Lettuce could protect astronauts' bones on long spaceflights: study

LOS ANGELES, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a genetically modified lettuce producing a drug to protect against bone density loss in microgravity during long spaceflights.

Spending time in microgravity may cause astronauts to lose bone mass. This can be treated with a drug called parathyroid hormone (PTH), but it requires regular injections, according to the researchers.

They developed a genetically modified lettuce that expresses a fusion protein combining PTH with part of a human antibody protein.

The fusion protein is designed to be stable in the bloodstream and to allow astronauts to potentially purify the drug from plant extracts, said Somen Nandi, adjunct professor at the UC Davis Department of Chemical Engineering.

The work was presented this week at the Spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego.

The team is evaluating the plants for how much of the drug they can produce. Ideally, the drug would be in an orally available form, so that astronauts could dose themselves with PTH by eating lettuce leaves, said the researchers.