Zero-G Biology
The next frontier for medicine is closer to Los Angeles than San Francisco but feels like another galaxy. That's because it's about 300 miles straight up above sea level – in low-Earth orbit.
Varda Space Industries, an El Segundo microgravity-enabled life sciences company, uses low-Earth orbit to develop unique drug formulations. It's a space-age approach to medicine that launches a capsule containing chemical compounds beyond Earth's atmosphere, where microgravity allows pharmaceutical formulations to be created in a process differently than on the surface. The capsules then reenter the atmosphere with their precious cargo.
It became the first company to complete a manufacturing mission conducted outside of the International Space Station last year. Two more missions followed in early 2025 and a fourth launched on June 22. Varda plans to launch one more capsule this year and has four scheduled in 2026, which are all booked to capacity.
'What's special about next year is that the last two capsules will be going up on the same rocket. It will be the first time where we have two spacecraft in orbit at once, and we'll start to move into a fleet mentality,' said Will Bruey, chief executive and co-founder of Varda.
Bruey, a former SpaceX engineer co-founded the company in 2021 with Delian Asparouhov, a former principal at Khosla Ventures. The company's growth is supported by a new round of investment. In July, the company announced a $187-million Series C round led by Natural Capital and Shrug Capital, with participation from Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Lux Capital and Also Capital. That brings total funding to $329 million.
It will use the additional funds to scale operations so that it an expand its capsule production capacity, as well as open additional ground test facilities for pharmaceutical development. Additional capacity could eventually help lower costs – the average mission costs several million dollars today, although the finances are not measured by traditional revenue figures because there is potential to structure deals with royalties from the research and development conducted now.
To support its additional manufacturing capabilities, it signed a 10,000-square-foot lease near its El Segundo headquarters for a dedicated lab space that will design molecules and test them prior to launch. The new laboratory will facilitate more complex experiments and allow it to research small molecules and move into more complex biologics. It currently has roughly 130 employees, and that number could increase to 180 within the next 12 months.
Bruey envisions a time when there is a steady stream of capsules launching into, and returning from, space for biotech research, with launches on a weekly or daily basis. The company envisions scaling operations by launching more frequently, rather than trying to increase the size of their capsules to accommodate more experiments at a single launch. He likened it to his first job as a pizza delivery driver where the goal was to deliver many pizzas hot and fast to a large number of customers rather than waiting for a large order that required a semitruck to make the delivery.
The capsules and satellite buses that carry them are constructed at the company's 61,000-square-foot headquarters where it forges raw materials into space vehicles. Those are then transported to Vandenberg Space Force Base up the coast near Santa Barbara for launch aboard a SpaceX rocket.
Reusable rockets have lowered the cost of access to space and opened a range of in-space activities. Increased launch capabilities from companies, such as Long Beach-based Relativity Space, could lower costs even further as the lower-earth-orbit economy becomes more attainable as a destination for manufacturing, biotech, data centers and other technologies.
Inside of the Varda capsule, custom-made lab equipment holds raw components that are mixed to form the targeted chemical compound. The device itself is small – measuring less than two feet tall by one foot wide. It has proprietary technology that is different from lab equipment on Earth. For example, a gas bubble that forms during an experiment on Earth would escape due to gravity, but it's not able to do so in space, so the equipment needs to account for environmental factors. Molecules could take a day or more to form, so the capsule remains in space for an extended period of time to complete the experiment. It also must preserve the temperature during re-entry and secure it from vibrations to ensure that the molecule is not destroyed.
The capsule re-enters the atmosphere at speeds that reach Mach 25. Re-entry is supervised at the company's mission control center inside the headquarters building, where teams oversee both the capsule re-entry and its novel cargo. The capsule acts like a hypersonic wind tunnel at top speeds, so Varda has secured contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense to test materials for other applications beyond pharmeceutical development. This is also a third line of business – microgravity testing on materials for government and private clients – similar to the way that experiments are conducted on the International Space Station but with full automation and with the results delivered faster and at a lower cost than waiting for transportation to and from the space station. The typical Varda mission can last about two months.
