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- ‘Forever chemicals’ linked with higher odds of cancer in women, new study suggests. Here’s why experts say people shouldn’t be ‘overly alarmed.’ Yahoo Life
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Tag Archives: ovarian
ELAHERE® Demonstrates 35% Reduction in the Risk of Disease Progression or Death Versus Chemotherapy in FRα-Positive Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer – Yahoo Finance
- ELAHERE® Demonstrates 35% Reduction in the Risk of Disease Progression or Death Versus Chemotherapy in FRα-Positive Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer Yahoo Finance
- Trial demonstrates one-year progression-free survival in 94% of patients with stage 3 or 4 classic Hodgkin lymphoma Medical Xpress
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- ImmunoGen Shares Rally Premarket on Elahere Study Data >IMGN MarketWatch
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- View Full Coverage on Google News
ELAHERE® Demonstrates 35% Reduction in the Risk of Disease Progression or Death Versus Chemotherapy in FRα-Positive Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer – Yahoo Finance
- ELAHERE® Demonstrates 35% Reduction in the Risk of Disease Progression or Death Versus Chemotherapy in FRα-Positive Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer Yahoo Finance
- Trial demonstrates one-year progression-free survival in 94% of patients with stage 3 or 4 classic Hodgkin lymphoma Medical Xpress
- Mirvetuximab Soravtansine Improves Survival in Patients With Recurrent Ovarian Cancer The ASCO Post
- New Ovarian Cancer Drug Extends Survival in Resistant Disease Medpage Today
- ImmunoGen stock jumps on Elahere cancer data (NASDAQ:IMGN) Seeking Alpha
- View Full Coverage on Google News
ImmunoGen Touts Additional Positive Data From Ovarian Cancer Drug, Seeks Expanded Use Approval, Stock Soars – Yahoo Finance
- ImmunoGen Touts Additional Positive Data From Ovarian Cancer Drug, Seeks Expanded Use Approval, Stock Soars Yahoo Finance
- ImmunoGen Touts Additional Positive Data From Ovarian Cancer Drug, Seeks Expanded Use Approval, Stock Soa Benzinga
- ImmunoGen’s Elahere delivers landmark ovarian cancer win FiercePharma
- ELAHERE® Demonstrates Overall Survival Benefit in the Phase 3 MIRASOL Trial in Patients with FRα-Positive Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer Yahoo Finance
- Why ImmunoGen Stock Is Blasting Off Wednesday – Immunogen (NASDAQ:IMGN) Benzinga
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Ultra-processed foods may increase ovarian cancer risk, U.K. study warns
Researchers at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health assessed the diets of almost 200,000 middle-aged adults for a 10-year-period in the United Kingdom and found a “higher consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with a greater risk of overall cancer and specifically ovarian and brain cancer.”
It was also associated with an increased risk of dying from cancer, they found.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine journal Tuesday, was a collaboration with researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), University of Sao Paulo and NOVA University Lisbon.
Of the 197,426 individuals, some 15,921 people developed cancer and 4,009 cancer-related deaths occurred.
“For every 10 percent increase in ultra-processed food in a person’s diet, there was an increased incidence of 2 percent for cancer overall, and a 19 percent increase for ovarian cancer specifically,” Imperial College London said in a statement. These links remained after adjusting for socio-economic factors such as smoking, physical activity and body mass index (BMI).
It’s unclear why there was a particularly high increased incidence in ovarian cancers — however, separate research has found an association between the disease and acrylamide, an industrial chemical formed during high-temperature cooking procedures.
“Some potentially cancer-causing agents such as some controversial food additives and chemical agents generated during processing may interfere with hormone effects and thereby affect hormone-related cancers such as ovarian cancer,” Eszter Vamos, lead senior author for the study, told The Washington Post by email Wednesday.
More studies are needed to determine the impact on women and children, she said, as the latter tend to be the “main consumers of ultra-processed foods.”
According to the American Cancer Society, ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women in the United States — accounting for more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. The cancer mainly develops in older women and is more common in White than Black women, it said.
Almost 60 percent of the calories that adults in the United States eat are from ultra-processed foods, which often have a poor nutritional value. They account for 25 to 50 percent of the calories consumed in many other countries, too, including England, Canada, France, Lebanon and Japan.
The observational study “cannot prove cause and effect” definitively, Vamos noted, showing only an association between the foods and increased cancer risks. However, the study argues, the findings nonetheless highlight the importance of considering food processing in diets.
