Human Transcribed
Mari Anne Snow:
I would argue it's an inflection moment that is happening globally to kind of think about what a space economy for life science products looks like. More traditional space elements, which are telecommunication, defense, weather surveillance, that's the tip of the iceberg. Once that moon colonization has advanced, now we can think about, geez, how are we going to go beyond that? Whatever that means.
Chai Nussbaumer:
What do camera phones, wireless headphones and memory foam have in common? Each of them was created at least in part because people started exploring space.
Micah Schweizer:
Today, the space economy is growing fast with more products, experiments, and companies involved than ever before.
Chai Nussbaumer:
In this episode, we'll look at one product that began on earth, made its way into space and became more efficient as a result.
Micah Schweizer:
We'll explore how microgravity plays a role in all of this and ask, what does a supply chain that goes 250 miles straight up look like?
Chai Nussbaumer:
I'm Chai Nussbaumer.
Micah Schweizer:
And I'm Micah Schweizer. This is Balancing the Future from METTLER TOLEDO.
Chai Nussbaumer:
On this show, we explore the world of science and technology and the solutions transforming our lives.
Mari Anne Snow:
My name is Mari Anne Snow and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Eascra Biotech.
Micah Schweizer:
And can you tell us a bit more about what Eascra Biotech does?
Mari Anne Snow:
Eascra Biotech is a therapeutic delivery technology that is used to deliver a wide variety of different types of therapeutic payloads. It could be an mRNA, it could be siRNA, proteins, peptides, even Cas9. And we are particularly effective at penetrating very dense tissues like cartilage, kidneys and solid tumors.
Micah Schweizer:
And Eascra says it's the first company to produce nanoparticles in space for advanced medical applications on earth. So let's focus on this. Why develop therapeutics in space in the first place?
Mari Anne Snow:
I think what's important to know, Micah, is we actually have a very successful terrestrial product. Very funny, how many companies get to say terrestrial product, right? And my co-founder and business partner, Dr. Yupeng Chen, is a biomedical engineer. He's an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, and he has been working on the technology for 20 years. However, when you actually launch a life science company and you do it at the beginning of what was really the biotech winter 2022, you are instantly faced with the question, how are you going to fund yourself?
And my co-founder and business partner actually had a relationship with NASA. They were aware of his technology and they were also standing up a new program identifying candidates for microgravity production. And they suggested to him that we were good candidates for that program. He called me and he said, "What do you think about becoming a space company?" And I chuckled and I said, "Well, will they actually fund us?" And he said, "I think they will." And in less than four months, we received 1.86 million US dollars to actually launch Eascra and not only advance our technology on the ground on earth, but also we brought it to the International Space Station, produced it in space. And lo and behold, we can produce a product that is an advanced therapeutic and advanced formulation of our product on the ground that is 40 to 50% more efficacious than the product that we produce on earth. So we're already producing effective product on earth, but we have a mechanism to produce advanced formulations in the future that are capable of doing even more than what our current product can do.
Micah Schweizer:
And that's a dramatic increase.
Mari Anne Snow:
Yeah. We're not talking about a little increase. We're not talking about 10%. We're talking about significant percentage increases.
Micah Schweizer:
So you mentioned microgravity production. Can we just take a step back and give a definition of what microgravity production means?
Mari Anne Snow:
Microgravity is really the area that exists that is about 250 miles straight up out of the Earth's immediate atmosphere. So we're talking about the area that actually is where satellites play, where the International Space Station exists as a perpetual orbital platform. It's also known as low earth orbit. So it's the area that is going to be completely free of gravity. So gravity is going to change quite a bit, which is really a fundamental factor in biological production of therapeutics, whether we're talking about our assembly of nanoparticles in space or we're talking about things like crystallization for crystal-based therapeutics. And we even have a colleague who is building artificial retinas to deal with genetic conditions that cause blindness.
Micah Schweizer:
Wow.
Mari Anne Snow:
So people are doing really interesting things. People are doing cancer research because of the impact microgravity has on cell aging and Eascra is actually building nanoparticles.
Micah Schweizer:
And the benefits of microgravity, for instance, working with nanoparticles are what?
Mari Anne Snow:
Our assembly process is pretty straightforward. So our product starts as a base molecule that then through non-covalent bonding and pi-pi stacking actually formulates through really the attachment of tens of thousands of those base molecules to form nanotubes that then encapsulate a cargo and render our nanoparticle a very unique shape, which is very long and slender. It's more rod shaped, more needle shaped than it is spherical, which is typical. In earth setting, a terrestrial setting, when we assemble those particles, obviously on earth we have gravitational forces, we have friction forces. And when you take the raw materials to space and you conduct the assembly process in microgravity, not only do you have an absence of gravitational forces, but also it's a completely different frictionless environment. And so when you begin a process where there are base molecules that are suspended liquid, just like crystal formations, if you have a base seed crystal that then is grown in a frictionless environment, you get more uniform homogeneous structures that tend to, in our case, be much more robust. They have better loading capability that translates not only to transfection improvements, but also translation improvements.
