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Will Someone Please Wake Up CASIS and the ISS National Lab Teams?

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 30, 2012
Filed under , , ,

Scientists discover enzyme that could slow part of the aging process in astronauts — and the elderly, FASEB Journal
“New research published online in the FASEB Journal suggests that a specific enzyme, called 5-lipoxygenase, plays a key role in cell death induced by microgravity environments, and that inhibiting this enzyme will likely help prevent or lessen the severity of immune problems in astronauts caused by spaceflight. Additionally, since space conditions initiate health problems that mimic the aging process on Earth, this discovery may also lead to therapeutics that extend lives by bolstering the immune systems of the elderly.”
Keith’s note: When NASA flew John Glenn on his second space mission, much mention was made of the possible connections between aging on Earth and effects observed in astronauts and other organisms in space. Indeed, one of NASA’s biggest PR thrusts has always been the applicability of space-based research (especially biotech) upon life back on Earth. Well, here is one example. Interestingly, FASEB, which published this research, has a long history of often criticizing NASA’s human space life science program. So there must be something to this research, right?
You’d think that NASA, CASIS etc. would be playing up these results, right? No. Not at all. Just silence. You see, NASA no longer tracks this sort of news (but they used to). Nor do NASA and CASIS seem to have the collective or individual smarts to understand that the best way to garner support for future ISS research is to stay current with the benefits of past research – and tell everyone exactly what the benefits of that research is – as soon as that knowledge becomes available.
This is cluelessness in the extreme. Indeed, not making mention of this at NASA.gov and at CASIS borders on professional negligence.
Oh yes, full disclosure: 15 years ago (ouch!), I heaped my fair share of criticism on NASA for John Glenn’s flight (see below). While there is no obvious connection between these new research results and the experiments conducted on Glenn’s shuttle flight, it would seem that Sen. Glenn (apparently) still knew something that I did not …

12 December 1997: Looks like John Glenn will be flying on a Space Shuttle mission.
Editor’s comment: The White House is involved – and, from what we have learned, this is all but a done deal. More details to follow. Once this is announced, you can expect NASA to hurriedly come up with some spur of the moment, after the fact “experiments” to justify flying an elderly former astronaut in space. Glenn’s exposure to space flight was so brief and so long ago as to make a scientific basis for this flight utterly meaningless. This is about politics and public relations – not science. Anyone at NASA – or Senator Glenn’s office – who attempts to put a scientific spin on the reason for this space junket is being less than truthful with the public.
Since this is all about politics, we urge Senator Glenn to use the obvious media exposure that will result from his flight to call for a reversal of the punitive budget cuts being inflicted upon NASA by the Clinton Administration. THAT would have some clear value to the agency.
Otherwise NASA, if you really want to study the effects of space flight on senior citizens, keep flying Story Musgrave until he’s old enough.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

20 responses to “Will Someone Please Wake Up CASIS and the ISS National Lab Teams?”

  1. Jerry_Browner says:
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    I am pretty surprised that with all of the interest in this topic, and with the large staffs of people at JSC, MSFC and NASA Headquarters that are specifically responsible for the science, health and medicine and payloads, that there is no one in NASA making sure this story gets put together and out to the taxpayers and Congress.  You really have to wonder what they are all doing if they miss stuff like this. 

    • Anonymous says:
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      Why be surprised?  It’s science that was done in Italy, not the U.S.  Most people here are focused on things that they are working on, not the work of other science teams.  Why should NASA or CASIS spend the time or energy to promote the fact that a non-U.S. science team actually got something notable done on the ISS?   In the U.S. we live in a me, me, me nation, not a you or them nation.  If anything, the science staffs here may hope this FASEB pub goes unnoticed.   Why would people here want to see headlines that say “Foreign Science Team Makes Discovery on The ISS, While U.S. Agencies and Firms Are Too Politically Bollixed Up To Accomplish Anything” ?

      • kcowing says:
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        Science is science. Biology is biology. The “International Space Station” is international.  NASA promotes all of this on one hand and then ignores it on the other. Then the budgets get threatened ….

        • dogstar29 says:
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          If the ISS is international, why so blatantly exclude China, the world’s #2 economy and one of only three nations to send people into orbit? More than anyone else, this is the work of Congressman Wolf of Virginia.

          • npng says:
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            Yeah DS3, the ISS is international!  In fact, why aren’t we bringing in North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Iran too?  We could share all of our technologies with them too. 

            Question Dog: Do you know how a #2 economy becomes a #1 world economic leader?  Answer:

            If we team and work hard and share all of the last 50 years of our space skill and knowledge I’m sure we could accelerate the timeline so China could be the #1 world economic leader faster.  Sound good?

