November 28, 2017
Courtesy of Derek Gilliam Jacksonville Business Journal
Space may be the final frontier for not just humans, but industry as well, with Jacksonville positioned to capitalize on the commercialization of the cosmos.
One sign that could be the case happened this February when doctors at Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville campus, with help from several space-focused organizations, launched the first stem cells into space.
Representatives of several space-focused companies met at the Mayo Clinic campus on Nov. 17 to hear the results of the research conducted Mayo Clinc’s Dr. Abba Zubair.
Some of the companies represented included; Blue Origin, Made in Space, Cecil Spaceport and Center for Applied Space Technology among the attendees.
While still in its infancy, the commercialization of space appears to be on the horizon. SpaceX, a private company, built the rocket that carried the Jacksonville produced stem cells. A New York Times article published last week detailed other recent efforts to commercialize the heavens.
Lawrence M. Harvey, an Orange Park resident and one of the founders of the Center for Applied Space Technology, believes that Northeast Florida is perfectly positioned to be a player in this burgeoning industry.
“It’s all here,” he said about the building blocks for the commercialization of space. “It’s all here in the Northeast Florida region.”
Some of the major positives for Jacksonville is that it is near Cape Canaveral and there are already several companies that focus on the topic operating here. Made in Space, which built a 3-D printer that’s on the International Space Station, has a Jacksonville office off Philips Highway. Cecil Spaceport, at Cecil Airport, is the only licensed horizontal launch commercial spaceport on the East Coast.
David Wolf, a former astronaut who helped develop the bio reactor that is used on the International Space Station, spoke at the Mayo Clinic presentation. He said the commercialization of space is in its infancy, but people should expect more and more products, particularly medicine, to be produced in zero gravity in the future.
One of the biggest benefits, he said, revolves around conducting research. On Earth, gravity is a constant. In space, it’s a variable.
For Dr. Abba Zubair, the research, the audience and the topic had been years in the making. As a child, he wanted to be an astronaut, but focused on medicine instead. Ultimately, it was tragedy that cemented his focus on stroke. His mother died from a stroke just as he obtained his doctorate more than 20 years ago.
And while the commercialization of space is in its infancy, the use of stem cells as a form of regenerative medicine has arrived.
Mayo Clinic announced at the presentation of the research that it had received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct human trials of stem cells produced in a bioreactor at the Jacksonville campus.
Zubair and the researchers at Mayo Clinic will soon start a human trial that will use stem cells to heal patients.
As for the results of the research, it showed that some forms of stem cells produced nearly 300 percent more in space than on earth, although other stem cells grew at roughly earth-sized rates.
The somewhat inconclusive results could mean a return trip for Jacksonville-produced stem cells, although there aren’t any planned experiments. Yet.
Here are some stroke facts:
• Someone in the US has a stroke about once every 40 seconds.
• Stroke accounts for 1 of every 20 deaths in the US.
• Intra-cerebral hemorrhage (ICH) occurs in about 8% of all strokes but is disproportionately more deadly with 40% one month mortality.
• Stroke kills someone in the US about every 4 minutes.
• Stroke ranks No. 5 among all cause of death in the US, killing nearly 133,000 people a year.
• From 2004 to 2014, stroke death rate decreased 28.7 percent, and the actual number of stroke deaths declined 11.3 percent due to advancements in stroke care.
• Each year, about 795,000 people experience a new or recurrent stroke. Approximately 610,000 of these are first attacks, and 185,000 are recurrent attacks.
• Stroke is a leading cause of serious long-term disability in the US.
• In 2013, worldwide prevalence of stroke was 25.7 million, with 10.3 million people having a first stroke.
• Stroke was the second-leading global cause of death behind heart disease in 2013, accounting for 11.8 percent of total deaths worldwide.
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