“Ultra-processed foods are everywhere and highly marketed with cheap price and attractive packaging to promote consumption,” study author Kiara Chang said in a statement. “This shows our food environment needs urgent reform to protect the population.”
Chang called for better labeling and packaging of food to make clear to consumers the risks of their choices, as well as subsidies for freshly prepared foods to ensure they remain accessible, “nutritious and affordable options.”
Other studies have shown a link between ultra-processed foods and higher rates of obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and colon cancer. A recent study of more than 22,000 people found that people who ate a lot of ultra-processed foods had a 19 percent higher likelihood of early death and a 32 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with people who ate few ultra-processed foods.
“There has been a global rise in ultra-processed foods, and these products increasingly replace traditional foods in our diet,” said Vamos. “Generally, high income countries have the highest levels of consumption, and the U.S. and the U.K. are leading consumers.”
Brazil has banned the marketing of ultra-processed foods in schools, while France and Canada have pushed to limit such foods in their national dietary guidelines.
Panagiota Mitrou, director of research and innovation at World Cancer Research Fund, which helped fund the study, said by email Wednesday that the findings were “significant” and should encourage people to limit their fast food consumption and “other processed foods high in fat, starches or sugars.”
“For maximum benefit, we also recommend that you make whole grains, vegetables, fruit and pulses a major part of your usual diet,” she added.
Anahad O’Connor contributed to this report.
Ultraprocessed foods linked to ovarian and other cancer deaths, study finds
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Eating more ultraprocessed foods raises the risk of developing and dying from cancer, especially ovarian cancer, according to a new study of over 197,000 people in the United Kingdom, over half of whom were women.
Overly processed foods include prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza and ready-to-eat meals, as well as hot dogs, sausages, french fries, sodas, store-bought cookies, cakes, candies, doughnuts, ice cream and many more.
“Ultra-processed foods are produced with industrially derived ingredients and often use food additives to adjust colour, flavour, consistency, texture, or extend shelf life,” said first author Dr. Kiara Chang, a National Institute for Health and Care Research fellow at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health, in a statement.
“Our bodies may not react the same way to these ultra-processed ingredients and additives as they do to fresh and nutritious minimally processed foods,” Chang said.
However, people who eat more ultra-processed foods also tend to “drink more fizzy drinks and less tea and coffee, as well as less vegetables and other foods associated with a healthy dietary pattern,” said Duane Mellor, a registered dietitian and senior teaching fellow at Aston Medical School in Birmingham, UK, in an email.
“This could mean that it may not be an effect specifically of the ultra-processed foods themselves, but instead reflect the impact of a lower intake of healthier food,” said Mellor, who was not involved in the study.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal eClinicalMedicine, looked at the association between eating ultraprocessed foods and 34 different types of cancer over a 10-year period.
Researchers examined information on the eating habits of 197,426 people who were part of the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database and research resource that followed residents from 2006 to 2010.
The amount of ultraprocessed foods consumed by people in the study ranged from a low of 9.1% to a high of 41.4% of their diet, the study found.
Eating patterns were then compared with medical records that listed both diagnoses and deaths from cancer.
Each 10% increase in ultraprocessed food consumption was associated with a 2% increase in developing any cancer, and a 19% increased risk for being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, according to a statement issued by Imperial College London.
Deaths from cancers also increased, the study found. For each additional 10% increase in ultraprocessed food consumption, the risk of dying from any cancer increased by 6%, while the risk of dying from ovarian cancer rose by 30%, according to the statement.
“These associations persisted after adjustment for a range of socio-demographic, smoking status, physical activity, and key dietary factors,” the authors wrote.
When it comes to death from cancer among women, ovarian cancer is ranked fifth, “accounting for more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system,” noted the American Cancer Society.
“The findings add to previous studies showing an association between a greater proportion of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in the diet and a higher risk of obesity, heart attacks, stroke, and type 2 diabetes,” said Simon Steenson, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, a charity partially supported by food producers and manufacturers. Steenson was not involved in the new study.
“However, an important limitation of these previous studies and the new analysis published today is that the findings are observational and so do not provide evidence of a clear causal link between UPFs and cancer, or the risk of other diseases,” Steenson said in an email.
People who ate the most ultraprocessed foods “were younger and less likely to have a family history of cancer,” Chang and her colleagues wrote.