            Dog, you Do know how much they would like you in China, right?  Plunk-a-chunk of dogstar into a dish of little dip-per and you’d be quite the tasty appeal.

            Don’t get me wrong DS3. Some of the brightest people I know are in China.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        The average person doesn’t much care who did the science, only if it is available to him and his family if they should need it.  Science done on the ISS was a key to this.  Do we want to be in on ISS science capability or not?  That, I think, is the question people need to ask themselves, instead of discussing things like inspiration and who’s the leader.

        Steve

      • Jerry_Browner says:
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        Within NASA there are scientists who work specifically in this field and if they are competent scientists paying attention to the latest science, they would be aware of this. There are also large numbers of science integrators, international integrators working with and in Italy, public affairs specialists, tech transfer specialists, and managers who ought to be ensuring that when someone gets word of a positive development like this, the information is shared and a strategy is worked out to make the most of it. How is it that dozens, and maybe hundreds of NASA people miss out on something like this when SpaceRef/NASAWatch with one Keith Cowing and maybe one or two others scoop the story? Somebody’s not doing their jobs.

        • Anonymous says:
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          JB could you name a few of the scientists that are working on this (lymphocytes) specific science at NASA? Or at least say what center they’re at if you squirm at listing names.

          You say there are large numbers of people that ought to be…?  I’d say no, a handful at best.  NASA tends to focus more on building stuff than on using stuff. 

          As for getting the story out, timeliness and speed are more relevant to NASA Watch than to NASA, so Keith will always win.  NASA’s job isn’t about being speedy.

          • Jerry_Browner says:
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            How many scientists are all working on lymphocytes? I could not tell you. The effects of the space environment on humans is the specialty of JSC, which has a substantial life sciences organization. There are other life sciences organizations at Ames, MSFC, and KSC. Life sciences research is sponsored out of these locations and NASA Headquarters.  What science gets priority support comes in part from the ISS Program. NASA is not a small organization in which a couple researchers are focused solely on their own narrow focus of research.

  2. no one of consequence says:
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    Because political agendas are not advanced by it.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Mr. C,

      While I don’t dispute your statement, it doesn’t excuse the situation.  Rather than just saying “this is bad” and “these guys are to blame,” I’d very much like to find a way to correct the situation.  Anybody can complain and theorize.  I feel it’s long past time that we started forcing hands and trying to fix some of these inexcusable dysfunctions.  I view the ISS in the same light as Armstrong said about the Moon — “for all mankind.”  Well, we who make up “all mankind” far outnumber the relative handful of people who have made the ISS a political football instead of a highly valuable research institution.  If we sit on our duffs and do nothing, are we not just as guilty as those who we point at?  Either we believe in democracy or we don’t.  But to claim we do, and then do nothing, is a contradiction, and our (lack of) actions speak louder than our words.

      I don’t really expect you, or anyone else at NASA Watch, to give me an answer of the  top of their heads.  But I really would like people here and elsewhere to start thinking more in terms of “what can we do to change things for the better?” instead of just pointing them out and complaining.  I see it as a responsibility that we all share, to try to fix the problems that deny important benefits to us all.

      Steve

      • no one of consequence says:
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         … I’d very much like to find a way to correct the situation.
        So would many of us.

        Its why I bother to comment at all.

        I feel it’s long past time that we started forcing hands and trying to fix some of these inexcusable dysfunctions.
        Maddening isn’t it?

        But this frustration takes on peculiar dimensions. I went to mail a package at a post office, only to find someone like you in needing to change things – his top down starting point was to “impeach Obama”. Needless to say, he’d gotten his facts from a peculiar source, and all that energy went into … nowhere. You don’t have those problems, but many, many do.

        I had a guy who once worked for me, and he was susceptible to rants, including one about not paying taxes because of an absurd notion about currency being illegal. I think he’s still behind bars – he was (otherwise) a great guy with a good family, talented, good work ethic, etc. Several times before on lesser like fantasies, spent the time with him to teach him how to critically analyze these “notions”, with legitimate resources (back then it was in a library). Worked for a while.

        … handful of people who have made the ISS a political football …
        Much of these class of problems are due to legacy.

        The ISS was, for example, made up as we went along, and is still very much a work in progress. It is gradually, like turning a battleship, being turned into a useful laboratory (personally I’ve thought that “core complete” is more a political definition of convenience). Not like finding a group that did a research lab, and top down defining transport thru operations with research products in mind.

