The New Pharma Frontier: Could Drugs Made in Space Help You Live Longer?
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With artificial intelligence, creating an ethical foundation isn't just the right thing to do, is crucial to success. Join IBM of the break to hear why from federal binet eris IBM consult into global leader for trustworthy ai.

Where do the medicines people use every day to live longer, healthier lives come from? If you said a laboratory, well, yeah, that's a really good answer. But in the future, the components in cutting out drugs may not be made on earth.

If you want things to actually bind together in a very specific way, you have to create surface tension among them. And in a microgravity environment, you can control IT.

That's c usi, the former CEO of orbital manufacturing company space tank o that makes minister labs for research on the international space station. We spoke back in may at the w jays future of everything festival, along with eric lasker, an executive at another company, vast space industries that's working on satellite that can make pharmaceutical components while in orbit around the earth in ten years time.

My big hope is that we have drugs from space in patient populations that are actually bringing the benefits of microgravity. And to help people .

back down here from the wall street journal, this is the future of everything. I'm danny Lewis. Today, we're bringing you a conversation about where space manufacturing is going and how I could help make Better medicine. That's after the break.

How do you start to lay the foundation for responsible AI in your organization? Here's fator. Born a dear. Is IBM consultants global leader for trust or the AI IT .

starts with asking the question, what is the kind of relationship that we ultimately want to have with A I? The purpose of A I is not meant to display human beings. That is meant to all meant human intelligence. Soon, as you have a glimmer in your eye about how you're thinking, you might want to U Z, I then asking the questions like what would be required in order to earn people's trust in such a model.

And now here's my conversation with vast space industry's executive, eric lasker, and former space tango CEO sea soni from the future of everything festival in may. Sani left space tangle last month. This interview has been edited for time and clarity. I started by asking sani about how he thinks space manufacturing will expand for mini labs on the international space station to actually making things in orbit.

IT started as science experiment, right? In fact, the first microgravity science experiment was sixty two years ago, part of project mercury, where an astronaut was actually testing food at physics. So how do we get from that to making patient specific gene therapy? In order to get to actually making products in space, you have to understand and leverage the properties, but you actually want to figure out which products grow faster.

One is based on induced perper stem cells, the harvest stem cells from any person that's willing to donate them, and they grow faster in space. So you can actually model how they grow. And you can take a batch of a particular cancerous stem cell and model how that grows. And based on that data, you can actually design a patient specific therapy for IT.

Just about a year ago, artist ACE industries launched its first test of an unman capital into orbit. IT had an automatic factory making Christal for an HIV drug at return t to earth earlier this year. What did you learn from that whole experiment over a va?

We've really been building the company based on the research that's been done on the IOS that to was just talking about and Frankly, a lot of the worth that space tangles been doing, but something that we noticed in the commercialization of microgravity base products. There are some limitations with the international space station Operating on IT.

And so we wanted to go build a venture back to company for ordinary manufactured pharmaceutical, particular. The first piece of that was to build an autonomous platform for us to actually go make some of these pharmaceuticals. And so that first and admission test was, yes, the test of the processing capabilities that bar is bringing to bear with that he was a tonic bear in agv.

Medication also used impacts love ID to show that we can control the criminalization and keep medications forms stable all the way back to the entry. But more than anything, IT was to show that a much cheaper platform goat in space and bring back down to earth can Operate and perform these functions. And now we can go scale to a number of vehicles, really as many as we want and are uninsured. Red by the international space station, but also the processing equipment. I were billion inside.

So this might be a little bit of a physics one of one kind of question. But what is microgravity? Is this different from zero og vy? And what is IT about IT that makes these Crystals and these drought grow so much faster?

Microgravity in the gravity, you can think is largely synonomous. Microgravity is just saying we're approaching zero, but we're not all the way there. But it's when you're in free flow one, you're in lower, you're in a consequence of free fall.

So you're not experiencing that one g that you and I all are thinking about today, but we're still experiencing in gravity. It's a little bit of semantics there. If you think about sprinklin some pepper on a glass of water, you're going to see those pepper flakes fall to the bottom slowly over time.

And that's because gravity is Operating on every single particle in that glass of water. As as particles strip down, there are making little currents on the outside picture may be even like a lava lap, something similar there in microgravity. You don't have that effect on. It's a very, very stable environment and allowing just different materials to be made in more advantageous ways that hopefully very economically valuable, valuable enough to help make its space and great back down.

not only the way different particles small, but their different sizes, right in microgravity, convection, temperature, pressure, baLanced segmentation, five principles that we'd all probably learned, unlike forth or fifth grade, some of us forgot. I know I did. So you can control them. You can actually leverage surface tension if you want things to actually bind together in a very specific way, you have to create surface tension among them. And in a microgravity environment, you can control IT.

And so just a jump in two, you don't mind. With an example that I like is that mark actually had grand to study up on the ice on their blockbuster cancer diabetic called key trude, one of the larger selling oncology drugs on the market right now. Right now, that's an intervenes injections.

So something that you have to go sit in the clinic for quite some time to actually get into your body. Doctor paul record from mark show that by performing a single unit Operation up on the international space station, he was able to express cyclization up and make a more uniform, a cryo of that product that really paved the way for a subtler ous injection. Now, mark grand, that study on the is great path finder.

