Joe Caspermeyer, Media Relations Manager & Science Editor
(480) 727-0369 | joseph.caspermeyer@asu.edu
April 30, 2008
Biodesign's Nickerson Speaks on Capitol Hill
Biodesign Institute researcher Cheryl Nickerson recently served as a key witness in a hearing with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, regarding NASAs International Space Station (ISS) Program: Status and Issues.
Nickerson, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences and researcher in the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, was part of a prestigious panel that provided testimony expounding on the significance of NASAs ISS Program and its tremendous potential to benefit mankind.
“NASA’s support of my research has resulted in multiple spaceflight experiments, which have provided novel insight into how microbial pathogens cause infection both during flight and on Earth, and hold promise for new drug and vaccine development to combat infectious disease,” said Nickerson in her testimony.
Last fall, she completed a multi-institutional study that showed for the first time that spaceflight can affect microbes by making them more infectious pathogens. The results were from a payload flown onboard space shuttle Atlantis in 2006.
Spaceflight not only altered bacterial gene expression but also increased the ability of these organisms to cause disease, or virulence, and did so in novel ways. Compared to identical bacteria that remained on Earth, the space-traveling Salmonella, a leading cause of food-borne illness, had changed expression of 167 genes. In addition, Salmonella that were flown in space were almost three times as likely to cause disease when compared with identical control bacteria grown on the ground. This work also identified a “master switch” regulatory protein that controls Salmonella responses to the spaceflight environment.
“A detailed understanding of how these gene regulatory proteins are controlled may offer new opportunities to design efficacious drugs and vaccines that would target this class of protein,” said Nickerson.
As one of the most complex international scientific and technological endeavor ever undertaken, ISS incorporates innovative ideas and technologies from the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and 10 member states of the European Space Agency. ISS has been continuously crewed for over six years. Once its assembly is completed it will have a pressurized volume of more than 33,000 cubic feet and a mass of more than 925,000 pounds.
“The ISS provides a unique environment where researchers can explore fundamental questions about human health like how the body heals itself and develops disease,” said Nickerson in her testimony. “Specifically, the ISS offers an orbiting laboratory to use microgravity as a tool to bring a new technological approach to understanding living systems and discover basic mechanisms we haven’t seen before. That is because organisms and cells respond in unique ways to spaceflight and exhibit characteristics relevant to human health and disease that they do not when cultured using traditional conditions on Earth.”
“Many of these findings may translate directly to the clinical setting for novel ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease here on Earth. This type of research creates exciting new opportunities for the utilization of ISS to advance the frontiers of knowledge and act as a commercial platform for breakthrough biomedical and biotechnological discoveries. I believe it is important to take advantage of this unique research facility to develop new advances in biotech and biomedicine that will globally advance human health and benefit the United States in the international economy.”
The ISS is intended to support NASA’s exploration initiative and to serve as a National Laboratory for space-based research. Currently, the Space Shuttle is scheduled for retirement in 2010, which will cause the U.S. to rely on partners such as Russia to provide routine transportation and emergency crew return from the ISS and to seek commercial resupply services.
Other witnesses who appeared at the hearing included: William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, NASA; Ms. Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management, Government Accountability Office; Dr. Jeffrey Sutton, Director, National Space Biomedical Research Institute; Dr. Edward Knipling, Administrator, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Dr. Louis Stodieck, Director, BioServe Space Technologies, Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado; and Thomas B. Pickens, III, SPACEHAB Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Interested parties who would like to read complete witness testimonies presented at the hearing can visit the Committee on Science and Technology Website by accessing the following link:
http://www.science.house.gov/publications/hearings_markups_details.aspx?NewsID=2162
There is also a Webcast of the hearing available at the same link.
