Drug discovery and development: the final frontier

Greener, Mark

doi:10.1002/psb.1823

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 12 publications

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“…Space medicine has always been fundamental to human exploration of space [ 1 , 2 ]. It is now expanding beyond its usual specialty within aerospace medicine, beyond being a discipline that tackles comprehensive health care delivery issues within the challenging environment of space into a discipline that uses that challenging environment for drug discovery and development for both terrestrial and space health applications [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. The quest for personalized medicine for terrestrial purposes also becomes a quest for personalized medicine for space explorers [ 6 , 7 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulated Microgravity-Induced Changes to Drug Response in Cancer Cells Quantified Using Fluorescence Morphometry

McKinley

Taylor

Peeples

et al. 2023

Life

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Unlike plants that have special gravity-sensing cells, such special cells in animals are yet to be discovered. However, microgravity, the condition of apparent weightlessness, causes bone, muscular and immune system dysfunctions in astronauts following spaceflights. Decades of investigations show correlations between these organ and system-level dysfunctions with changes induced at the cellular level both by simulated microgravity as well as microgravity conditions in outer space. Changes in single bone, muscle and immune cells include morphological abnormalities, altered gene expression, protein expression, metabolic pathways and signaling pathways. These suggest that human cells mount some response to microgravity. However, the implications of such adjustments on many cellular functions and responses are not clear. Here, we addressed the question whether microgravity induces alterations to drug response in cancer cells. We used both adherent cancer cells (T98G) and cancer cells in suspension (K562) to confirm the known effects of simulated microgravity and then treated the K562 cells with common cancer drugs (hydroxyurea and paclitaxel) following 48 h of exposure to simulated microgravity via a NASA-developed rotary cell culture system. Through fluorescence-guided morphometry, we found that microgravity abolished a significant reduction (p < 0.01) in the nuclear-to-cytoplasm ratio of cancer cells treated with hydroxyurea. Our results call for more studies on the impact of microgravity on cellular drug response, in light of the growing need for space medicine, as space exploration grows.

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