Varda Space Successfully Manufactures HIV Medicine in Earth Orbit

Varda Space Industries has successfully manufactured the HIV/AIDS medication, ritonavir, in space. The company’s W-1 capsule returned to Earth on February 21, after spending seven months in orbit, carrying this unique payload.

Varda Space is pioneering the autonomous manufacturing of pharmaceuticals in microgravity, a strategy that could significantly reduce the cost of life-saving drugs. According to a new preprint paper, the company is one step closer to achieving that goal.

The W-1 mission sought to test the feasibility of making therapeutics in space, testing Varda’s hardware off Earth for the first time. During its time in orbit, the W-1 capsule successfully crystalized the metastable Form III of the antiviral drug ritonavir, which then survived its return to Earth. The space-processed ritonavir has since been analyzed, and per a post by Varda Space cofounder Delian Asparouhov, “[t]hem space drugs cooked real good.”

The mission’s data, now published in the preprint paper, also provides crucial information about the effects of spaceflight and reentry — such as vibration, acceleration, radiation, and temperature — on the pharmaceutical-production process.

“By providing a detailed experimental dataset centered on survivability, we pave the way for the future of in-space processing of medicines that enable the development of novel drug products on Earth and benefit long-duration human exploration initiatives,” states the paper’s abstract.