A British startup, BioOrbit, has launched Box-E, a compact unit the size of a microwave, on a SpaceX flight from Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station to grow ultra-pure protein crystals for self-injected cancer drugs. The unit will stay in orbit for about six weeks, using effective weightlessness, or microgravity, to turn pharmaceutical compounds into pure, highly stable structures that can make drug formulations not achievable on Earth.
Who Gets the Benefits
Once the crystals come back to Earth, they can be turned into cancer medications that patients can keep in a fridge and inject themselves at home or at work, instead of going to hospital to have immunotherapies infused intravenously over several hours. The drugs also have a longer shelf life. That shift is being sold as convenience, but the basic arrangement is still a system where the most advanced treatment depends on a launch pad, a space station, and a chain of corporate and institutional gatekeepers.
Dr Katie King, co-founder and chief executive of BioOrbit, described the orbital tests as a “big step change towards large-scale production of protein crystals in space”. She said gravity negatively impacts crystallisation. “That becomes really critical for protein drugs, antibody drugs because they are very large and very flexible molecules. So through going to space you see a much better, more superior crystallisation process than what you can achieve here on Earth,” she said. For cancer treatments, she said, a big dose is needed and the liquid can become too thick to use in an injection pen. “Which is why we don’t have these treatments at home already. Through using crystals, you can get these really concentrated formulations that will have a low enough viscosity that they can still flow through the needle.”
The Machinery Behind the Promise
Hundreds of experiments onboard the space station have already shown that the process works. Scientists from the US pharma company Merck produced protein crystals for its bestselling cancer medicine Keytruda to turn it into a quick injection instead of a lengthy IV infusion. This new route of delivery was approved by the US health regulator in September.
King said, “Box-E is the first step moving towards mass manufacture in a way that will transform cancer treatment, reduce hospital visits and support patients in receiving therapies at home.” She is the daughter of the TV presenter and maths whiz Carol Vorderman. Despite the huge expense of sending the drugs into space, King argued the switch to self-injection at home could end up saving the NHS and other health systems “millions, potentially billions” of pounds.
The pitch is wrapped in the language of efficiency, but the structure is familiar: public systems absorb the costs, private firms chase the upside, and patients are told to celebrate fewer hospital visits while the production chain moves farther from public control and deeper into the orbit of investors and regulators.
Assuming the orbital tests are successful, multiple Box-E units could be stacked together to ramp up the pace of pharmaceutical manufacturing in space. BioOrbit is aiming to process thousands of litres of fluid per box every year, and is confident it could produce enough for a blockbuster drug with a handful of boxes in constant use.
BioOrbit, founded in 2023 by King and the medical doctor and cancer researcher Leonor Teles, raised £9.8m from investors last month, led by the UK venture capital group LocalGlobe and Paris-based VC firm Breega, to take its technology into orbit and build the hardware to mass produce crystals. BioOrbit won a £250,000 contract from the UK’s Space Agency in March to manufacture drugs in microgravity.
Who Funds the Future
This week Elon Musk’s SpaceX set out its stock market flotation prospectus, which mentions in-space manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and other materials as a key revenue stream, and estimates a $22.7tn market in enterprise applications. BioOrbit wants to be part of that.
King said it will take at least five years until the new cancer drug formulations hit the market, as they need to be tested in clinical trials and get approved by health regulators. She added that the crystallisation technology can also be used for other treatments. About 70% of the world’s biggest-selling drugs are administered intravenously at hospitals or doctor’s offices.
To make its cancer drugs, BioOrbit will partner with pharmaceutical companies, and has already had interest from several multinational groups, including in the UK and the US. The Californian startup Varda Space Industries has also flown small capsules into space to process pharmaceuticals, and is working with the US biotech United Therapeutics Corporation to develop improved treatments for rare lung disease.
The whole arrangement runs through the same hierarchy from top to bottom: venture capital, state contracts, health regulators, multinational drug companies, and a launch system controlled by SpaceX. The people who actually need the medicine are left waiting for clinical trials, approvals, and whatever market logic decides comes next.