Yossi Yamin

MAKING MEDICINES IN ORBIT. Yossi Yamin is the Chairman of SpacePharma, which provides researchers access to the unique environment of microgravity, using cutting edge remote controlled orbital labs. SpacePharma is headquartered in Courgenay, Switzerland, with research and development in Herzliya, Israel, and an office in Palo Alto, California USA.

What is SpacePharma?

SpacePharma is trying to take mankind beyond the horizons of the atmosphere, to make space accessible and affordable to scientists and younger people, on a commercial basis without the intervention of states, space agencies, or someone who would like to know what you are doing. Our robust miniaturized-technology CubeSats are dedicated miniature laboratories in 30 by 10 by 10 centimeters containers whose total weight is 5 to 6 kilos. They have their own solar panels to create power, and we operate them 500 kilometers above earth so you can send up your command files within a few seconds.

What led you to start SpacePharma ?

After 25 years of service in the Israeli army, when I commanded the spacecraft in orbit that belongs to the state of Israel for intelligence, I learned that there are many things that can be done in orbit using liquids. For example, we utilized hydrogen liquids as the engine to move the satellite from place to place. I asked myself: Why only engines? Let’s use liquids for other purposes. I started to read a lot of books on NASA, futurism, new aspects of space, travelling to Mars, and I realized that all people on Earth admire astronautical abilities but few can access them. If you check Google, all kids until they are 10 years old mostly read about dinosaurs and astronauts, but space has not been accessible so their interests change as they mature. If we let them have direct access, by holding the control stick and using technology in orbit while still on Earth, they can generate fascinating things. So I decided to build something for everyone who has access to Wi-Fi.

What did you do?

We designed a miniaturized wet laboratory, which means that everything based within it must be liquid. We can stuff it with stem cells, bacteria, reagents, liquids, and enzymes, and operate it from Earth to verify how we can build a better structure of crystals, to learn more about defeating cancer, and to generate more and more knowledge for the scientific community to advance medicine and treatments.

Why do you need a lab in space to do this?

All around us on Earth, from plants to mankind, experiences gravitational effects. Even our aging is influenced by gravity. If you can take gravity out of the equation, fabulous things will happen, but this world without gravity cannot exist on Earth. There is no machine or simulator (although there are some around the world that say there is), that can generate weightlessness, microgravity, for a long time. Exceeding the atmosphere, between 250 kilometers and above, everything is free floating, and for example bacteria at this position will turn very aggressive. If you know how to defeat those virulent bacteria you can help more people survive.

Can you really create new medicines in space?       

Yes. In space, without the forces that affect their growth, we can grow much purer and much bigger crystals. We can let the pharmaceutical industry use much better compounds for the later stages of building new medications. In space you can fold enzymes together like an origami of peptides, which you cannot do here on Earth, and many other things. For example, if you take cancer cells from a patient’s body and culture them in a petri dish on the ground there is no way they will stay stable, but if you take the sample and put it in orbit, it will stay and grow in three dimensions. Then you can add markers to it and check the right way to attack the cancer. This is not artificial intelligence, it is something real that cannot be replicated on Earth.

How many of these space labs have you created?

Four. Three were in orbit and have come down, one is still in orbit. Since February 15, 2017, there is a lab orbiting Earth.

How long does each one orbit?

Between 2 to 3 years, during which time its experiments are done. It is a box, with many small laboratories inside that are loaded with liquid and materials before launching. Then, from Earth, you command the reactions in the liquid, and replicate and change the parameters. You can take photos, spectrometry readings, fluorescence imagery, and you know what has happened in the box in order to build the medicine you want.

Is there an example of what has been achieved using these labs in orbit?

We built crystals for respiratory disease models. We took these crystals and put them in inhalation machines, and those are the best in the world.

What else can you do?

It is useful for medicine, for food, for new compounds and even for new materials for the automobile industry. The bottom line is that in space, in zero gravity, you can change or create new enzymes or particles or materials that you cannot create here on Earth, that are much better for use for medical or pharmaceutical purposes, and the cost will become much more efficient.

How much does it cost to do this?

