Tumors in Space
i grew up in
canada a town called sudbury
it’s a rather unusual place sudbury was
formed
by the impact of a meteorite two billion
years ago
and when that meteorite came crashing to
the ground it left
a gaping hole a crater
filled with nickel platinum copper
copper mineral deposits
and sudbury was built
inside that hole and around it
growing up as a kid the um
sulfur content was so thick you could
smell it and taste it and feel it in the
back of your throat
the acid rain was so piercing
it would burn through the paint in
people’s cars
would you be surprised if i told you
that sudbury has an excellent
cancer center
the mining practices devastated the land
the air the water
could this image of our mind tailings
not be from another planet
the vegetation died the rocks were
black and burnt and my hometown became
a desolate moonscape so much so
that the nasa astronauts came to train
in sudbury
before they launched into space for the
apollo missions
so you see i have always been surrounded
by space
right here on earth and i’ve always been
surrounded by cancer
perhaps then it comes as no surprise
that i’m specializing in space medicine
and leading tumors in space which is the
most
advanced cancer research experiment ever
conducted in space
and i have people ask me all the time
but trisha isn’t there a cure
and the dreadful truth is there is no
cure for cancer there is no cure
there is early detection there is
treatment with chemotherapy radiation
therapy hormone therapy there’s surgery
but there’s no cure and we are spending
billions of dollars
doing the same research over and over
again
from biomarkers for early detection to
investigating smaller and smaller
biological mechanisms that may
kill a tumor even though that tumor will
probably come back
we’re treating our cancer patients in
the same toxic methods over and over
again
there has to be another way
in the next two decades cancer cases
will increase
by 70 percent it is time
to do something radically different not
more of the same it is time
to broaden our perspectives
it’s time to use every platform that’s
available to us
to stop this disease in its tracks
it is time for tumors in space
so let’s talk about science
we are sending organoids
into space for a 31 day space mission
and we’re the first team
to do it so what are organoids organoids
are three-dimensional stem cell
organoids
that mimic the structure and function of
the source
tissue or organ from which they’re taken
they’re so
physiologically relevant that their
trademark
name is patient in a lab and sometimes
we call them
well we do call them mini organs
so these three dimensional organoids
consist of adult stem cells
and we take these we care for them we
clone them in our lab and we can do
highly relevant cancer research that are
immediately applicable to a human being
so we
are taking cancer organoids and healthy
organisms five centimeters away from
that tumor
and we’re sending them into space
why space i believe
that zero gravity may have therapeutic
effects
and i’m not the only one previous
investigators
have sent 2d cell lines which are
nowhere near as physiologically relevant
as our 3d organized they’ve sent them
into space for 7
10 14 days and they found a change in
gene
expression linked to tumor suppression
which means
zero gravity may interfere with the
cancer cell’s ability to replicate
itself
so zero gravity may slow or
stop the growth of cancer
what would that mean it would be
completely unsustainable to send every
cancer patient
up into space for therapy but what we
can do
is we can harness that environment right
here on earth
and build anti-gravity chambers
now this may sound like a far-fetched
idea but i ask you to please remember
it wasn’t so long ago we were treating
patients with leeches by sucking out the
bad blood as a cure
and now we know this to be absurd and it
is my hope
that one hundred years from now our
grandchildren our great canned children
will look back on this time and shake
their heads
at the way we treat cancer patients with
chemo and radiation
and wonder how it is we could have been
so archaic
what if we’re wrong
if we’re wrong at least we tried
something new
not more of the same and we will have
inspired ourselves
and others to also try something new
again and again
until we stop this disease
but in order to get to that bright
future without cancer we must be
bold we must be creative
we must not be afraid
to fail
we must remember to dream
it’s not enough anymore to think out of
the box we have to think
out of this world
tumors in space an idea
worth sharing
[Applause]
you