A British startup, BioOrbit, secured £9.8m from investors last month, led by UK venture capital group LocalGlobe and Paris-based Breega, to advance its technology for manufacturing cancer drugs in space. The company aims to exploit microgravity to grow ultra-pure protein crystals, a process projected by Elon Musk’s SpaceX to contribute to a $22.7tn market in enterprise applications for in-space manufacturing. This financial injection follows a £250,000 contract BioOrbit won from the UK’s Space Agency in March, further solidifying state support for private capital's expansion into orbital production.
BioOrbit's compact unit, Box-E, was launched this month on a SpaceX flight from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station. The unit is designed to remain in orbit for approximately six weeks, leveraging effective weightlessness to crystallise pharmaceutical compounds into structures not achievable on Earth. Dr. Katie King, co-founder and chief executive of BioOrbit, stated that gravity negatively impacts crystallisation, particularly for large, flexible protein and antibody drugs. She described the orbital tests as a "big step change towards large-scale production of protein crystals in space," aiming for formulations that can be self-injected by patients at home or work, rather than requiring lengthy intravenous infusions in hospitals.
New Frontier for Capital
The drive to establish pharmaceutical manufacturing in space represents a new frontier for capital accumulation. BioOrbit plans to process thousands of litres of fluid per box annually, with confidence that a handful of constantly operating boxes could produce enough for a "blockbuster drug." This ambition aligns with SpaceX's recent stock market flotation prospectus, which explicitly identifies in-space manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and other materials as a key revenue stream. The US pharma company Merck has already demonstrated the viability of this process, producing protein crystals for its bestselling cancer medicine, Keytruda, to enable a quick injection delivery route. This new method was approved by the US health regulator in September of the eighth month prior.
Dr. King, whose background includes a PhD in nanomedicine and an internship at Nasa, argues that despite the "huge expense" of sending drugs into space, the switch to self-injection could save the NHS and other health systems "millions, potentially billions" of pounds. This projected saving for public health systems serves as a justification for the private sector's investment and profit extraction from a new mode of production. The technology, which will take at least five years to bring new cancer drug formulations to market after clinical trials and regulatory approval, is also applicable to other treatments, with about 70% of the world’s biggest-selling drugs currently administered intravenously in hospitals or doctor’s offices.
Shifting the Burden
The proposed innovation, while framed as a benefit for patients through convenience and reduced hospital visits, also signifies a shift in the labor of care. By enabling self-injection at home or work, the burden of administration moves from trained medical professionals within institutional settings to the patients themselves. This transfer of labor, presented as an improvement in patient autonomy, simultaneously allows for potential reductions in the demand for hospital infrastructure and staff, indirectly contributing to wage suppression within the healthcare sector. The existing system, where large doses of cancer treatments become too thick for injection pens, necessitating hospital visits, highlights a structural inefficiency that capital seeks to bypass through technological means rather than addressing the broader issues of drug affordability or systemic healthcare access.
BioOrbit, founded in its third year by Dr. King and medical doctor and cancer researcher Leonor Teles, plans to partner with multinational pharmaceutical companies in the UK and US. Another Californian startup, Varda Space Industries, has also flown small capsules into space to process pharmaceuticals, collaborating with US biotech United Therapeutics Corporation on treatments for rare lung disease. These ventures underscore a concerted effort by private capital to colonize orbital space for industrial production, transforming what was once a collective scientific endeavor into a new arena for profit generation and surplus extraction.