The highly anticipated SpaceX mega-IPO is part of a space frenzy that is moving beyond satellite connectivity, launch vehicles, and aerospace defense to the pharmaceutical sector. A growing number of companies are heading to lower Earth orbit to make medicines in zero gravity.
The range of commercial opportunities is expanding as foundational aerospace industries set the necessary infrastructure. Morgan Stanley predicts the space economy could surpass $1 trillion by 2040, and while industries from semiconductors to fiber-optic cables stand to benefit, medicine could see the most immediate disruption.
Last year, space and defense technology company Redwire formed a dedicated subsidiary, SpaceMD, to commercialize pharmaceutical products developed in space. It has spent years developing orbital bioprinting but sees its most commercial opportunity in creating ways to administer drugs to patients.
The most successful technology is the PIL-BOX, a new drug formulation technology, SpaceMD CEO John Vellinger told CNBC.
SpaceMD has already flown 54 PIL-BOX units – specialized, automated micro-laboratories designed to crystallize proteins in orbit – and has tested 37 drug compounds, he said.
“We’ve worked with Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, other pharma companies, and we’ve shown them these new crystal forms, and they want to continue to bring us new drug candidates,” Vellinger said.
Why are drugs being made in space?
On Earth, pharmaceutical formulation is constantly disrupted by gravity via mechanisms like sedimentation, where heavy particles sink to the bottom of a test tube, and convection, where hot fluids rise and cold fluids sink.
In space, the absence of gravity means that scientists can grow more uniform and higher-quality crystals, said Phil Williams, professor of biophysics at the University of Nottingham. Crystals grown in low Earth orbit are therefore more predictable and free from defects.
Glycine crystals grown with Redwire’s PIL-BOX on the ISS. Glycine is an amino acid which serves functions in many areas of the human body such as a neurotransmitter, a component in collagen, and a building block for other important molecules in the body. The crystals returned to Earth in April 2024. Image: Redwire
Redwire
When molecules are more uniform, they typically become easier to administer to patients, Williams said. When crystals are a mix of different sizes, small crystals hide in the gaps of larger ones, making the liquid thicker.
This matters because viscosity — the thickness of the drug — dictates how patients absorb medicine. Thick biologics and medicines typically require big needles and long hospital infusions. By lowering viscosity, complex therapies can be reformatted into thin, painless injections. Heavy, unstable liquids can also be stored without the massive financial and environmental costs of, for example, deep-freeze air freight.
Merck’s proof of concept
Space pharma originated with Merck, known as MSD outside of the U.S. In 2014, it conducted crystal growth experiments on the International Space Station to better understand how the lack of gravity influences medicines, including its best-selling cancer drug Keytruda.
IN SPACE – FEBRUARY 18: In this photo provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, the International Space Station is seen from Atlantis as the orbiter undocks February 18, 2008 in space. Atlantis delivered the long awaited, $2 billion Columbus science lab addition built by the ESA to the space station. (Photo by ESA/NASA via Getty Images)
Handout | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Keytruda is a lab-made antibody that helps the body fight disease. Originally delivered to patients at hospitals via hours-long intravenous infusions, the experiments helped inform an injectable version that patients could potentially administer at home.
UV imaging of the spaceflight samples revealed that growing the antibodies in space produced a highly uniform, stable mixture that dissolved easily.
Merck found a way to replicate those conditions on Earth. This route of delivery takes just minutes to administer and secured FDA approval in 2025.
Paths to space commercialization
The pharmaceutical industry alone spends hundreds of billions annually on research and development and on work with contract research organizations (CROs) to conduct clinical trials.
“We only need a thimble full of these crystals… we’ve actually shown that you can replicate that crystal five different generations,” SpaceMD’s Vellinger said. “We have the drug candidates, we have the spaceflight-proven hardware… and we have the royalty agreements in place.”
Varda is betting on continuous orbital production and has developed 300-kilogram autonomous manufacturing satellites equipped with specialized re-entry pods. It recently completed its sixth capsule, which was launched with SpaceX’s Transporter-16.
“We fundamentally believe industrialization of space is what’s going to make [human expansion] happen, and that first industrial use case being in space manufacturing,” Delian Asparouhov, president and co-founder of Varda Space Industries, told CNBC.
The active ingredients (API) in drugs are so highly concentrated that Varda can generate significant value from relatively small loads.
The volume of crystalline API needed to dose 450 million patients with the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine would fill just two milk gallon jugs, Asparouhov said.
Companies like United Therapeutics, which recently announced a collaboration with Varda to explore the use of microgravity to improve treatments for pulmonary disease, don’t purchase spacecraft from Varda, Asparouhov said. “They just send us a drug and we give them back a better drug.”
Overcoming bottlenecks
The aerospace industry established a robust supply chain for going to space, but only a narrow, expensive chain for returning. Existing spacecraft built for human re-entry, like SpaceX’s Dragon, are high-end, expensive vehicles engineered for safety.
They are not economically viable for high-cadence, low-cost commercial manufacturing logistics, according to Asparouhov.
Varda and SpaceMD agree that relying on the International Space Station, which is winding down in a few years, is unsustainable for long-term commercial production.
“The moment that you are running on a government-run research lab… there’s just no clear path to commercialization,” Asparouhov said. “You’re privy to the whims of geopolitics… a station that’s run half by the United States, half by the Russians.”
Regulation is another hurdle. Across the Atlantic, the U.K. earlier this year acknowledged that patients could benefit from higher-quality medicines and set out a route to bring drugs manufactured in space to market. The UK Space Agency is also investing in projects such as a feasibility study by British startup BioOrbit.
BioOrbit is exploring a scalable system for crystallising and manufacturing complex biologic drugs in space to enable at-home cancer treatments. It recently poached two high-level executives from Redwire: Molly Mulligan as president and Ken Savin as chief scientific officer.
Given the financial and environmental costs of manufacturing at scale in orbit, Williams, the biophysics professor, expects that the future lies in making small research batches in space and replicating that on Earth.
Whether that can be done is the “killer question,” he said, adding: “This is really exciting science and technology… I don’t see the same future in it that they [BioOrbit and other space drug manufacturers] do.”
What’s next for space pharma?
As the ISS approaches retirement, companies are already moving away from government-run research labs. SpaceMD is establishing relationships with commercial low-earth orbit destination providers like Vast and StarLab.
SpaceMD’s Vellinger said he wanted to ultimately use space to develop promising drug compounds that are derailed by crystallization errors or instability.
Varda is planning to nearly double its flight cadence to seven next year, and to eventually debut a vehicle that is around 10 times larger and fully reusable, shifting toward fixed infrastructure in orbit where mini space planes carry ingredients up and down.
While early operations are automated to keep costs low, Asparouhov added: “Once we can economically justify somebody that is up in orbit doing that type of productive activity, we will probably be able to justify 10, 100, 1,000, and at some point build basically the first industrial city in low Earth orbit.”
