The Pharmacy in Orbit: How Zero Gravity Is Brewing the Next Cancer Drugs | Space Pharma

Your next cancer drug might not come from a lab — it might come from orbit. Space Pharma founder Yossi Yamin has been manufacturing medicines in space since 2012, crystallizing drugs in microgravity that simply can't form correctly on Earth. A lab the size of a shoebox, 250 miles above your head, quietly changing what medicine can do. 

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Transcript

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 0:00

No people, it's unmanned, no robots. I can generate a tissue culture in orbit in a three-dimension because there is no gravity. And if you can hit 70 to 80 percent concentration within our crystals, we can triple the time between administration.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 0:26

Did you know that there is a race to manufacture in space because of zero gravity? Picture this: a shoebox-sized lab orbiting the earth at like 28,000 kilometers an hour, growing human tissue 22 times faster than any lab on Earth. They create crystals with unique properties that are just not possible on Earth, which means for you that life-saving drugs that normally take 15 years, maybe, perhaps we can get that down to a couple of years. Cancer treatments, not available for decades, now available quicker. Welcome to the Israeli Trailblazer Show, where we uncover the innovators and visionaries who are improving your lives in ways you just never knew. And oftentimes because the media rarely shares what Israelis contribute to mankind. Today, one incredible company is using space factories to help you heal faster. My guest is Yossi Yaman, founder of Space Pharma, former Israeli intelligence officer and satellite commander. Now he's pioneering a revolutionary company that's been around since 2012. So while Elon and SpaceX are building Starfall, Yossi has already proven that this works. Let's dive in. Hello, Yossi.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 1:59

Thank you, Jennifer.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 2:00

It's a race to develop manufacturing in space.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 2:03

Absolutely.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 2:04

In space, how does removing gravity change the way we can create life-saving drugs?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 2:12

On Earth, there are elements and they are not equal by weight. In orbit, if you take those elements to space 500 kilometers above us, you're gonna face that all elements are equal by weight. Fascinating. Very simple. And now try to build this molecule based on those elements. You can generate different shapes. Different shapes means different efficacy. Different shapes means different patterns. Different shapes means different therapeutics, different medicines. And that's what we would like to see, all coming from space.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 2:50

Mind-blowing. And the fact that your company, Space Pharma, an Israeli-based company, has been doing this since 2012. Elon's just getting into it, right?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 3:02

Thank you for the comparison. We have the vehicle built by Elon Musk, the power, the capacity, the re-entry to return, the reusability. So it would be much cheaper. But at the end, what are we going to do with those vehicles? We can send people, it's true. We can send satellite as well. But imagine that you can go to your industrial zone above you, taking your liquids, and we are talking only about liquids, convert those to be crystal shapes, means solid state. Bring those back with different elements. The nanoparticles are much more unique by viscosity, concentration, shape. And that's what will make our life much better. Because if we know how to take and lift up all this amount of liquid, we can bring it back as a medicine. And I would like to focus on another thing. Each chemical has its own bioreactor, means on Earth you can have a bottle, you can have a glass in orbit. You don't need any bottle or a glass to host liquid. It will stay by itself, very liquid, still, it will not pour down, right? Let's take an egg. You crack the shell on Earth and it will smash to the pan, right? Down. Yes. If you crack the same egg in orbit, the content will stay very circled. The yellow inside, the liquid behind, this is the protein that we used to take to space. Now we would like to intervene. We would like to implement something within this very little and fascinating egg. We take a needle, we hit the yellow part of the egg. Let's say we inject blue color and we get a green color, right? We generate reaction. Now imagine that you do that remotely. No people, it's unmanned, no robots, it's unmanned, and we are focusing on the liquid elements. So it's streams of liquids that maneuver one beside each other and generate fascinating shapes, which are the medicine. And for that we call monoclonal antibodies crystallization. We can do that for any small molecule, for any monoclonal medicine. And in the future, we will be able even to generate creatures in space.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 5:32