High consumers of ultraprocessed foods were less likely to do physical activity and more likely to be classified as obese. These people were also likely to have lower household incomes and education and live in the most underprivileged communities, the study found.
“This study adds to the growing evidence that ultra-processed foods are likely to negatively impact our health including our risk for cancer,” said Dr. Eszter Vamos, the study’s lead author and a clinical senior lecturer at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health in a statement.
This latest research is not the first to show an association between a high intake of ultraprocessed foods and cancer.
A 2022 study examined the diets of over 200,000 men and women in the United States for up to 28 years and found a link between ultraprocessed foods and colorectal cancer — the third most diagnosed cancer in the United States — in men, but not women.
And there are “literally hundreds of studies (that) link ultraprocessed foods to obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality,” Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University told CNN previously.
While the new UK-based study cannot prove causation, only an association, “other available evidence shows that reducing ultra-processed foods in our diet could provide important health benefits,” Vamos said.
“Further research is needed to confirm these findings and understand the best public health strategies to reduce the widespread presence and harms of ultra-processed foods in our diet,” she added.
A 24-year-old says she ‘ignored’ her bloating and stomach pain until it got so bad she went to the ER. Doctors diagnosed her with ovarian cancer.
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A woman, 24, found out she had ovarian cancer after her stomach pain got so bad she went to the ER.
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Doctors arranged for an ultrasound scan, which found two tumors on Chloe Etheridge’s ovaries.
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Etheridge told SWNS that she “ignored” her pain for months because she didn’t know cancer could cause it.
A 24-year-old who “ignored” her bloating and stomach pain for months was diagnosed with a rare type of ovarian cancer, according to a report.
Chloe Etheridge, from the UK, initially experienced bloating and abdominal pain in December 2021. By April 2022, her stomach pain was so bad she went to the emergency room, she told the South West News Service.
Doctors arranged an ultrasound scan, which found two tumors on her ovaries. One was seven inches long and the other was about four inches long, she told SWNS.
‘I don’t think young women know the symptoms of ovarian cancer’
Three months later on July 11 2022, doctors told Etheridge she had germ-cell ovarian cancer, a rare type of the disease that is typically diagnosed during adolescence, though anyone above the age of one can get it, according to the National Institutes of Health’s Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center.
Generally, people are diagnosed with ovarian cancer after menopause and it’s rare in people younger than 40 to develop the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. It estimates that 19,710 women in the US will receive a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer in 2023 and about 13,270 women will die from the disease.
Symptoms of germ-cell ovarian cancer, which affects fewer than 1,000 people in the US, include: a pelvic mass, fever, vaginal bleeding, and abdominal pain, GARD states.
Symptoms of other types of ovarian cancer include: pain in the pelvis or back, bloating, and feeling full “too quickly,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other conditions can cause those symptoms but “the only way to know is to see your doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional,” the CDC states.
Etheridge told SWNS that she ignored her symptoms because she didn’t realize they could be caused by cancer. “I don’t think young women know the symptoms of ovarian cancer,” she said.
Chemotherapy was ‘brutal’
Treatment of ovarian cancer depends on the type of cancer and how far it has spread, but includes chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and surgery. Etheridge started chemotherapy the day after she was diagnosed, for six months.
“It was incredibly brutal. My chemotherapy had seven different chemical components. The side effects were horrendous, I had nausea, fatigue, hearing loss — I still can’t hear some frequencies now,” she said.
Etheridge had an operation on January 11 to try to remove as much of the tumor as possible.
She told SWNS that the procedure went “really well,” and she is “expected to make a full recovery.”
According to the ACS, germ cell ovarian tumors often have a “good outlook,” with more than 90% of people with the condition living for more than five years after diagnosis.
Etheridge shared her story to raise awareness: “I think for women because we have periods, it is assumed that we are meant to live with pain but that should not be the case.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
A Woman’s Weight Gain Turned Out to Be an 86-Pound Ovarian Tumor
- A woman in Italy went to her doctor after months of unexplained weight gain and stomach pain.
- She found out that she had a massive tumor in her abdomen from a rare form of ovarian cancer.
- Doctors removed the 86-pound tumor and the woman is now cancer free.
At a doctor’s office in Italy, a female patient presented with a swollen belly and stomach pains, and said that she had gained about 55 pounds over the past ten months. The symptoms normally might point to pregnancy — if the patient wasn’t 62 years old.
