Varda Space Industries has closed on a major round of funding just weeks after the first drug-making capsule returned from orbit.
The company's $90 million Series B round marks a turning point for the company, which is now preparing to expand from initial demonstration missions to a regular series of missions carrying customer payloads, Varda said. founder Delian Asparouhov told TechCrunch.
El Segundo-based Varda was founded in 2021 by Aspalhoff, who is also a partner at Founders Fund, and Will Bluey, a spacecraft engineer who honed his skills at SpaceX. The pair had an audacious goal: to eventually commercialize their until recently promising but small-scale research into the effects of microgravity on drug crystals.
In fact, Varda's first mission, which returned to Earth in February after 10 months in orbit, was not the first time a drug was crystallized in microgravity. Astronauts have been conducting protein crystallization experiments in space for decades aboard the International Space Station and, before that, on the Space Shuttle.
However, to date, the business case for expanding this research has never materialized. There are several different reasons for this, Asparoukhov explained. For crew reasons, there are significant restrictions on the types of solvents and other substances that can be brought onto the ISS. The work carried out at the station is subject to intellectual property related constraints. Additionally, pharmaceutical research equipment designed for use in space generally lacked sophistication compared to its terrestrial counterpart.
But a lot has changed, especially in the space industry. Varda is now possible in part because of SpaceX's availability of regular low-cost rideshare launches and Rocket Lab's innovations in satellite bus manufacturing. Even beyond these external partnerships, the startup has made great strides on its own, as the success of its first mission demonstrated. Their reentry capsule appeared to work perfectly, and their experiment with reformulating the HIV drug ritonavir ran without a hitch. Say.
Varda also began publishing internal research and development results, including scientific papers on supergravity (as opposed to microgravity) crystallization platforms. Varda was developed by the startup as a type of screening method for drugs before sending them into space. This is an entirely new field of research that harnesses the ability to truly unleash gravity as a variable in scientific experiments.
Image credit: Varda Space Industries (Opens in new window)
“Over time, we will be able to generate data sets between both supergravity and microgravity, and we will start to see correlations,” he says. “As Varda flies more and more, we think we will be able to develop a system of thinking for patterns in certain types of chemical systems where supergravity will eventually be used as a way to determine interrelationships. I am confident.”, Microgravity and drug performance. ”
There is still much work to be done. Engineers will study this first spacecraft, called Winnebago, to understand wear and tear on the airframe, but the company as a whole will focus on rhythm rather than reusability, he said.
“If you simply amortize the total cost of running your business, you have a lot more to gain by increasing the spacing between flights in the first place before you actually start pursuing reusability. In a sense, It’s like we need to get to once a month frequency before reusability really becomes the biggest lever for us.”
Varda aims to significantly reduce mission costs by refurbishing and reusing the Winnebago capsule, much like SpaceX is doing with the Dragon capsule, but Asparoukhov said that will not happen until late 2027. He said it wouldn't happen until around 2017. (He said this in a recent podcast appearance) It specifies that the all-in initial mission will cost about $12 million, but by mission 4 he's spending $5-6 million, and by mission 10 He'll make less than $2.5 million. ) A larger capsule is also in the long-term pipeline, but again in the 2027 timeframe.
Asparoukhov also acknowledged that pharmaceuticals will be Varda's sole focus for the next 10 to 20 years (or more), based on the company's belief that pharmaceuticals create more economic value compared to other materials. Ta. Much of this comes down to the fact that there are important classes of medicines that require only “seeds” of materials that can only be manufactured in a microgravity environment, while the rest of the pharmaceutical formulations can be completed on Earth. This means that the product has a high profit, but a low mass.
The company is also aiming to improve the throughput of its on-board pharmaceutical reactors. In the first mission he transported only one drug protein, but in the future the company wants to process multiple drug products that can be carried out in different processing regimes. In the future, other missions may carry larger reactors for pharmaceuticals that require more than “seed” crystals, and the profile of those missions could move closer to something like mass production. It will be.
Varda has signed “several” contracts with publicly traded biotech companies, and the next three missions have already been completed with Rocket Lab, which provided the spacecraft bus for Mission 1. The startup's next manufacturing mission is scheduled to begin later this year, when the team plans to land the spacecraft in Australia.
The new funding was led by Caffeinated Capital, with participation from Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and Khosla Ventures. Varda has raised $145 million to date.