Creatures? Yes.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 5:33

Of course, they are not looks like us, but they are representing us. For example, I can generate a tissue culture in orbit in a three-dimension because there is no gravity. And that means I can take a few stem cells to orbit, let's say up to eight. A few of those will ignite to be or to represent, let's say, a lung cancer. And by that, this organoid represents a patient with a lung cancer. Now, it will generate in microgravity environment, means in a 3D by nature. No power, no energy, no scaffolds, nothing. It just generates by 3D by nature. And then we start to hit this cancer with medicines. And we are observing that with sensors. We let other to intervene and change parameters within the genetics, within the concentration. We mix maybe something else within the medicine. And by that, we can do a personalized medicine in all things.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 6:39

Let's just unpack this a little bit. So you have this crystallization process that happens in a zero gravity environment. And because it's easier to make those crystals in zero gravity, first of all, can you make the crystallization on Earth? It just takes a lot longer. Is that true?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 7:01

Sometimes it takes too long. Sometimes you cannot do it at all. So you must go to the microgravity environment, do it the space, in order to generate those crystals. It will not go on Earth.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 7:15

So you go to space, you generate the crystals, you observe the reaction of what you insert into the organoid and you record its results.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 7:27

Yes.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 7:27

And this process is in high demand, obviously, for pharmaceutical companies where they can spend, I would imagine, much less money and much faster time to market. Is that correct?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 7:41

Enrich different shapes, means different pattern, different concentration, different viscosity. There are many attributes associated with this crystal. There is no way that you can make it on Earth.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 7:53

So this crystal that is only achieved in space can create new formulations of pharmaceutical products. So maybe not a pill but a shot. And maybe that's easier for a patient to tolerate or take at home instead of an IV. Is it something like that?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 8:11

That's exactly what we are betting. We would like to make the life of the patients, which are horrible, for a better user-friendly administration. So no more hospitals, expenses on real estate shifts, consumable. You need a medical doctor, a nurse. You need to spend energy to reach the hospital back and forth. And then you are calling the insurance for reimbursement for the patient, sometimes for a relative who accompanied him to this treatment. But in our case, the hospital is no more in the loop. You stay home, your comfort zone, while at home, it's where you would like to get your medicine. It's user-friendly, close to your family, no need to spend energy on the back and forth or away to the hospital and back. And in this manner, we provide better quality of treatment. Now imagine you need to go every two weeks to the hospital to take an IV. In our case, you stay home, like you use the insulin for diabetes, you inject it as subcutaneous under the skin. The nurse stays 15 minutes and then can go to another patient. Okay? So we move the nurse, not the patients. Another important thing is that we can extend dramatically the time period between administrations. While IV required biweekly IV treatment in the hospital, if you can hit 70 to 80 percent concentration within our crystals, we can triple the time between administrations. So not every two weeks, every six weeks. Now imagine that you have five days of side effects. If you go every two weeks, it's 14 days, minus five days of side effects, the quality of life are only nine. If you go every six weeks, and which is 42 days, and now you deduct five side effects days, you stay with the longer than a month's quality of life. So patients will vote we want this medicine because we stay home, our relatives, our comfort zone, we have less side effects periods, and that's what we are willing to get. And that's the beauty. The patient will select the administration method.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 10:31

So the crystallization process is the sweet spot. That is the secret sauce here.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 10:37

Yes. The secret sauce is something that we add to the formula, but we never touch the chemical string. Means if we touch it, we need to go all the FDA from scratch. If you don't touch it and only the shape and administration is touched, you need only two to three years to extend the patent and to keep the market open. And this is the beauty of space pharma.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 10:58

Okay, so space pharma is not involved in long clinical trials that have to be reviewed by the FDA. You're short-circuiting that.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 11:07

We still need some FDA reapproval for the administration, not for the entire drug. So we need to pass toxicity and few tests of efficacy. We don't need mice anymore, so we are keeping the animals safe. We need organoids, and then we are trying it on certain steps that could take two to three years. And at the end, this medicine is secured to be administrated to humans. And this is very important.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 11:36

Are there drugs out there right now that you've done this with?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 11:40

There are drugs. We did two already, but there are many more that are in the pipeline that we are very capable to implement in space. There are some issues. Even today, there is not enough power in space. There is no space inside, for example, the ISS to host our technologies. We recently, actually a year ago, recognized as the first ever builder for Europe to build the factory of the future. We call it SFAC Space Factory to mass produce millions of human doses per year per medicine.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 12:15