We can generate a lab for $60K USD and let’s say four clients use it, so $15k per client. Then add the launch cost and the satellite. For about $1 million US dollars you can have a full lab in orbit with antennas on it, with liquid, with communication. Compare this to the ISS (The International Space Station), where you also need to send astronauts. One of my friends, the Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, is going to be the commander of the ISS soon, but the astronauts are risking their life. Even before we refer to astronauts, the ISS is the most expensive machine ever built by mankind, costing 130 billion US dollars, and after 20 years of operating in orbit it is very expensive to run.

What is your aim?

We want more and more academies around the world, and universities, and research institutes belonging to governments, to use this orbital domain. We want to enable them to use these microgravity conditions directly, to study what can be done and then to come up with a pipeline of new medicine, new compounds, and new chemistry.

What does SpacePharma sell?

We sell the capacity to build things that you cannot build here on earth in an orbital industrial zone. We lease the CubeSat machine to between one and four people, and it is mostly used for research and know how rather than production. Our next stage is going to be the James Bond suitcase, a suitcase size factory of the future of 25 kilos, which you can operate in orbit while staying with your family and without even driving to your laboratory. On each flight we can host between 4 to 30 James Bond suitcases, and you can produce 50-75 kilos per mission of active raw material. 5 kilos is enough for a complete medicine and we will produce it with the James Bond system for around 2 million Euros. This is a new industry. The production line is in orbit with our delicate miniaturised components, and we don’t need to make a huge factory. We can save a lot of real estate on Earth with factories circling us in orbit 500 km above.

How do you operate?

Four people work in a ground station at our headquarters in Courgenay, near Basel in Switzerland, that is certified by the ITU (International Telecom Union) and they operate the antennas and communicate with the satellites in space. The lab is created by nineteen people in Israel: mechanical engineers, spacecraft operators, software programmers, scientists from biology, chemistry, physics, pharmaceutical.

How do you get these small labs into space?

We use launchers like, for example, Vega and Arianespace, SpaceX. They are carriers, like buses. If I go to ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) in India, and I buy five kilos capacity on top of the launcher, they will put me there. It’s a market with 101 entities building launch providers today. I mostly deal with the big ones.

Are you the first to provide laboratory facilities in space?

The second to NASA in the United States, but we are the first privately funded commercial entity.

Are your main goals to help find treatment for cancer, to prevent aging, to enable skin and tissue regeneration?

Yes, research on DNA, cancer and stem cells, and even to build seeds for agriculture that have more resistance to global warming and other diseases. We have taken seeds into orbit and coated them with some material and brought them back.

How does microgravity help plant DNA research?

On earth a plant’s roots always point to the centre of gravity, even if you have nearby water. Now imagine that for each plant you know how to disconnect the gene that points to the centre of gravity. Then the roots will go first to the water. We can know that only from microgravity. As the space environment becomes a domain that is usable by mankind it is helping save water.

Are you also trying to find vaccines?

Yes, vaccines develop well in microgravity, and we have an agreement with a bio-tropical disease center in Basel to try to find a medicine for ebola.

What is your business model?

Our clients are pharmaceutical companies, or researchers, or academia, all over the world. We sell the technology, we do not focus on building the medicine, although we have some success stories to help convince the market that we are capable of doing it. There is demand for access to our system from Australia, from India, from China, from Europe, from the States, from Brazil, even from Russia.

What does SpacePharma sell?

We sell the capacity to build things that you cannot build here on earth in an orbital industrial zone. We lease the CubeSat machine to between one and four people, and it is mostly used for research and know how rather than production. Our next stage is going to be the James Bond suitcase, a suitcase size factory of the future of 25 kilos, which you can operate in orbit while staying with your family and without even driving to your laboratory. On each flight we can host between 4 to 30 James Bond suitcases, and you can produce 50-75 kilos per mission of active raw material. 5 kilos is enough for a complete medicine and we will produce it with the James Bond system for around 2 million Euros. This is a new industry. The production line is in orbit with our delicate miniaturised components, and we don’t need to make a huge factory. We can save a lot of real estate on Earth with factories circling us in orbit 500 km above.

How do you operate?

Four people work in a ground station at our headquarters in Courgenay, near Basel in Switzerland, that is certified by the ITU (International Telecom Union) and they operate the antennas and communicate with the satellites in space. The lab is created by nineteen people in Israel: mechanical engineers, spacecraft operators, software programmers, scientists from biology, chemistry, physics, pharmaceutical.

