Update (March 15): at 2.30 a.m. The supply mission to the International Space Station was successfully launched, together with SpacePharm’s tiny laboratory. The laboratory is a small part of 2.8 tons of scientific equipment and supplies for the astronauts staying on the space station.
The Israeli company SpacePharma, which is supported by the Israeli Space Agency in the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, will launch a range of experiments to the International Space Station on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. The range will include medical experiments from three Swiss companies. The company's automated laboratory is intended for launch on an unmanned SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on March 14 (in the early morning of March 15 Israel time). It will be connected to the infrastructure of the American part of the space station, and will operate for about a month, before being returned to Earth in a Dragon spacecraft.
In the miniaturized lab, which is about the size of a shoebox, five experiments will be carried out. Three of them will be from Cutiss, a dermatological company. They will test the ability of skin tissue to heal incisions under microgravity conditions, the production of collagen in the skin under such conditions, and the ability of cells to organize into three-dimensional skin tissue.
"These processes will help in the development of many products, such as a biological band-aid for the treatment of astronauts’ cuts in space, or a biological glue for fusing cuts in the event that they need to perform surgery in space, on long missions," explained Yossi Yamin, founder of SpacePharma and CEO of its development center in Israel, while talking with the Davidson Institute website. "They are also designed to develop three-dimensional skin tissue intended for cosmetic or medical skin transplants on Earth."
Another experiment will be conducted with Doxil – a drug for the treatment of cancer, packed in liposomes – tiny fat bubbles that are supposed to ensure that the drug is released only at the target site. In the experiment in space, the stability of the liposome and the drug inside it will be tested, over time, under microgravity conditions, in order to examine the possibility of using them in space missions and of producing them in space.
The last experiment is from Supersonic, which manufactures emulsions – mixtures of aqueous and oily substances. The company manufactures cosmetic emulsions, among other things, for delaying skin aging. In the experiment in space, they will try to produce an emulsion from tiny molecules, in the hope that microgravity production will yield a more homogeneous and stable emulsion than on Earth.
In about two months, Space Pharma is scheduled to launch another experiment to the space station, to test the microgravity production of a drug for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The uniqueness of this experiment is the integration of artificial intelligence in the design and control of the microgravity protein formulation process, in the hope of producing an efficient 3D protein. The trial is being carried out by an Italian company, but this time SpacePharma not only provides the platform, but also holds most of the ownership of the drug.
“Last year, our company quadrupled sales and revenue, and this year we expect to grow threefold. Our work program is full, and the 2024 program is quickly filling up also. In 2024, we are also expected to grow,” says Yamin. “The 2024 segmentation of revenue is also changing; today, almost all the money comes from commercial companies, not from academic or institutional research grants. In the years to come, space will have a suitable infrastructure not just for research, but also for real production. Here too, we have great commercial potential, because in the pharma market we need small-scale production of hundreds of grams or kilograms – not tons – and those are products whose value is thousands of dollars per milligram."
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Ettay Nevo is the editor-in-chief of the Davidson Institute for Science Education, the educational arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science.