There is not a way to either scale of Operations or Frankly, even repeat that experimenting rapidly enough to start to bring up to market. And so they're still a bit of a break in the infrastructure value chain before we're starting see some of these products come online. But but there are some real near market test cases that looks like this tango been involved with up on the state station, and I hope to .

see more while launching things into space has gotten a lot easier. Retrieving products from orbit is another thing. After the break, we'll hear how vita space industries got its first space lab back to earth and the chAllenges the company faced in the process stick around.

Arc mentioned bring these products back to earth. For people, a big part of commercialized near earth orbits is how much easier and cheaper is to launching to space. But IT can getting them back is a different thing.

And it's one va ran into with your test capture. IT was stuck in or arabic IT for months after the federal aviation administration at first united reentry. That's a pretty big logistical wrinkle, especially when you're talking about increasing capacity for manufacturing and if you bring that into the supply chain. So are you taking that to consideration for future flights when you're talking with lights?

So first launch has become fairly, I won't say completely motives, but there's a milking nine rocket going up every two to three days or right now. And that's just what space acks and they are certain ly other launch providers Operations in orbit. Reentry though is a piece that there's been a bit of a chicken and egg problem going on with and and it's really stunted orbital manufacturing.

The only real need right now or to bring things back down for more orbit is to bring people back down astronauts. And so you have vehicles that already built to bring astronauts back down. And so that's not allowed folks to really proferred orbital manufacturer goods because it's hard as expensive.

And imagine if you are only able to travel, your manufacturing location wants to twice a year. And by the way, you just got the little corner of the van because that's not what the vans for. What does reanna vehicle is really ready built for products.

And so there's some chAllenges along the way. We certainly went to a learning period with the fa after getting the approval of a launch, took a bit longer to get that reentry license. We brought the craft down very safely just west olic city in the utah test and training range. And we're continuing to work with the fa because they this is something that is going to scale up, and we feel really confident with our ability and not only get the next one down, but to increase decade. And so then hopefully, we can get to where reentry is as common as .

launched and how do we get the point where manufacturing in orbit becomes more common? What are the steps and chAllenges that we can need to overcome? Me know, from getting things into space to bring them back.

You're seeing a proliferation of not only launch providers but also the size and scale of what each launch provider can Carry. And I think that diversification of not only the number but like uber x versus uber comfort versus like that tiny uber that everyone has to share, you're having that proliferation for space as well. So that's building block one.

Building block two is you need to have a lot of different facilities to manufacturer in not only space but capital that goes into making those spaces happen. They don't all have to be stations. They can be like VS model, which is independent free fires. So there is not a unique model.

But I think the proliferation and diversity of those models enables people like space tango to put our systems in all of them, right? And then building block three is the reentry piece that that the folks of water and a couple of other just d orbiting solution companies are really thinking about. There's a number of companies that come to space tangle.

They're what's your reentry solution? Who's bringing your stuff back when you start making get them like do you want to be my reentry solution? What are you charged in parkin group? But that's a real economic conversation. It's not a scientifically conversation .

speaking on the the material science side, there need be more research. Certainly on the IOS, there need be more rigger. Right now, if you want to go prove something before you see large R N G spend from a farming company, you're not just running at one time and saying that this is a great growth point, running at ten times, fifteen times, maybe even a couple hundred times, and then you start to spend significant dollars on R N D or the experiment.

And there are a couple of examples where there's been a repeat. But it's not to the extent of if you you're to just go into a wet level over like a marker fier and look a lot of that just because the the folks that are the research and and where the dollars are coming from are from the likes of NASA, the likes of nas, its government funded the research. Ultimately, that's passing through.

And what you're really not seeing almost at all right now is pharmacy dal and our industry driven rng into orbital manufacturing, right? And so I would argue that as big as getting all the infrastructure in place, it's really making those proof points as clear as possible. So then if somebody add a major farming company, add a major fier optics company, add a semi conductor company, said, I want to go make sure that my R N D investment in microgravity is going to bring about economic city, my company, that are confident enough that, yes, I can get in there and back, but also that something really good and valuable is happening there at the same time. So in ten years time, in my big for for vta and and the industry is largest, that we have drugs from space in patient populations actually bringing the benefits of microgravity and and truly bringing them into not only the economy but to help people back down on here. What that looks like from an infrastructure standpoint is multiple reentry es hopefully per day, but were probably talking order per week.

Um i'd say really focused on patient specific gene therapy and leveraging will hopefully be a very well capitalized and robust infrastructure of launch in space, in scale, manufacturing and reentry points so that there is multiple space ports. I mean, the stuff that we do in space, there's obviously a lot of government, national security, sovereign interest in what is made, where it's made and who owns what comes back. The beauty of where we said is it's very much health care anchor. And so in the perfect world, we'll be able to actually have more equitable distribution of those space goods, leveraging that kind of global space port of structure.

Hopefully right this all the time. I got ford today. Thank you, bill, so much for the at here.

The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. This episode was produced by me, danny Lewis. Our fact checker is a partner native mixing and sound designed by Michael love like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform.

Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discuss what responsible AI looks like in practice. Here's fator boy to eris from IBM consulting again on why that begins with data.

My favorite definition of the word date up. It's an architect of the human experience. A I is like a mirror that reflects our biases back towards us, but we have to be brave enough and introspective enough to look into the mirror.

Does this reflection actually line to my organization? Values, if IT allies be true, aren't about why did you pick the data that you did? If IT doesn't like that, when you know you need to change your entire approach.

learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM outcome flash consulting.