A British startup has sent a refrigerator-sized device to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket, with the aim of manufacturing cancer drugs in orbit. BioOrbit, founded in London in 2023, launched its Box-E unit on 15 May from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The device is designed to grow protein crystals in the near-weightless conditions of space, producing pharmaceutical compounds that the company says cannot be made to the same standard on Earth.

The scientific case rests on what gravity does to the crystallisation process. On Earth, gravitational forces interfere as protein molecules attempt to form ordered structures, producing crystals that are irregular and less stable. In microgravity, the same molecules settle into purer, more uniform formations. For cancer immunotherapies, this distinction has a direct clinical consequence. Many of these drugs are large, complex proteins that must be delivered at high doses. In liquid form, concentrating them enough for an injection causes the solution to become too viscous to pass through a needle. Crystals solve that problem. A crystallised formulation can achieve the concentration required while remaining fluid enough to inject, meaning a patient could self-administer at home rather than attending hospital for an intravenous infusion lasting several hours.

The concept is already moving from theory to practice. Merck, the American pharmaceutical company, worked with researchers at the space station to grow crystals of its cancer drug Keytruda, one of the world's best-selling medicines, and reformulate it as a subcutaneous injection. The US Food and Drug Administration approved that new delivery method in September 2024. BioOrbit is working within the same scientific and regulatory framework, and is targeting the same category of drug.

The company was co-founded by Dr Katie King, who holds a PhD in nanomedicine from Cambridge University and undertook an internship at Nasa, and Dr Leonor Teles, a medical doctor and cancer researcher. Last month BioOrbit closed a £9.8m funding round led by the venture capital firms LocalGlobe and Breega. In March it received a £250,000 contract from the UK Space Agency to develop its drug manufacturing capability in microgravity.

The cost of reaching orbit is not small, and BioOrbit's commercial argument depends on what happens once the drugs come back down. King contends that converting cancer patients from hospital infusion suites to home self-injection would reduce costs for the NHS and other health systems by potentially billions of pounds over time, offsetting the expense of space-based production. The company plans to scale by deploying multiple Box-E units simultaneously, targeting thousands of litres of processed drug fluid per unit per year. BioOrbit does not intend to manufacture drugs itself; it plans to license its crystallisation process to major pharmaceutical companies. The company says it has already received interest from multinationals in the UK and the United States.

BioOrbit is entering a sector that is attracting serious commercial attention. Varda Space Industries, a Californian company, has already flown capsules into orbit to process pharmaceuticals and is developing treatments for rare lung disease in partnership with United Therapeutics. SpaceX, which filed its stock market prospectus this week, lists in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing as a material revenue opportunity, citing a market of more than $22 trillion in enterprise applications. The scale of the potential market reflects, in part, just how many drugs are currently given intravenously: roughly 70 per cent of the world's top-selling medicines reach patients through a hospital drip rather than a home injection.

Box-E will remain on the space station for approximately six weeks before returning to Earth. King is clear that what has been launched is a proof-of-concept test, not a manufacturing run. Even if the orbital results are positive, she estimates it will be at least five years before any reformulated drug produced using the company's technology completes clinical trials and receives regulatory approval. For now, a device is in orbit, results are pending, and the distance between a crystal grown in space and a medicine on a patient's shelf remains considerable.