        The ISS was designed with primarily diplomacy in mind … eventually the scientists and engineers will find some way to “make it good enough for use”. By the way, before the ISS, we didn’t work in a way conducive to an ISS – so the investment wasn’t in vain. IMHO, the issue is how to “evolve” the ISS – many different issues here.

        The current battles with SLS vs commercial keeps us from having the necessary discussion. IMHO, the large cost of SLS might also be seen as a way to do “budgetary denial” (like military “areal denial”) on all international/other projects.

        Many also want to splash the ISS to erase the IP’s from the equation, to go back to old nationalistic ways.

        So what is blocking us now is an evolution in how we work together. I’d like to hope the soon to open era in post Shuttle will begin the rational process with open frank civil dialog about the pragmatics of going forward.

        But as you see with even simple things like CASIS, much is being spent on “monkey wrenching”, made easier by the gestation of weak organizations cynically created for the purpose.

        Am attempting to answer your reasonable question.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          Thank you.

          I like your statement: “the issue is how to “evolve” the ISS”.  I’m going to try thinking more in terms of evolving, as opposed to just fixing the mangled management.

          As for splashing the ISS, I’ll take the cantankerous, possessive IP’s over archaic nationalism any day of the week.

          Steve

  3. Daniel Woodard says:
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    I am all for NASA research that affects life on earth but the headline
    “Scientists discover enzyme that could slow part of the aging process in astronauts — and the elderly” is simply untrue. 5-lipoxygenase is a relatively well-known enzyme that is important in the synthesis of leukotrienes, important mediators in inflammation. A variety of 5LO inhibitors are known and have been tested in various inflammatory conditions, i.e. asthma and COPD. To suggest it was “discovered” by this experiment misrepresents the intent of the experimenters.

    The ESA experiment flown on ISS compared lymphocytes in suspension in weightlessness and in a centrifuge. They found a number of changes including greater 5LO activity in the cells at 0-G.

    In my opinion the problem with this and a number of similar cell and bacterial culture experiments is that they imply that the effects of 0-g are the result of mechanisms within the cell itself. But all cell culture experiments depend on a culture medium and its virtually impossible to avoid macroscopic differences in flow and diffusion in the medium between the 0-G and 1-G culture systems, differences which can affect parameters as basic as oxygen partial pressure in the immediate microenvironment of the cells and thus produce the observed changes. Gravitational effects increase rapidly with mass of the system and, absent specialized gravoreceptors, few effects are detectable within the confines of a single cell.

    Similarly there are a wide range of environmental and systemic factors that are more likely than direct intracellular effects to produce stress responses in the crew and cause the relatively modest immune system changes that have been observed.

    That said, I found the experiment interesting and certainly worthy of further investigation. I realize this is a rather informal forum but would invite discussion from the authors if they are so inclined. If a credible and testable mechanism for direct intracellular effects of 0-G can be identified I would certainly be interested.

    • npng says:
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      Nice post Daniel.  I agree with your enzyme explanation and reframing of the activities and likely science outcomes. 

      Please elaborate on your statement:  ” … absent specialized gravoreceptors, few effects are detectable within the confines of a single cell.”   Do you mean graviceptors?   Are you saying that absent gravoreceptors the cellular activity alterations cannot occur?  What do you mean by “detectable”, detectable by the cell? 

      Also in your last paragraph, please clarify what you mean by “If…[a]…mechanism for… effects of 0-G can be identified…”  I read this as, ‘can a mechanism for effects be identified’? which is still somewhat unclear to me; do you mean ‘what is the mechanism of action?’

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        First let me say that I recognize and respect other opinions and welcome discussion. However, this is where I have arrived after several decades.

        Gravity has a pronounced effect on a human being, but that effect is dependent on mass and so small at the level of an individual cell that it has little effect on cellular physiology. The development of amphibians can be disturbed by simply altering the orientation of their eggs, but these cells are huge compared to lymphocytes. Mammals can function in any orientation. Most animals and plants that respond to gravity in a consistent way
        depend on specialized organs to detect it, i.e. statoliths in plants
        and some invertebrates and otoliths in mammals and other animals, in which cellular structures sense the position of dense bodies within or outside the cell.  Years ago pilots flew by “the seat of thier pants”, i.e. the sense of the seat’s pressure against the skin was more sensitive than the inner ear in sensing gravitational force. In darkness it is hard for a diver (lacking proprioception) to even tell which way is up.

        There’s a lot of imprecision in the discussion of gravitational effects of spaceflight. Bone loss in space, for example, is due to the absence of external stress induced by muscle contraction, not to the direct effects of gravity on bone cells, although this didn’t stop NASA from sending osteocyte cultures into space, which of course demonstrated differences from cultures on the ground.  Unfortunately mammalian cells are very sensitive to surface contact, flow shear stress, and many other parameters of the cell culture system that are very difficult to quantify, let alone control, particularly in the austere environment of spaceflight.

