India’s Spacetech Ecosystem Looks To Microgravity For Drug Discovery And Manufacturing

India’s spacetech startups are exploring microgravity as a new frontier for drug discovery, pharmaceutical manufacturing and advanced materials.

Microgravity can enable more uniform protein crystals and manufacturing conditions that are difficult to replicate on Earth, potentially improving drug development.

Serendipity, AnduraX, Akashalabdhi and Ethereal are among the companies building platforms and infrastructure for in-space manufacturing, as global players such as Merck, Redwire and Varda push the technology towards commercialisation.

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Nearly seven decades after NASA began studying how matter behaves beyond Earth, microgravity research is entering a new phase: from experimentation in space to manufacturing in space.

Microgravity offers conditions that are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to replicate on Earth. With gravity largely out of the equation, researchers can grow ultra-pure protein crystals that could aid drug discovery, explore new biological processes and develop advanced materials with properties that are difficult to achieve on the ground. What began largely as a scientific pursuit is now........

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