Millie Hughes-Fulford, Scientist and Prior Astronaut

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Researcher and former NASA payload specialist Millie Hughes-Fulford, of the Hughes-Fulford Laboratory, San Francisco, Calif., accepts the European Space Agency ESA T-cell experiment flight units being handed over in a Space Station Processing Facility laboratory at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From left are Hughes-Fulford shaking hands with Pier Luigi Ganga of Kayser Italia, manufacturer of the hardware, with Raimondo Fortezza of ESA looking on. The immunology experiment will launch on SpaceX-3 and focus on the effects of microgravity on early T-cell signaling pathways. Current work aims to identify and compare the gene expression of microRNAs miRNAs during T-cell activation under normal gravity and in microgravity, and compare those patterns to changes seen in aging populations. The experiment will be the first flown on SpaceX funded by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Hughes-Fulford flew aboard space shuttle mission STS-40 in June 1991, the first Spacelab mission dedicated to biomedical studies. For more information on the T-cell experiment, visit http://hughesfulfordlab.com and http://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/t-cell-activation-in-aging-spacex-3/. Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston