sit on top of each other.

We were able to figure out what parameters we needed to control so we could make the same kind of microcapsules on the ground, said Morrison. Now, we no longer have to go to space. Space was our teacher, our classroom to figure out how we could make these on Earth.

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Better Cancer Treatments May Follow Research In Outer Space