BioOrbit secures £9.8m to advance drug manufacturing in space

In-space drug manufacturing company BioOrbit has raised £9.8m in seed funding to accelerate its mission to manufacture pharmaceutical drugs in space at scale.

BioOrbit’s solution enables the usage of microgravity to develop crystals of biological drugs at scale that aims to transform how life-saving treatments reach patients worldwide.  

Currently, 70% of the highest-grossing drugs globally are administered intravenously in clinical settings. BioOrbit is on a mission to use the microgravity environment found in low-Earth orbit to reformulate them as subcutaneous, self-injectable treatments – shifting hospital treatments, including cancer care, from hospital to home.

This is made possible by BOX, a compact, modular and autonomous manufacturing unit – roughly the size of a microwave – deployed in microgravity, which moves crystallisation from a one-off experiment to industry-ready scale. This enables better-performing biologics through formulation pathways not achievable on Earth.

This round, co-led by LocalGlobe and Breega, with support from Auxxo, Seedcamp, Type One, 7 percent and angel investors, is the world’s largest seed round for in-space manufacturing and strives to unlock the ability to produce high-value drugs at scale and in orbit for the first time.

“Our focus from day one has been scale, moving beyond experimental results to industrial production where no existing solution has succeeded,” says Dr Katie King, founder and CEO of BioOrbit. 

“We are now enabling the creation of more perfect, highly ordered crystals that unlock drug formulations not achievable on Earth. It is a paradigm shift for cancer therapies and for the pharmaceutical industry at large, as we’re enabling manufacturing at scale in orbit for the first time.”