Millie Hughes-Fulford


Millie Elizabeth Hughes-Fulford is an American medical investigator, molecular biologist and former NASA astronaut who flew aboard a NASA Space Shuttle mission as a Payload Specialist.

Background

Hughes-Fulford was born in Mineral Wells, Texas. She graduated from Mineral Wells High School, in 1962, then received her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Biology from Tarleton State University in 1968, and her Ph.D. from Texas Woman's University in 1972. She is widowed and has one daughter named Tori.
She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society for Gravitational Science and Biology, American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, American Society for Cell Biology, American Society of Hematology and the Association of Space Explorers.

Academic experience

Hughes-Fulford entered college at the age of 16 and earned her B.Sc. degree in chemistry and biology from Tarleton State University in 1968. In 1968, Dr. Hughes-Fulford began her graduate work studying plasma chemistry at Texas Woman's University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow from 1968 to 1971. She was an American Association of University Women Fellow from 1970 to 1971, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1971 to 1972. Upon completing her doctorate degree at TWU in 1972, Dr. Hughes-Fulford joined the faculty of Southwestern Medical School, University of Texas at Dallas as a postdoctoral fellow with Marvin D. Siperstein where her research focused on regulation of cholesterol metabolism.
Dr. Hughes-Fulford has contributed over 120 papers and abstracts on bone and cancer growth regulation and on the effect of spaceflight on the immune system at the cell molecular and systems biology level. Since then, she was named the Federal Employee of the Year for the Western Region in 1985, International Zontian in 1992 and Marin County Woman of the Year in 1994. She was a major in the US Army Reserve Medical Corps until 1995.
Selected as a payload specialist by NASA in January 1983, Hughes-Fulford flew in June 1991 aboard STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences, the first Spacelab mission dedicated to biomedical studies. The SLS-1 mission flew over 3.2 million miles in 146 orbits and its crew completed over 18 experiments during a nine-day period, bringing back more medical data than any previous NASA flight. Mission duration was 218 hours, 14 minutes and 20 seconds, or 9 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes, and 20 seconds.
Hughes-Fulford is a Professor at the University of California Medical Center at San Francisco where she continues her research. As the Director of the Hughes-Fulford Laboratory and Scientific Advisor to the Under Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, she studies the control of human prostate cancer growth with VA grants and the regulation of bone and lymphocyte activation with NASA grants.
She was the Principal Investigator on a series of SpaceHab/Biorack experiments, which examined the regulation of osteoblast growth. These experiments flew on STS-76, in March 1996, STS-81 in January 1997, and STS-84 in May 1997. These studies examined the root causes of osteoporosis that occurs in astronauts during spaceflight. She found changes in anabolic signal transduction in microgravity. Later, in collaboration with Dr. Augusto Cogoli of Zurich, Switzerland, she examined changes in T-cell gene induction in spaceflight in a joint NASA/ESA International Space Station experiment that launched on the Soyuz TMA-9. The previous Leukin experiment with Dr. Cogoli was lost on the STS-107 mission. This study examines the mechanism of action causing the decrease in T-cell activation in microgravity, a medical problem that was first found in returning Apollo astronauts. Isolated T-cells will be activated in spaceflight on Biopack hardware; the altered activation will be examined by reverse-transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction analysis of induced genes. Further studies of gene regulation and signal transduction in spaceflight were approved in January 2002 for Shuttle/ISS experiments examining protein kinase C signal activation. She flew her most recent experiments to ISS on SpaceX in collaboration with the ISS International Laboratory, the European Space Agency and the National Institutes of Health. In those studies she found one bases for changes in the immune system in spaceflight many of her publications are available at her lab website.

Awards and honors