That's incredible. We're living in the future with space pharma. It's absolutely incredible. Pharmaceutical companies, I would imagine, would be lining up to get their drugs in your space factory to create a new formulation that will come out quicker. What would be the reason that they might be concerned about using Space Factory?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 12:39

There are concerns. For example, if you are signing a contract to produce a drug, you need at least 15 to 20 years of delivery. Means they want to be sure that you want stock to deliver after three, four years. So to sign up a contract is a very long period, 20 years. So it's about 18 years per medicine. Then you need the amount, then the market changes. Crystals are very, very unique and talented creatures. Crystals behave. We see that. They start from liquid, then they generate seeds, then you have like infants, grown ones, elders, and those who die. And every single change of pH, temperature, something that they touch off the surface of the capillar, or even season that people are not aware of, might cause them to disappear. So you need to keep them in a very solid phase that they will be within the chain supply of the pharmaceutical.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 13:46

Talking about crystallization, because I've never heard the concept before, but it seems that's the whole ballgame here is the crystallization.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 13:55

Yes. Crystallization. We know how to crystalline molecules in space. We focus on that. Because at the end, in our technology, once we gain the crystals, we can cup them in a jar and send them all over in a room temperature. They will not melt, they will sustain the drive, they will go only in the body in a certain level of reaction with the blood, subcutaneously, and start to be dissolved. And this is fascinating and it's changeable from one medicine to another. It's not similar between medicines.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 14:33

What you're doing now with crystallization technology in space is actually something that could affect everyone on Earth. What is your background, Yossi, that made you come up with this idea? Because you've been doing this for a very long time.

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 14:51

Thinking outside the box to survive, to progress, and to make our life easy and better. And that's important. I used to run national assets in orbit, and I realized that we can transform hydrogen, which required to maneuver satellites from liquid phase to a gas. And I thought to myself, if I can convert in orbit liquid to gas, I can do liquid to solid. And let's try it. Why not? Right? So I went to a friend that worked for a big pharmaceutical and I told her, listen, I'm going to convert liquid in space to solid. And she asked me, really? I told her, yes, I will do that. And if I'll can you add oil to the equation? I told her, of course. But you know, oil will not go to the surface. It will stay inside, let's say, the water molecule. And at the end, you get a very homogeneous structure. If you can convert it from liquid phase to solid, you can run a medicine to any body part. And that's amazing. Only oil and water.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 15:59

What's your greatest success with space pharma?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 16:08

We start with pharmaceutical, but I got last month's request to crystal milk, TFD Food and Drug Administration. So we can do also food. That's what I really like to see. More and more disciplines using the technology.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 16:24

What are the top five things that you would use crystals for?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 16:27

I would use it for medicine, for food, for super additives, super additives for society, chemistry or chemicals, polymers, and to pesticide fields. That's where I would go. It's the whole world. It's the whole world.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 16:46

How does that actually work?

GUEST, YOSSI YAMIN, FOUNDER SPACE PHARMA 16:47

It's work between a group of people from Harvard University and another big farmer. They believe that if they will integrate chemicals into tissue culture and generate the tissue, and then under surgery embedded it to the body, it will stay inside the body as a sleep agent. And once this agent recognizes a disease like cancer, like something else, it will start to activate the compounds that were hidden within this tissue. That's incredible. For the first time, can integrate 3D reactions, humans, and space to survive, to generate quality of life, simplicity, energy consuming. I heard from someone that it could be even national security, because we took bacteria to orbit, the first one in the world, by the way. And in order not to risk the astronauts within the ISS, we put those bacteria within our little cube laboratory. We have CubeSats in space, belongs to space pharma, and we let bacteria to grow inside and to detect the conjugation. Conjugation between bacteria means how they communicate. So if we can defeat and cut the communication between plasmid and plasmid, we can defeat diseases related to instead of using antibiotics. And we did it with Sheba, the hospital here in Israel. Professor, we're sitting on ground and running bacteria's battles in Obi. Amazing.

HOST, JENNIFER WEISSMANN 18:16

Unbelievable.