A Startup Tries Making Medicine in Space (cnn.com) 21
"California startup Varda Space Industries launched its first test mission on June 12," reports CNN, "successfully sending a 200-pound (90-kilogram) capsule designed to carry drug research into Earth's orbit.
"The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely." Research has already established that protein crystals grown in a weightless environment can result in more perfect structures compared with those grown on Earth. These space-formed crystals could potentially then be used to create better-performing drugs that the human body can more easily absorb.
"Its research, company officials hope, could lead to better, more effective drugs — and hefty profits," CNN reported earlier this week: "It's not as sexy a human-interest story as tourism when it comes to commercialization of the cosmos," said Will Bruey, Varda's CEO and cofounder. "But the bet that we're making at Varda is that manufacturing is actually the next big industry that gets commercialized." Varda launched its first test mission Monday aboard a SpaceX rocket, which took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California just after 2:30 pm PT. The company then confirmed in a tweet that its satellite successfully separated from the rocket...
If successful, Varda hopes to scale its business rapidly, sending regular flights of satellites into orbit stuffed with experiments on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. Eventually, the firm hopes that research will yield a golden ticket drug, one that proves to be better when manufactured in space and can return royalties to Varda for years to come... Founded less than three years ago, Varda has gone from an idea to a company with more than $100 million in seed funding and grants, a 68,000-square-foot factory, and a satellite in space. Its workforce has grown to nearly 100 employees...
One day, the company hopes Varda flights will be so common that its capsules will blaze across the night sky every evening, like shooting stars to those on the ground who catch a glimpse. From there, Varda could even look to develop a research platform on a private space station, where pharma researchers could travel themselves.
"The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely." Research has already established that protein crystals grown in a weightless environment can result in more perfect structures compared with those grown on Earth. These space-formed crystals could potentially then be used to create better-performing drugs that the human body can more easily absorb.
"Its research, company officials hope, could lead to better, more effective drugs — and hefty profits," CNN reported earlier this week: "It's not as sexy a human-interest story as tourism when it comes to commercialization of the cosmos," said Will Bruey, Varda's CEO and cofounder. "But the bet that we're making at Varda is that manufacturing is actually the next big industry that gets commercialized." Varda launched its first test mission Monday aboard a SpaceX rocket, which took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California just after 2:30 pm PT. The company then confirmed in a tweet that its satellite successfully separated from the rocket...
If successful, Varda hopes to scale its business rapidly, sending regular flights of satellites into orbit stuffed with experiments on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. Eventually, the firm hopes that research will yield a golden ticket drug, one that proves to be better when manufactured in space and can return royalties to Varda for years to come... Founded less than three years ago, Varda has gone from an idea to a company with more than $100 million in seed funding and grants, a 68,000-square-foot factory, and a satellite in space. Its workforce has grown to nearly 100 employees...
One day, the company hopes Varda flights will be so common that its capsules will blaze across the night sky every evening, like shooting stars to those on the ground who catch a glimpse. From there, Varda could even look to develop a research platform on a private space station, where pharma researchers could travel themselves.
Re:We should stop making pharmaceuticals on earth. (Score:4, Informative)
most are poisons designed to get people hooked for life and make $$$ for big pharma.
True healing requires a vastly different paradigm.
Well, the phrase that comes to mind is: "how do you tell me you don't know anything about medicine without saying you don't know anything about medicine ?" Seriously, I would estimate that 95% of human pharmaceuticals are non-addictive. Most would take a huge overdose to kill you. For all the problems that the pharmaceutical industry has, and it has many, this is not one. No one "designs" pharmaceuticals to be addictive (perhaps excepting Purdue), or poisonous. Some are, most aren't. And, yes, I DO know what I'm talking about, I worked in pharmaceutical research my whole adult life until I retired. The drugs they are talking about here are proteins. They are attempting to crystalize the drugs as a more pure enantiomeric form.
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That's clearly wrong. ALL medicines are poison, but guess what, so is water. The dose make the medicine.
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That's what I'd inferred from the (very lightweight) article. Glad to see I'm not alone.
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It is unclear (to me - you may see something I missed) if they're trying to crystallise potential targets (to improve the knowledge of the target's structure, and hence improve specificity of of the drug that attempts to target this target.
Alternatively, they could be trying to figure the structure of a protein they're making, to see if they've got a good sequence of "shake, bake, ROLL then rattle (not RATTLE then roll)" to fold
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: DRUGS... IN... SPAAACE !!! (Score:2)
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Re: DRUGS... IN... SPAAACE !!! (Score:2)
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Mr. White in Space (Score:2)
With an airtight RV making perfect crystal.
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200 pound capsule (Score:3)
Now that's one tough pill to swallow.
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Elizabeth Holmes v2.0 (Score:2)
$100 million in seed funding (Score:2)
Exactly what sort of "medicine" are they growing up there?
Go for the VC buzzword trifecta (Score:2)
1. Space: Ok
2. Biotech: Ok
3. AI: Fail
Two little letters and their pretend VC worth could have been in the billions of dollars. It's like getting two cherries on a old school three reel slot with one blank. You loose.
Not as Interesting? (Score:2)
I actually think growing perfect crystals and more effective medications in zero gravity is way more interesting than "human tourism".