Developing drugs from outer space: Exobiosphere raises €2 million

Do you associate biotech with space conquest? Space isn’t just about rockets and satellites – it’s an increasingly valuable environment for running biomedical experiments that aren’t possible on Earth. Under microgravity, biological systems behave differently, and that difference is exactly what makes space so useful for drug discovery and disease research. And Exobiosphere, a Luxembourg-based contract and research organization (CRO) is leveraging this environment.

Today, Exobiosphere completed an €2 million ($2.2 million) seed round to develop its microgravity-enabled drug discovery platform. The company is backed by the Luxembourg Space Agency and is preparing for its first space mission. 

Exobiosphere isn’t an isolated case. NASA has supported numerous companies in conducting experiments in space. But what makes space an interesting environment that can accelerate biotech innovation? 

Why space? The biological case for biotech off-earth

In orbit, the absence of gravity-driven convection and sedimentation allows protein crystals to grow more slowly and evenly. This leads to larger and well-ordered crystals, which are easier to analyze. Concretely, insights gained from these space-grown crystals can accelerate the design of new drugs, especially for proteins that are difficult to crystallize on Earth.

NASA has supported several such experiments on the International Space Station (ISS), including a recent project led by Merck on the crystallization of key oncology targets.

Microgravity also changes how human cells grow and interact. For example, cancer cells cultured in space often form 3D structures that more closely resemble real tumors than flat cell layers in petri dishes. Similarly, kidney cell models in orbit have provided new insights into fluid balance, inflammation, and tissue degradation, allowing for a better understanding of renal disease progression.

Exposure to radiation, microgravity, and limited oxygen in space creates a kind of accelerated stress environment for cells. This makes space an unexpected platform for building relevant disease models, which could help close the gap between lab results and patient outcomes.

This environment also induces oxidative stress and triggers forms of cell death like necrosis, which are harder to study in standard lab setups. This is particularly relevant to companies like LinkGevity, which we received on the Beyond Biotech podcast in October 2024, and is developing anti-necrotic compounds with potential applications in both Earth-based medicine and astronaut health.

What’s changing now is the emergence of dedicated biotech companies, like Exobiosphere and LinkGevity, that aim to industrialize and scale what used to be niche experiments. With space becoming more accessible, biotech may soon be one of the most unexpected sectors to take off.

Exobiosphere and the rise of space-based platforms

For years, space-based biotech was mostly about one-off experiments – growing protein crystals, testing how cells behave in orbit, or seeing how microgravity affects muscle atrophy. But that’s starting to change. A new wave of companies is working to build actual platforms in space – not just experiments – that can make research in microgravity more systematic, scalable, and accessible.

Exobiosphere is one of them. Founded in 2024 and based in Luxembourg, the contract research organization (CRO) is developing a high-throughput drug discovery platform designed specifically for microgravity conditions. The company has already secured support from the Luxembourg Space Agency and has won a LuxIMPULSE contract co-backed by the European Space Agency (ESA). Its aim is to run large-scale preclinical testing in orbit, starting with applications in oncology, regenerative medicine, and immunotherapy.

“We’re building critical infrastructure that lowers the barrier to entry for pharma and biotech companies. This investment marks a pivotal step in making microgravity drug discovery accessible, scalable, and commercially viable,” said Kyle Acierno, chief executive officer (CEO) of Exobiosphere in the press release.

The idea is simple: use space as an integral part of the drug development pipeline, where compounds can be screened and optimized based on how they behave under stressors like microgravity and radiation. If successful, this could unlock new mechanisms of action or reveal biological behaviors that are difficult to detect on Earth. 

Exobiosphere is far from alone venturing into space. A growing number of startups are exploring microgravity as a tool for therapeutic discovery or production — from Space Tango’s modular payload units designed to conduct autonomous biomedical research in space, to LambdaVision’s space-grown artificial retinas, to Varda and Redwire’s efforts to improve drug crystallization in orbit. The field is still emerging, but biotech is starting to take space seriously. 

Another company trying to turn microgravity into something useful for biotech is SpacePharma. It has built small, automated labs that can be sent into orbit and controlled from Earth, allowing researchers to run experiments without the need for astronauts or custom payloads. It’s a way to make space research less of a one-off mission and more of a service.

Sometimes, it’s also the other way around, biotech developed on earth finds additional use in space. That is the case for LinkGevity.

LinkGevity: Rethinking aging and cell death in orbit

LinkGevity didn’t start as a space company. In fact, its initial goal was much more grounded, to rethink how we apprehend aging and the decline that comes with it. Founded by sisters Carina Kern, a longevity scientist, and Serena Kern-Libera, a lawyer, the company built its foundation on what they call the blueprint theory of aging – a framework for identifying shared biological pathways that drive multiple age-related diseases, rather than chasing individual diagnoses one by one.

The company’s lead drug is a set of anti-necrotic compounds that can block necrosis. Unlike apoptosis, which is a controlled and often beneficial form of cell death, necrosis is chaotic and irreversible, leading to tissue and organ failure. According to LinkGevity’s research, this process plays a central role in six of the top ten global causes of death, including acute kidney injury.

So where does space come in?

It turns out that necrosis – and the stresses that trigger it, like oxidative damage, inflammation, and oxygen deprivation – are also serious concerns for long-duration space missions. Astronauts on extended flights experience physiological deterioration that resembles accelerated aging, and the kidney is one of the most vulnerable organs. As Serena Kern pointed out in the podcast, “We didn’t start out thinking we were a space company. It just so happens that our technology, which is really useful on Earth, is also really useful in space.”

That led LinkGevity to apply for and win a place in NASA’s Space-H accelerator, a program designed to support startups working on health technologies for space travel. The biotech company sees this as an opportunity to apply its anti-necrotic drugs in space – for example, to prevent organ damage during deep space missions, or even to support organoid growth and cryopreservation, two areas where necrosis also presents a major bottleneck.

The next chapter of biotech’s space odyssey 

Between Exobiosphere developing a discovery platform, LinkGevity designing therapies that might protect astronauts from organ failure, and SpacePharma offering remote-controlled lab systems, an ecosystem is starting to take shape. And it’s not just startups, agencies like NASA and ESA are backing this shift, not only with access to orbit, but increasingly with support programs like NASA’s Space-H accelerator or ESA’s LuxIMPULSE initiative.

Still, big questions remain. How do you validate results in orbit and translate them to Earth-based applications? And will pharma companies really be willing to scale research and development (R&D) beyond gravity once the novelty wears off?

For now, space biotech is still in its early chapters. But companies like Exobiosphere and LinkGevity aren’t just running experiments – they’re trying to build something repeatable and scalable. And if they succeed, the next generation of drugs might not come from a lab bench but from a space station.