        • npng says:
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          Daniel, I agree with some of your points, but not others.  Your comment regarding cell walls and shear stresses alone is worth an hour of discussion.  The diver example is good, but then not good.  I’ve been a diving instructor since 1970.  It may be ‘hard’ and is definitely a different sensation, but gravity is still fully present and orientation sense-able 100ft down in total darkness, granted at-depth sensory deprivation and kinetics can drive multilple vestibular effects yielding mental confusion and an impaired sensing of direction (in the untrained).

          Please go see Dr. Neal Pellis in Houston. Perhaps you know him already.  He teaches a course in space biology and it includes content on pico-newton forces present in intracellular volumes that affect cellular function.

          If it turns out you are right and there are no gravity forces (or conversely, absence of gravity forces) sufficient to affect internal cell function, there are several dozen PIs and researchers that need to be notified so they can stop their micro-g research and return the unused portion of their grant money.

          Also, are you really sure about your statement on bones and ‘external stress induced by muscle contraction’?  If so, could you please cite a finding or journal pub that addresses this specifically?

          I’ll make a $1 bet with you:  If while on the ISS you took an astronaut (or equivalent rat, suitable vertebrate animal, or even an idled politician), fully disabled their bone adjacent muscles and then cycled the subject bones, weighting and loading them and then had a separate control where you did not load them, you would find a substantial bone loss, non-loss differential. Are you game? 

          Come to think of it, I’ll vote for the rat and skip the politician, since there is no surety the latter will be in the vertebrate class.  Please call JSC and request a speedy manifesting so you we can work this; $1 bets are given top priority.   Wait, no, since we can’t get up there anymore, you’d better call Roscosmos, we’ll need lots of rubles. 

    • kcowing says:
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      Way back in the day when I worked for NASA HQ life sciences there was a strategy to address questions like this that utilized a variety of organisms, cultures, etc.- all designed to focus toward a series of answers. I helped write multiple reports wherein that approach was to be used. That integrated strategy evaporated a long time ago – mostly around the time that the U.S. abandoned the 2.5 meter centrifuge project and associated  biology racks due to lack of money. 

      Now we’re left with a fractionated approach wherein nothing is really related to anything else and there is no overall strategy guiding NASA space life science research. Add in the fact that CASIS is not allowed to do human biology research and JSC does what it wants, you have two independent paths. The fact that CASIS has no idea whatsoever as to what sort of biology it will seek out and/our encourage and its an uncoordinated mess. 

      Then there are the other participating nations (who used to work more closely with the U.S.) and you get research in a variety of ares – virtually none of it coordinated in a strategic fashion – one wherein the combined efforts could have synergistically moved our collective knowledge forward regarding the ability of life to function and adapt to the space environment.

      As far as NASA has been concerned for the past decades any research done on ISS is good research – by definition. If that old mindset does not change soon, the ISS will never achieve its amazing potential to help elucidate fundamental aspects of microgravity and gravitational biology and allow the flight certification of humans so as to allow them to travel safely and productively to/from other worlds and destinations.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Keith,

        You’ve just provided information on something that I consider a very important issue —  both the biological science aspects and the lack-of-organization aspect.  Do you know, is there any organization or group that can and is willing to address the lack-of-organization problem?  Someone to whom we can try to show support?  Within the limits of the information available to the layman (like me), it seems as if the students are performing more and better biology experiments on the ISS than the professionals.  I’m a strong believer that the research potential of the ISS is being largely wasted, especially in the biology areas (space and Earth).  Is there no entity that we can appeal to, who has the capability to better organize things into a coherent overall plan?

        Thanks, Keith.

        Steve

  4. CutsAreGlobalLie says:
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    From Spain (Europe) I have read some references on this subject, especially a letter (¿resignation) the head of cassis, as I recall it was a lady, and though not remember everything that has happened, I give my opinion if it helps someone.
    Keith is right questions: why research is interrupted? Why is parked in the pantheon of illustrious work? Being so light exposure and knowing how things work in USA and accordingly, all over the world there are only two possible answers:
    1) From Glenn’s mission is solved the problem of biological research of the enzyme 5-lypoxigenase and need not follow, or be accountable. In that case the benefits of the discoveries misappropriate any partner of the Washington Consensus (WC), is American, Italian or Chinese communist labels that are without real value, only newsworthy ..
    2) Those in charge are incompetent or stupid.

    I think the second alternative is not possible.
    Sorry for my horrible English.