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The next generation of drugs could be made in space. Here’s why

Several projects have proven the potential benefits of manufacturing drugs in orbiting laboratories.

In-flight analysis indicated that the manufacturing process ran as planned, and while final results are not yet available, Varda is currently busy preparing for a second mission that will carry their first commercial payload. It turns out that microgravity conditions cause many of the processes used to build complex crystalline molecules – such as the proteins and antibodies used in many medicines to treat everything from cancer to heart disease – to behave differently from how they do on Earth. “The evidence suggests that crystals grown in a microgravity environment have an 80 per cent or better chance of being superior compared to their Earth-grown counterparts,” says Prof Anne Wilson, a researcher based at Butler University in Indianapolis who carried out a series of experiments growing in 2022.

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