Besides the stomach pain, swelling, and some shortness of breath, all of her other tests came back normal.
Doctors opted to perform exploratory surgery and remove whatever was growing in the woman’s abdomen. When they opened her up, they discovered an 86-pound tumor, which they described in a recent JAMA Clinical Challenge.
Surgery revealed a rare tumor heavier than 4 watermelons
The tumor was a mucinous ovarian carcinoma, a rare subtype of ovarian cancer characterized by fluid-filled cancer cells that are coated in mucus, that had originated from the patient’s left ovary. Mucinous ovarian carcinoma accounts for about 2-3% of new ovarian cancer diagnoses.
The doctors were able to remove the tumor in one piece, which is important for fluid-filled tumors. Spilling the tumors’ contents during surgery may increase the risk that the cancer will come back, according to a 2019 review published in Radiographics.
The tumor, once removed, measured 19.7 inches long and weighed nearly 86 pounds — bigger and heavier than four large watermelons.
Mucinous tumors can balloon to huge sizes, so they tend to be found early compared to other types of ovarian cancer, according to the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Fortunately, patients who are diagnosed with stage I mucinous ovarian carcinoma have a 5-year survival of 90% or higher if they get the tumor removed completely, according to a review in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer.
The patient in Italy recovered well after her surgery and was discharged from the hospital five days later, her doctors wrote. At a six-month follow-up appointment, she was symptom-free and had no markers of cancer in her blood.
Ovarian tumors can be dangerous at any size
Even larger ovarian tumors have been described in medical literature; in 2018, doctors removed a 132-pound mass from a 38-year-old woman in Connecticut. Her tumor was not cancerous, but it grew to be so large that it affected her digestion.
But the size of a tumor doesn’t have anything to do with how dangerous it is. In fact, mucinous tumors like the woman in Italy had are benign in about 80% of cases, borderline cancerous in 10% of cases, and the remaining 10% are malignant.
Smaller ovarian masses can be just as lethal, and about 13,270 women in America will die of ovarian cancer this year — often because other forms of the cancer are only diagnosed when they are much more advanced.
21-year-old’s pain was dismissed by doctors for years. She had a rare ovarian cancer
Sharp abdominal pain struck Jessie Sanders’ body. For almost two weeks in November 2021, she couldn’t eat, work out or move. All she did was lie in bed.
Then, the day after Thanksgiving 2021, Sanders, 21, finally drove herself to the emergency room. She was fed up with the pain. Her weight had dropped a lot. What frustrated her most was that she couldn’t eat her Thanksgiving dinner.
She made the difficult decision to go to the hospital — she’d been dismissed for her pain many times before — and underwent emergency surgery for an ovarian cyst. A week later, she got a call from the surgeon. She learned she had small cell carcinoma of the ovary, hypercalcemic type — a very rare, aggressive form of cancer.
“I thought I was crazy having these pains (because) doctors always (dismissed) my pain,” Sanders tells TODAY.com. “I was having very severe abdominal pain for two weeks, and I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t go do things because it was so severe.”
Years of abdominal pain, dismissed
Sanders began experiencing chronic abdominal pain five to six years ago. When she was 15, she went to an OB-GYN for the first time for her symptoms and was told to try birth control. She recalls them telling her not to worry because it was just her body changing.
Her pain varied week to week, but she never went more than a few days without any. In high school, it was sometimes so bad that she couldn’t go to class. Her mom or dad would pick her up and drive her to the doctor, but it was always dismissed as period cramps.
When she got to college, Sanders occasionally had to sit out of soccer practice or games.
“I was always so frustrated because the thing that … doctors always assume is you’re pregnant or it’s just hormones or it’s your menstrual cycle,” Sanders says. “And I’m just like, ‘No, it’s not. I know there’s something else wrong with my body.’”
By Thanksgiving during her junior year at San Diego State University, her pain got so severe that she overcame her fear that doctors would dismiss her once more, and she went to the hospital.
When Sanders arrived at Kaiser Zion Medical Center in San Diego, doctors discovered a 17-centimeter cyst on her right ovary. They rushed her into emergency surgery and removed the cyst, along with her right ovary, which the cyst had wrapped around and killed.
Afterward, Sanders recovered at home. Pain from the surgery itself was the only discomfort she felt, and it lasted just a few days. She went back to playing Division 1 soccer and pursing a psychology degree.