How do you get these small labs into space?

We use launchers like, for example, Vega and Arianespace, SpaceX. They are carriers, like buses. If I go to ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) in India, and I buy five kilos capacity on top of the launcher, they will put me there. It’s a market with 101 entities building launch providers today. I mostly deal with the big ones.

Are you the first to provide laboratory facilities in space?

The second to NASA in the United States, but we are the first privately funded commercial entity.

Are your main goals to help find treatment for cancer, to prevent aging, to enable skin and tissue regeneration?

Yes, research on DNA, cancer and stem cells, and even to build seeds for agriculture that have more resistance to global warming and other diseases. We have taken seeds into orbit and coated them with some material and brought them back.

How does microgravity help plant DNA research?

On earth a plant’s roots always point to the centre of gravity, even if you have nearby water. Now imagine that for each plant you know how to disconnect the gene that points to the centre of gravity. Then the roots will go first to the water. We can know that only from microgravity. As the space environment becomes a domain that is usable by mankind it is helping save water.

Are you also trying to find vaccines?

Yes, vaccines develop well in microgravity, and we have an agreement with a bio-tropical disease center in Basel to try to find a medicine for ebola.

What is your business model?

Our clients are pharmaceutical companies, or researchers, or academia, all over the world. We sell the technology, we do not focus on building the medicine, although we have some success stories to help convince the market that we are capable of doing it. There is demand for access to our system from Australia, from India, from China, from Europe, from the States, from Brazil, even from Russia.

The Italian Ambassador to Israel and the SpacePharma team – including Israeli Space Agency – shaking hands at SpacePharma’s labs.

I think that in September you are launching a satellite called Dido 3 which is a combined venture between Israel and Italy?

In Torino we have our best business partners, ALTEC (Aerospace Logistics Technology Engineering Company). Dido 3 is a joint satellite laboratory that is going to be operated by eight scientists, four from Italy and four from Israel. Hospitals like Sheba Medical Center from Israel are involved and we have the academia and technology institutes in Rome, Bologna University, and Pisa University joining these experiments in orbit. The scientists have designed fascinating experiments involving DNA and other targets. You are going to read about it soon. The most important thing about this particular CubeSat laboratory is that it is going to maintain body temperature, so it’s always going to be at 37 degrees centigrade. You can manipulate the DNA in orbit at body temperature and study it remotely, so the Italian scientists are going to stay in their comfort zone with their families in Italy, and they and their four partners in Israel will activate and control the experiment in orbit and take down the data to process.

This will last 3 years?

This one will last a year or a year and a half, because the experiments are short, but this is the timeframe we expect it to be operational in orbit.

Can you also reduce waste?

This is a green innovation system. Today there is a lot of radioactive waste, but there is no problem to leave it in orbit because it’s already radioactive. Secondly the energy is much cheaper. It costs a lot to generate energy on Earth, even solar energy, but imagine lifting up the system to generate its energy from the Sun without the mask of clouds – you can work day and the night.

Is this system revolutionary?

So far we have experienced three space revolutions. The first was communications, the second was Earth observation – to observe your neighbours, and the third was GPS. All those three revolutions came from defence and military use, but today they have become our daily life. Imagine ourselves without TV or radio going through satellite communication. Imagine not having GPS in your pocket. The younger generations don’t even know that paper maps exist! But this fourth space revolution is commercial, the opposite of the other space revolutions, and this is the first time that the private sector is leading governments.

How long will this fourth revolution take to change things?

Change can come about very fast, I think between 2022 to 25.  Today the pharmaceuticals’ development cost is so high and it requires 10 to 15 years to build a new medication, but we can stop a failure before wasting money, because we can check toxicity on mammalian cells in orbit and see if the medication is going to be toxic or not, without using animals. It’s amazing. With our affordable technology they can use currently wasted money to develop more medications, including for the smaller communities of disease sufferers whose size currently means they are not even in a development pipeline because it would not be commercial.

Are the pharmaceutical companies taking a keen interest in SpacePharma?

They are watching us, and they are talking with us, but they already have their production lines, supply chains and distribution. They are making money, but they won’t stay aside for too long. They must find new medications, and the cost is so high and new medications are not coming. This is the new.

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