Varda is the first and only company to receive a special vehicle operator license under FAA Part 450. The W-4 mission is the first time the agency has issued that license, which allows it to reenter W-series capsules as needed without submitting new safety methodologies to the FAA for each identical flight. It has permission from the FAA to reenter capsules through 2029 before needing to renew the license.
The W-4 mission is the maiden flight for Varda's next-generation spacecraft, which includes an in-house platform to navigate the spacecraft during the mission. While in orbit, the satellite bus provides the capsule with power, communications, attitude control and propulsion. When the capsule is ready for re-entry, it separates from the satellite bus and reenters, where it is recovered.
Several startups have conducted test flights, such as German firm Atmos Space Cargo, California-based Outpost Space and Inversion Space, but none of these companies have successfully launched and landed a commercial mission. Meanwhile, SpaceX is reportedly interested in developing similar biotech capabilities to Varda. In some ways, the competition has helped Varda by lending validity to its approach to the larger biotech community, which is taking greater interest due to more capacity and competition.
'More people are getting to see the huge opportunity. We're actually pretty excited,' said Bruey. 'We've collaborated with SpaceX the last five years. Our partnership right now is focused on the launch aspect, and we'll continue to collaborate.'
In February, Colorado-based Sierra Space, a commercial space and defense company that is building the Dream Chaser spaceplane, announced initiatives to advance research and development of biopharmaceutical solutions in low-Earth orbit during its inaugural mission to the International Space Station. Plans include conducting experiments to identify new ways to deliver cancer therapies to patients on Earth in collaboration with Merck.
Another challenge for Varda is companies that are developing commercial space stations, such as Axiom Space, Blue Origin and Starlab Space. While these are in current development, they still have several years before they could come online. 'Once the commercial space stations have real estate in space, they will sell capacity or manufacturing,' said Dr. Leon Alkalai, chief executive at Mandala Space Ventures (and an investor in Varda). However, Varda has a real advantage built in to its ethos.
'Rather than thinking of manufacturing as a service, Varda is making it part of their core competency and betting on the value-add component to make themselves part of the value chain.'
Overall, the space economy currently generates $613 billion in revenue, according to a recent report from The Space Foundation, which tracks revenue and spending on space technology. It projects that the space economy could grow to $1 trillion by 2032 at the current growth rate.
Asparouhov credited an experiment published by pharmaceutical developer Merck in 2019 regarding the International Space Station as inspiration for Varda. That experiment demonstrated microgravity could develop higher-quality and more uniform crystallization. The applications could lead to new drug formations or entirely new medicines. For example, there is potential for medication that needs to be given intravenously to be recalibrated into a shelf-stable pill format.
The company focus is both a biotech formulation platform and a space operation. It doesn't discover the molecules or choose what targets to go after. Rather, its business is to work within the pharmaceutical supply chain during the manufacturing process to open formulations that wouldn't otherwise exist. In a sense, the Varda system is a specialized piece of lab equipment that can introduce a new type of environment for biotech research. Bruey likened it to the introduction of other technologies such as cold and refrigeration, which have major implications on drug development.
Crystallization and growth continue on Earth following the initial microgravity development. It's akin to a sourdough starter, which can be expanded to many loaves of bread once it's initially formed. Crystallization processes are commonly used in the manufacture of small molecules and small protein therapeutics. However, it has been challenging to identify the optimal crystallization processes for biologic drugs due to their large size and the flexibility of their structure.
Once the drugs are developed, they are still required to go through testing, clinical trials and would need regulatory approval. A traditional drug development timeline could take a decade on average, and Bruey stated that he hopes that Varda's initial microgravity molecules could be available by the end of the decade for commercial use.
'The partners that we have see us as a pharmaceutical company. They don't see us as a space company. They bring us a drug that is having a particular problem, and we go solve it for them and hand it back,' said Asparouhov.
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