When the surgeon called a week later, she was told to come into the office and bring family. Her mom, Lisa, sister and dad all flew in from her home town of San Carlos, California.
“It was just so unbelievable that my incredible, healthy daughter could have cancer,” Lisa Sanders tells TODAY.com. “It just didn’t compute right.”
Finding the right treatment
Jesse Sanders’ type of ovarian cancer is especially unusual because it affects much younger women than the more common types of ovarian cancer, Dr. Kathleen Schmeler, executive director of global health at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, tells TODAY.com. By the time most patients, usually between 15 and 39 years old, are diagnosed, the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. (Fortunately, Jessie Sanders’ cancer had not.)
“Most of the time, people don’t think it’s necessarily cancer because the women are so young,” Schmeler says. “No one does a lot of testing because they’re so young, and it’s so unlikely that they would have ovarian cancer.”
After Jessie Sanders’ diagnosis, she met with a doctor in San Diego to create a treatment plan. Sander’s mom says she asked the doctor if they were open to hearing about any other research or information.
“She pretty much said, ‘No, this is our protocol. This is what we do,’ Lisa Sanders recalls the doctor telling. “It was really hard first meeting to be shut down. … I didn’t do a WebMD search. … I had legitimate resources from good sources, and I was just shut down so hard.”
The same afternoon, a friend put Lisa Sanders in touch with Dr. Joseph Pressey, co-director of the young adult oncology program at Cincinnati Children’s hospital. Pressey’s helped treat about 70 cases of small cell carcinoma of the ovary, hypercalcemic type. Pressey estimates that only a few hundred patients with this type of cancer have been documented in medical journals.
“Obviously an extremely rare ovarian cancer isn’t at the top of people’s minds when they’re seeing somebody who’s starting to have symptoms,” Pressey tells TODAY.com “I think the question becomes, if someone has persistent symptoms.”
Pressey confirmed that Jessie Sanders’ first treatment plan was inadequate. Instead, he recommended that her treatment be approached similarly to pediatric cancer, with high doses of chemotherapy, and oftentimes surgery and a bone marrow transplant.
“It’s so hard to realize how much you have to advocate for yourself, and what if I never met Dr. Pressey?” Lisa Sanders recalls. “How would I know we were on the wrong treatment? It’s scary.”
In December, while home for winter break, Jessie Sanders started chemo at Redwood City Kaiser Oncology. For eight hours a day, three days a week, for three weeks, she sat in a chair next to other cancer patients. Often, she was the youngest person in the room. She lost her hair, developed neuropathy, losing feeling in her feet and hands, and was nauseous for six months.
“It was just really hard because I’m 20 years old, and I’m on social media, trying to pass the time, and I’d see my friends are traveling, or they’re out practicing and doing normal things that I should be doing,” Jessie Sanders says.
After completing six rounds of chemo, she moved to Stanford Hospital for a three-week long bone marrow transplant.
The treatment was hard on her body; some days she could barely move or get out of bed. Her mom says the nurses told her it was the highest dose of chemotherapy that they’d ever given anyone.
“There’s some really hard moments where she was having a reaction to some of the medicine, and her heart was racing, and she started convulsing,” Lisa Sanders says. “I was just thinking, ‘This is the moment where I lose my daughter.’”
Remission and raising awareness
While going through treatment, Jessie Sanders posted a video of her shaving her head on TikTok. Although doing so was scary for her, soon her phone flooded with comments.
People reached with suggestions about cold capping (a treatment to prevent hair loss due to chemo) and what type of beanies to wear. British broadcaster Will Buxton sent her a video wishing her the best of luck with treatment. But what struck Jessie Sanders most is that people were curious about her story.
Inspired, she filmed another video where she discussed her symptoms and diagnosis. After posting it, she said young women were commenting left and right that they, too, had been dismissed for their abdominal pain.
“I’m so frustrated for myself and for other women,” Jessie Sanders says. “I don’t want them to have their health care dismissed. I just need to get the word out. I want other people to be inspired to just advocate for themselves.”
So, Sanders began Fight for Female Health, an organization that sells T-shirts and sweatshirts to raise money for the Small Cell Ovarian Cancer Foundation. She also uses it to raise awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer and encourage early detection and ultrasounds at the OB-GYN. Sanders hopes that by sharing her story, she’ll teach people that ovarian cancer can happen at any age, and that it’s not detected by pap smears.
