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Frustrated by the constraints of Earth, a team of California scientists took tumor research to space—and may have discovered a ‘kill switch’ for cancer

With the help of Axiom 3 astronauts on the International Space Station, a cancer "kill switch" drug may make it to clinical trials before year's end.

On previous missions, her team noticed that mini tumors sent to space activated the gene before tripling in size in just 10 days, a much faster rate of growth than seen on the ground. Enthused by the results, Jamieson’s team began work on an experimental drug called rebecsinib that blocks ADAR1 activation in a different way—by preventing it from spawning malignant proteins. Pictures of breast cancer tumor organoids as viewed from a microscope on the International Space Station, provided exclusively to Fortune on Feb. 4 by the University of California San Diego.

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