WASHINGTON — Redwire is making a bigger push into space pharmaceutical development with a new business entity devoted to the field.
Redwire announced Aug. 4 the creation of SpaceMD, an entity that will commercialize its Pharmaceutical In-Space Laboratory, or PIL-BOX, technology that has flown on the International Space Station. SpaceMD will focus on using PIL-BOX to grow seed crystals in microgravity that can be returned to Earth to create new or reformulated pharmaceuticals.
“The team will develop a pipeline of new and modified drugs uniquely manufactured in microgravity, accelerating solutions for disease treatment and generating new revenue streams from sale or licensing,” Peter Cannito, chief executive of Redwire, said of SpaceMD on an Aug. 7 earnings call.
SpaceMD has one such licensing agreement in place with ExesaLibero Pharma, a company developing drugs to treat bone disease. On the call, Cannito said that Redwire would receive royalties from commercial sales of any drugs developed though that agreement.
“This agreement signals a revolutionary paradigm shift for commercial utilization of microgravity,” he said. “SpaceMD is translating the benefits of microgravity research into product value for our end customers, with the goal of transforming the future of therapeutics while creating value for our shareholders.”
Space companies had long seen the pharmaceutical industry as a potential major customer of space stations and free-flying spacecraft, where microgravity could enable the production of items like protein crystals not possible on Earth. But there have been few examples of drugs successfully developed using space capabilities.
“So you ask, what is different now?” said John Vellinger, president of in-space industries at Redwire, at an Aug. 5 event on Capitol Hill organized by Redwire about in-space pharmaceutical work.
He argued three factors make that work more commercially feasible now. One is better access to space, while a second is improved technology for performing pharmaceutical research in space. The third is growing industry awareness of the benefits of in-space pharmaceutical work.
“The industry has recognized the commercial opportunities of space and sees the potential of that unique environment in space,” he said. “They haven’t seen that before, I think.”
“Doing the research in space is really going to open up a whole new area of drug development,” said John Barnett, president and chief scientific officer of ExesaLibero Pharma, at the event. The drug his company is developing is one intended to “dial back” cell activity that eats bone, with applications on Earth as well as for astronauts who lose bone density while in microgravity.
“The drugs that work on Mother Earth don’t work in space, and that gives us the opportunity to go into space and develop new forms of these drugs and bring them back and see whether or not we can enhance them,” he said.
The activity comes amid an uncertain transition from the ISS to commercial space stations. NASA plans to operate the ISS to 2030, by which time the agency expects one or more commercial stations to be in service.
Vellinger argued that the next several years will be critical to the development of a space pharmaceutical industry. “We all realize the ISS does have a limited life — it’s not going to fly forever — but we need it right now as the commercial space providers are building up their platforms,” he said. “We need to the ability to go to space in the short term, the next three to five years, and get a lot of shots on goal.”
A recent change in NASA policy threatens to upend that transition. A recent directive from the agency’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, changed plans for the next phase of the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) programs, including a shift in NASA requirements from a continuous human presence to stays as short as one month. That could radically alter the designs and business plans of companies pursuing commercial space stations.
That change was not discussed at the Aug. 5 event, as the directive was not widely known at the time. However, one panelist, Greg Autry, associate provost of space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida, said that successful drug development in space could bolster the non-NASA business case for commercial space stations.
“The pharmaceutical business is a game of home runs,” he said. “As soon as you have one or two of these drugs produce billion-dollar results for companies that return money to investors, there will be a rush to get on to the ISS. There won’t be any argument about whether you need CLDs.”