Carol Vorderman’s daughter Katie King plans to take the fight against cancer into space with an orbital pharmaceutical factory
- Katie King hopes to use gravity production in space to fight cancer
- She is building a unit that will be taken to the International Space Station
Carol Vorderman’s daughter is taking the fight against cancer into space, with plans to build a pharmaceutical factory in orbit.
Katie King, a 31-year-old nanoscientist, hopes to use zero-gravity manufacturing to change the face of medicine.
Her technology already has the support of the European Space Agency and she is in negotiations to have her work tested on the International Space Station (ISS) next year.
The scientist, who draws inspiration from her mother, has focused on antibody cancer treatments, including immunotherapy drugs for lung, skin and breast cancer.
She wants to create antibodies in a crystalline structure, which could transform the way they are delivered.
Carol Vordeman’s daughter Katie King focuses on antibody cancer treatments, including immunotherapy drugs used to treat cancer
Her technology already has the support of the European Space Agency and she is in negotiations to have her work tested on the International Space Station next year.
Ms. King is building an automated unit that will be delivered to the ISS early next year
If successful, it could mean that cancer patients can inject medicine at home instead of spending hours in hospital on a drip every few weeks.
‘If you form them into small crystals you can get a concentration high enough to inject into the skin within a few minutes,’ she told the Sunday Times.
‘You can do it at home, just like diabetics inject themselves with insulin.’
Ms King explained that antibodies are very difficult to crystallize on Earth, but by carrying out the process in space they are highly reproducible without imperfections.
Together with colleagues, she is building an automated unit that will be brought to the ISS early next year.
If the proof-of-concept demonstration works, a second trial will take place in 2025. She hopes to one day have her own factory in orbit that can make the drug without human intervention.
The process should work for any antibody, she said, and could be used in a range of medications to treat migraines, osteoporosis and even Alzheimer’s disease.
Mrs King’s father is Vorderman’s second husband, Patrick King.