Profile

I’m a PhD student currently studying at the University of Birmingham. I have lived roughly around Birmingham my whole life, being born on twenty minutes down the road in a smaller town called Kidderminster. Since then, I have been a mix of sporty, musical and sciency.

Thoughout school and university I was part of the Running club, football team as well as anything else I could be apart of to get some exercise. Running has always been my main sport however, competing at national level in cross country competition, and getting very muddy throughout!

I also have been part of many choirs, bands and musicals, playing the trumpet, piano or singing. Watching musicals in another big hobby of mine, having probably watched over 100 in the past 24 years (I’ve even lost count at this point).

Overall, I would call myself a very happy person and will have a smile on my face nearly all the time!

Pronouns: He/Him

Twenty-five years from now, your typical summer holiday may have changed more than can ever be imagined. Instead of packing your sunglasses and flip-flops, getting on a plane and flying off to a sunny resort, you may be donning a space suit, stepping into a rocket and launching into orbit. Space tourism, as it is known, is a growing concept. By 2022 there are plans for the first “affordable space hotel” to be opened. For $9.5 million, up to four guests at a time (along with two trained staff) will be able to travel into orbit, spending 12 days aboard the Aurora Station, 230 miles above Earth. While this is unaffordable for you and me, there is a significant push to make space travel affordable to all, and not just for a holiday. Orion Span, the company behind the space hotel, say that their “long-term vision is to sell actual space…either for living or subleasing…to create a long-term, sustainable human habitation in LEO [low Earth orbit].” When this point is reached, we may be splitting our time between working on Earth and sleeping much higher up, in the Earth’s orbit.

So, what’s the problem?

The low gravity environment that is present aboard the
International Space Station and in Earth’s orbit will have a large detrimental effect on your bones. On average, astronauts lose 1-2% of bone mass a month in space due to less force being applied to their bones, meaning that their bones become much weaker. These fragile, porcelain-like bones will therefore buckle under much less stress, possibly shattering during day to day actions or a slight fall. Space travel bone loss (known as spaceflight osteopenia) is not the only way weak bones are formed. Large amounts of bone loss also occur following menopause, where 20% of bone can be lost within five years, or in elderly individuals. All bone loss causes the same complications, and therefore treatments are required to fix the bone.
In all forms of bone loss, your cells that produce bone (osteoblasts) slow down, being outperformed by bone eating cells (osteoclasts). This shifts the balance of bone protection towards bone damage, where more bone is destroyed than produced, making the bone much weaker. Bones can then be broken more easily, costing the government millions of pounds a year in fixing fractures and in many cases changing patients’ lives meaning they can no longer look after themselves and carry out day to day jobs. Current treatments are mainly focussed around bisphosphonates, a medication which incorporates into the bone and is taken up by osteoclasts, causing them to die and therefore stop destroying bone. However, bisphosphonates are not the perfect solution. Aboard the International Space Station, astronauts taking bisphosphonates only had a 50% decrease in the amount of bone lost.

My mission is to find new, effective treatments which can reduce bone loss, protecting not only elderly bones, but also the bones of us all during long-term space travel. Aboard the International Space Station, some work is being carried out to aid this. In the low gravity
environment, osteoblasts and osteoclasts are grown by
the astronauts. How these cells change their behaviour in space are then explored, helping to discover how these changes can be targeted or reversed through therapies, ensuring bone can continuously be maintained.
What I am researching is a little more down to earth.
Using whole knee joints from patients who have gone
through joint replacement surgery, I extract osteoblasts
to see how well treatments alter their bone-producing
activity. When osteoblasts are grown on a plastic surface, they begin to produce small amounts of bone, which I can observe and measure. I then add new treatments to the cells to see if they alter the osteoblast’s activity, leading to the production of more bone. I can also look inside the osteoblasts, splitting them open to investigate their DNA. By examining the genes and proteins that make an osteoblast happy and ready to produce bone, I can explore if treatment increases their presence inside the cell and causes higher levels of
osteoblast activity.

I also measure the impact of drugs on the bone destroying osteoclasts. Since these cells eat away at
bone, they need to be grown on a bone-like surface to
measure their activity. Whilst artificial fake bone can be
used, I get the most lifelike reactions using ivory (don’t
worry, I’m not a poacher!). When elephant tusks are
confiscated at customs after attempts to smuggle them
into the country, rather than them being burned and
wasted, I use them for the good of science. The tusks
are cut into small circular pieces on top of which
osteoclasts can be grown. I then measure the amount of
bone that has been eaten by the osteoclasts, by seeing
how much is removed. New treatments can be added
to the osteoclasts to see if they reduce the amount
of bone eaten and are therefore effective at reducing
bone destruction.
If these drugs show a positive result when added directly to the osteoblasts or osteoclasts, they need to be tested in more lifelike conditions before we can begin to explore their impact in humans. To do this, mice studies are used, where the drugs are given, and bone growth or destruction is measured by a tiny CT scanner. To begin, tests are done in normal, healthy conditions to find a drug’s overall impact on bone, in addition to its side-effects. We also need to use models that mimic the bone loss seen in human conditions. Currently, the mouse spaceflight training programme has not taken off, so in our lab we use a model known as ovariectomy, where ovaries are removed to initiate bone loss (replicating what occurs in women after menopause). Drugs can then be given once bone damage has occurred, testing whether they can stop the bone loss and if they are effective as a treatment.

If drugs pass all the tests, they can then be used in human studies, taking one small step towards use in the real world. Hopefully, this work will lead to the development of new therapies to stop bone loss in all conditions, from diseases like osteoporosis, to stopping spaceflight osteopenia. If this is the case, I look forward to meeting you aboard a space hotel one day!

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz.. My alarm clock sounds to wake me up ready for the day ahead. I spring out of bed (ok, some days I sleep for a bit more), throw on some clothes and head downstairs to have some toast and marmite. Once the morning routine is complete, I’ll begin the short 15 minute walk from my house to my lab in the Queen Elizabeth hospital.

Raring to go, it’s experiment time! The exact experiments I do changes every day, which means that no day is the same. Read the section “My work” to find out exactly what I do when I’m in, but it could be anything from growing cells and looking at them down a microscope to scanning whole bone to find out if bone loss has occurred.

At around 5 (though can be at any time until 10), I’ll pack up the equipment and head home. Once home, I’ll lace up my running shoes and get some fresh air outside, before cooking some dinner, scoffing it down and heading to bed.