Pharmaceutical

Differentiated drug products enabled by microgravity

Processing in a microgravity environment dramatically alters buoyancy, natural convection, sedimentation, phase separation and drives significant differences in transport-driven phenomena.

Abstract pattern of crystals
Business Benefits

Unlock new small molecule and biologic therapeutic solutions in microgravity

Varda’s microgravity platform enables unique formulations of small molecules and biologics, providing innovative solutions to industry challenges and unlocking new opportunities in therapeutic development.

Formulation

Varda’s microgravity platform provides a unique path to formulating small molecules and biologics to improve shelf-life, bioavailability and patient compliance.

Crystallization

Conducting polymorph, salt and cocrystal screens in microgravity can lead to novel form discovery. Reduced crystal growth rates result in the formation of high quality single crystals that can be used for X-ray structure determination.

Intellectual Property

The unique environment of microgravity allows for the generation of enabling product and process IP for new chemical entities (NCEs) as well as life cycle management of marketed drugs.

Capacity

Early Varda missions are focused on enabling fast, rapid cadence microgravity processing. Varda’s autonomous vehicle architecture has been designed from day one to be scaled to address scale-up capacity for pharmaceutical applications.
Why Microgravity?

A gravity off switch for material processing

Processing materials in microgravity, or the near-weightless conditions found in space, offers a unique environment not available through terrestrial processing. These benefits primarily stem from the lack of convection and sedimentation.

These effects are “locked” into the material, typically through material crystallization, before being brought back to Earth.

Flame in 1g environment and in µg environment (on the International Space Sation)
Platform Capabilities

Small molecule and biologic development and processing in microgravity

Varda’s microgravity platform offers direct access to processing in the microgravity of low Earth orbit. Microgravity offers the ability to eliminate factors such as natural convection and sedimentation, processing in a microgravity environment provides a path to formulating small molecules and biologics that traditional manufacturing processes cannot address. The resulting tunable particle size distributions, more ordered crystals and novel forms can lead to improved bioavailability, extended shelf-life, novel intellectual property and innovative routes of administration.

Science

Explore the science