The launch of SpaceX’s Drag­on space­craft from Cape Canaver­al last night had more on board than just sup­plies for the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. It al­so con­tained re­search ma­te­ri­als, in­clud­ing some from Bris­tol My­ers Squibb.

BMS’ project to study the crys­tal­liza­tion of bio­ther­a­peu­tic com­pounds in mi­cro­grav­i­ty is one of about 20 re­search projects on board, ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion Na­tion­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. The BMS re­search will in­ves­ti­gate how the crys­tal­liza­tion process could im­prove bio­man­u­fac­tur­ing and even­tu­al­ly pro­vide de­liv­ery of high­er dos­es of pro­teins.

Robert Garmise

Space of­fers a “unique en­vi­ron­ment” for crys­tal­liza­tion with the com­plete ab­sence of sed­i­men­ta­tion and con­vec­tion which is not avail­able on Earth, said Robert Garmise, the as­so­ciate di­rec­tor of BMS’ ma­te­r­i­al sci­ence and en­gi­neer­ing and the leader of the phar­ma’s space sta­tion re­search project, in an email to End­points News.

BMS’ ride on the lat­est SpaceX trip stems from a grant pro­pos­al in 2018 for mi­cro­grav­i­ty re­search on pro­tein crys­tal­liza­tion. The grant was award­ed, and the team was able to launch its first ex­per­i­ments on a SpaceX ves­sel in De­cem­ber 2020. Garmise said the re­sults from that ex­per­i­ment led to a fol­low-on grant which was award­ed last year for the cur­rent mis­sion.

This par­tic­u­lar project aims to ob­tain crys­tals that have greater “uni­for­mi­ty,” he said, which can BMS hopes can lead to a more ef­fi­cient man­u­fac­tur­ing process for ther­a­peu­tics.

“In the fu­ture, we hope to con­tin­ue to ad­vance our knowl­edge of crys­tal­liza­tion of ther­a­peu­tics in mi­cro­grav­i­ty, and then tak­ing our learn­ings and ap­ply­ing them to broad­er modal­i­ties,” he said.

BMS is not the on­ly one that is work­ing on drug man­u­fac­tur­ing projects in space.

Red­wire Cor­po­ra­tion, a Flori­da-based com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures space in­fra­struc­ture, is de­vel­op­ing tech for drug man­u­fac­tur­ing in low Earth or­bit and has part­nered with Eli Lil­ly to con­duct test­ing on its first ex­per­i­ments. The project, dubbed the Bio-crys­tal Op­ti­miza­tion Xper­i­ment, or PIL-BOX, gives com­mer­cial cus­tomers and re­searchers a plat­form in mi­cro­grav­i­ty that could im­prove the de­vel­op­ment of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and oth­er prod­ucts.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Catalent will be manufacturing a low-cost version of the opioid overdose treatment naloxone as part of a contract with Harm Reduction Therapeutics.

Catalent plans to manufacture the treatment at its facility in Morrisville, NC. No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

Harm Reduction was granted priority review status for the NDA on its spray last year. The company has been working on a naloxone product since 2017. It is anticipating approval in July of this year and a US launch in early 2024.

Last year, South African-based vaccine manufacturer Aspen Pharmacare was facing reports that it had not received a single order for its manufactured Covid-19 shots and that manufacturing lines were sitting idle. But now the vaccine producer is looking to turn things around.

Aspen’s disclosure of its financial results in March unveiled that manufacturing revenue had decreased by 12% to R 603 million ($33.8 million), which Lorraine Hill, Aspen Group’s COO, said is attributable to lower Covid vaccine sales.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is putting down more roots in the Bay Area.

The manufacturer opened the doors to a new cell therapy manufacturing facility next to the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus and on the university’s campus.

UCSF and Thermo Fisher have had a partnership since 2021, with the new site focusing on manufacturing cell therapeutics for certain cancers, including glioblastoma and multiple myeloma. The new site plans to use Thermo Fisher’s expertise in manufacturing services to help UCSF accelerate the development of cell therapies and eventually get them into the clinic, said Dan Herring, the general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher, in an interview with Endpoints News.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”