A space capsule containing a small unmanned pharmaceutical plant floated into the Utah desert in February of this year carrying freshly made crystals of anti-HIV medication.
The orbital platform was the culmination of four years of work by a California-based startup, Varda, which hopes to use the unique microgravity conditions in low-Earth orbit to make purer, and therefore cheaper, medicines.
Like the strange shape that ice cubes can take in an unbalanced ice bucket, a drug maker’s tiny molecular-scale chemical reactions can lead to unbalanced and unwanted shapes due solely to the bias of the Earth’s gravitational pull.
But Varda is not the only company entering the Big Pharma space race in an effort to improve these conditions to create its crystalline drug molecules.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and a number of universities that have partnered with the International Space Station National Laboratory have also begun testing orbital platforms for everything from cancer drugs to Alzheimer’s disease research.
A space capsule containing a small unmanned pharmaceutical plant (above) floated into the Utah desert in February of this year carrying freshly made crystals of anti-HIV drugs.
The orbital platform was the culmination of four years of work by a new El Segundo, California-based company, Varda Space Industries, which hopes to use the unique microgravity conditions in low-Earth orbit to make purer medicines and, therefore, cheaper.
“The impact of microgravity appears to be very effective in obtaining pure crystalline materials that have unique properties,” said biochemistry professor Anne Wilson of Butler University. the Wall Street Journal this week.
Wilson, who has conducted research on the chemistry of crystallization in microgravity but has no direct affiliation with Varda, noted that the promise of microgravity includes improved molecular structures for a host of specialty materials, in and out of medicine.
According to the company’s chief scientific officer, Adrian Radocea, Varda is currently analyzing the results of its HIV drug production trial in space.
Varda is now preparing for two future flights, launching this year starting in June or July aboard a reusable SpaceX rocket, according to Varda co-founder and president Delian Asparouhov.
Asparouhov said his company has already signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies for this year’s flights, as well as three more scheduled for 2025, some of whose names will be revealed ahead of this summer’s launch.
The project, which manufactured the drug ritonavir, was launched in June 2023.
The company is now preparing for two future flights, launching this year starting in June or July aboard a reusable SpaceX rocket, according to Varda co-founder and president Delian Asparouhov.
Asparouhov told the Journal that his company has already signed contracts with pharmaceutical companies for this year’s flights, as well as three more scheduled for 2025, some of whose names will be revealed before this summer’s launch.
But the space drug startup also has a more terrestrial program to help pharmaceutical companies determine whether their drugs would particularly benefit from the elaborate microgravity manufacturing process in orbit.
A new paper by two Varda researchers, published Thursday in the journal Crystal Growth and Designused a ground centrifuge to track which crystalline drug molecules are most sensitive to gravitational forces.
The company’s scientists called the proof of concept a “hypergravity crystallization platform,” which they plan to offer to potential pharmaceutical clients as a convenient screening tool for how their own drugs respond to gravity.
For their peer-reviewed test, Varda researcher Kanjakha Pal and his CSO Radocea used the essential amino acid L-histidine, which has unique properties based on its shape and has been used to preserve organs before transplant surgeries.
A new paper by two Varda researchers, published Thursday in the journal Crystal Growth & Design, used a ground centrifuge (above) to track which drug molecules with a crystalline structure are most sensitive to gravitational forces.
“Hypergravity experiments,” wrote Pal and Radocea, “show that gravity affects the crystallization process even when the solution is stirred at high revolutions (in a centrifuge).”
The result, they said, highlighted “that gravity likely plays an important role in many small molecule crystallization processes.”
“If you can observe a trend, it is much easier to convince the scientific public,” Radocea told the Journal.
Varda researchers hope to conduct more experiments to differentiate what other factors, such as cosmic radiation, might affect chemical reactions in low-Earth orbit.
“The ideal,” as Varda co-founder and investor Josh Wolfe put it, “is to reduce the cost of very expensive, life-saving drugs.”
EXPLAINED: THE $100 BILLION INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION IS LOCATED 250 MILES ABOVE EARTH
The International Space Station (ISS) is a $100 billion (£80 billion) science and engineering laboratory orbiting 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth.
Since November 2000, it has permanently staffed rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts.
The crews come mainly from the United States and Russia, but the Japanese space agency JAXA and the European space agency ESA have also sent astronauts.
The International Space Station has been continuously occupied for more than 20 years and has been exhausted with the addition of multiple new modules and systems upgrades.
Research conducted aboard the ISS often requires one or more of the unusual conditions present in low Earth orbit, such as low gravity or oxygen.
ISS studies have investigated human research, space medicine, biological sciences, physical sciences, astronomy and meteorology.
The US space agency, NASA, spends around $3bn (£2.4bn) a year on the space station programme, with the rest of the funding coming from international partners including Europe, Russia and Japan.
So far, 244 people from 19 countries have visited the station, including eight private citizens who spent up to $50 million on their visit.
There is an ongoing debate about the future of the station beyond 2025, when it is believed that part of the original structure will reach the “end of its useful life”.
Russia, a major partner of the station, plans to launch its own orbital platform by then, and Axiom Space, a private company, plans to send its own modules for purely commercial use to the station at the same time.
NASA, ESA, JAXA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are working together to build a space station in orbit around the Moon, and Russia and China are working on a similar project, which would also include a base on the surface .