Awards & Recognition
2008.Spring
Shuttle Experiment Profiled in LLUMC Proton Newsletter
PDF File: LLUMC Proton Newsletter
2008.02.27
Farnaz Baqai Wins APC Student Abstract Award
Every year, LLU runs the Annual Postgraduate Conference (APC) a week long symposium for the alumni. One aspect of this conference involes a student poster competition. Students are encouraged to submit abstracts describing their research. On one of the last days of the conference, the students also give a poster presentation. Generally, the judges are asked to select a "best abstract" to give a short oral presentation. This year, Farnaz won the award for her abstract describing some of our spaceflight work entitled, "Effects of Spaceflight Stress on Anti-Inflammatory Response".
PDF File: APC 2008 Poster
2007.08.08
Experiment Flown on Space Shuttle
In August 2007, we participated in an experiment that flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-118) on a 13-day mission, nine of which were spent at the International Space Station. We were part of a large team involved in the Commercial Biomedical Test Module - 2 (CBTM-2) payload. The lead investigators in this payload were Drs. H.Q. Han and David Lacey from Amgen, Inc. (Thousand Oaks, California), and Louis Stodieck and Virginia Ferguson from BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The primary focus of CBTM-2 was to validate the effectiveness of an experimental therapeutic agent as a possible countermeasure for the muscle atrophy known to be associated with long-duration space flights. However, through an extensive tissue-sharing program, several institutions were invited to evaluate tissues from placebo mice. We are focusing on the effects of space flight on stress and immunity. Although crew members on long-duration space missions will be exposed to isotropic whole-body radiation fields, simultaneous exposure to other environmental factors, such as microgravity and other mission-related stressors, could add effects to the radiation exposure, or even act synergistically. Previous microgravity experiments (from Shuttle missions STS-77 and -108) have shown that exposure to space flight can lead to changes in virtually all of the immune parameters influenced by radiation. This study, therefore, is paying special attention to three inflammatory cytokines, all three of which are released by activated macrophages in response to a pathogenic challenge. In small, localized amounts, these cytokines contribute to the immune response by regulating activity, enhancing phagocytosis, promoting coagulation, and stimulating growth and repair in damaged tissues. All three also have been linked to "sickness behavior" and, therefore, may provide valuable insight on communication between the brain and peripheral cell populations important for immune function. The investigation will characterize both the stress response and its effect on functional immune parameters ex vivo (studying the harvested tissues outside the body) utilizing spleen, liver, brain, adrenal, and thymus tissues. Results from the study may increase scientists' understanding of the link between stress and immune system functioning in crew members during space flight, and thus may help develop strategies to minimize any negative effects arising therefrom.
Mission: Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-118)