Jessie Sanders is now in full remission. She’s been out of the hospital for about five months. In July, she went back to San Diego State University for her last year of playing soccer, though her body and life are not the same. Instead of worrying about the normal college things like parties, she now worries about her fertility — and all the other young women whose cancer symptoms are being dismissed.
“It’s really important for all women to know their bodies and when something’s not right, and if it’s not right, then to see a health care provider and … if they feel like they’re being dismissed, to change to someone else,” Jessie Sanders says. “Nobody should be dismissing patients, not looking into whatever was causing (me) to have all those symptoms. Clearly something wasn’t right.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
Watch ovarian cells and other wild experiments launch to ISS Sunday
Update for 5 am ET, Nov. 7: Northrop Grumman is now counting down to launch the Antares rocket and Cygnus NG-18 cargo ship from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility today at 5:32 a.m. EST (1032 GMT).
Ovarian cells from cows are moo-ving to the space station, along with a set of other intriguing science experiments.
The latest International Space Station (ISS) shipment, coming courtesy of a Northrop Grumman robotic Cygnus cargo spacecraft, will blast off on the company’s Antares rocket no earlier than 5:50 a.m. EST (1050 GMT) on Sunday (Nov. 6) from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia. You can watch live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA Television. Coverage starts 20 minutes before launch.
After arriving at the ISS on Tuesday (Nov. 8) and getting installed, the bovine cell bonanza (OVOSPACE (opens in new tab)) will look at how microgravity affects the growth of cells. This could eventually have applications for human fertility treatments, experiment co-principal investigator Andrew Fuso told Space.com.
“This is really our first approach, and it is for the moment an observational study,” Fuso, who is also an associate professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, said during a livestreamed press conference on Oct. 25. After the results are in, the investigators will research possible drug interventions or edible (nutraceutical) additives to improve fertility outcomes in future studies, he added.
Related: NASA-funded spacesuit tech may help with menopause relief
Also heading to the orbiting laboratory is a 3D printer known as the BioFabrication Facility (opens in new tab), which also reached space in 2019 to print some human knee cartilage (specifically, the meniscus), and a set of human heart cells.
“We brought [the printer] back to our lab in Indiana … to add a few new capabilities, such as the ability to finally control the temperature of each printhead, and now we’re excited to see it launch,” said Rich Boling, vice president of corporate advancement for in-space manufacturing and operations at the company Redwire Space, in the same conference.
Related: Bioprinter will 3D-print human tissue on the space station
After another space shipment, Redwire will print a new meniscus and study it in the lab to get ready for possible patient transplants in the future, Boling said. Blood vessels and cardiac tissues will be manufactured as well. Redwire also plans drug efficacy testing in space on “organoids,” or miniature versions of organs.
Boling hinted that such research would continue on Orbital Reef, a Redwire-supported commercial space station in development for flight in the 2030s. The project is led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space, and includes partners like Boeing and Amazon.
Some of the other experiments making their space debut include, in the words of NASA (opens in new tab):
- Assessing how plants adapt to space: Plants exposed to spaceflight undergo changes that involve the addition of extra information to their DNA, which regulates how genes turn on or off but does not change the sequence of the DNA itself. This process is known as epigenetic change. Plant Habitat-03 (opens in new tab) assesses whether such adaptations in one generation of plants grown in space can transfer to the next generation.
- Mudflow mixtures: Climate change and global warming are contributing to increasing occurrence of wildfires. When a wildfire burns plants, combusted chemicals create a thin layer of soil that repels rainwater. Rain then erodes the soil and can turn into catastrophic mudflows that carry heavy boulders and debris downhill, causing significant damage to infrastructure, watersheds, and human life. Post-Wildfire Mudflow Micro-Structure (opens in new tab) evaluates the composition of these mudflows, which include sand, water, and trapped air.
- First satellites from Uganda and Zimbabwe: BIRDS-5 (opens in new tab) is a constellation of CubeSats: PEARLAFRICASAT-1, the first satellite developed by Uganda; ZIMSAT-1, Zimbabwe’s first satellite; and TAKA from Japan. BIRDS-5 performs multispectral observations of Earth using a commercial off-the-shelf camera and demonstrates a high-energy electronic measuring instrument. The data collected could help distinguish bare ground from forest and farmland and possibly indicate the quality of agricultural growth.
- Powering the space station: Hardware to be installed outside the station in preparation for the installation of Roll-Out Solar Arrays (opens in new tab).
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).