Chai Nussbaumer:
Hey, Micah.
Micah Schweizer:
Hey, Chai.
Chai Nussbaumer:
Micah, did you know that more than 80% of the 500 pharmaceutical and industrial crystals produced in space showed improved structure, better uniformity and fewer defects? That includes new technologies used to treat things like insulin related conditions and some cancers.
Micah Schweizer:
It's amazing what microgravity can do. Have there been benefits in other sectors too?
Chai Nussbaumer:
Yes. An example is superalloys, a mix of high strength metals that wouldn't blend as uniformly if they were created on earth. There's also the potential for new versions of ultra-thin semiconductors and ceramics that aren't bound to the effects of Earth's gravity.
Micah Schweizer:
So there's a lot going on in the space economy right now, but that also means that someone has to regulate and approve all these technologies back on earth.
Mari Anne Snow:
The one factor that we've identified with the FDA that will need to be modernized is how do you monitor those standards within the supply chain when you are 250 miles straight up? But remote monitoring is an existing construct. We certainly have precedent through COVID because there was remote monitoring happening there. And there are therapeutics that are being developed that have different types of toxicity issues, are caustic to handle. So you're not going to have human intervention in those particular production environments. There are chemical environments that require remote monitoring and remote observational oversight. So that stuff already exists, Micah. So now it's a question of really making sure that we can develop all of the individual components. And what's happening at this particular second is all the players are at the table. I mean, we actually have insurance companies saying, "How do you insure this thing?"
We have payers who are saying, "How would you pay for this thing?" We have healthcare facilities who are saying, "How do you apply this to a healthcare system? How do we educate physicians? How do we educate consumers?" Because ultimately we're building things that would be going into a healthcare system that administers them to humans. And we take that very seriously, but in some ways, it's no different than if you're building a new medicine terrestrially on earth. You still have the same considerations, but the variables are different.
Micah Schweizer:
It's interesting to think that the production is actually only 250 miles away. In terms of terrestrial supply chains, that would be considered short when we're talking about thousands of miles. But as you just said, of course, the variables are completely different. You don't have to punch through the atmosphere if you want to produce something in Asia, for instance. And so that's a whole different technological consideration in terms of the transport.
Mari Anne Snow:
It is, but I would argue that at the very beginning stages of setting up that global supply chain, there were a whole bunch of people in a room who were scratching their heads saying, "We've never done this before. How do we do it?" And so this has been a problem that has been actually overcome in many different forms. And a lot of it's going to be enabled by the advances in technology, whether we're talking about just the monitoring capabilities, the ability to just think about it from a Starlink satellite perspective. When we bring payloads up to the station right now, we've got real-time data packets that are being sent back to us. And the International Space Station is antiquated technology. It's 25 years old. So our data packet transfer is actually quite modest in comparison to what can happen in the future because with structures in place like Starlink, you can move data not only up and down, but all around the globe very fast and efficiently.
So how those mechanisms can work in today's environment based on what's available technically as well as just how each of the players are working together to formulate a full system. And part of the reason that Eascra and all of our colleagues who are actually working as an end customer right at this point exist is because everyone knows if you're going to build the supply chain, but you don't actually have an end user, that's a fundamental problem.
Micah Schweizer:
And everything you're talking about here would fall under the umbrella of the idea of a space economy. What are your thoughts on the current attention and investment the space economy is receiving right now?
Mari Anne Snow:
It's an inflection moment, and I would argue it's an inflection moment that is happening globally. To think about what a space economy for life science products looks like, I can tell you from a funding perspective, it is a concept that is really driving discussions in every country that has an interest in a lively and emerging sector. So think about it, you've got not only whether it's more traditional space elements, which are telecommunications, obviously we're also talking about things like defense. We're talking about things like surveillance in relation to things like weather surveillance. That's the tip of the iceberg, quite frankly, because now there are more and more industries that are saying to themselves, are we going to be infrastructure players here? Are we going to be really looking at service providers? What kind of products can we produce? And then what are all the ancillary services that will actually serve this industry as it starts to mature and as it starts to really become the base?
Because there are lots of individuals who have a lot of conversations about can we live on Mars? Can we travel to Mars? Can we live on Mars? But you can't really do that until you have a little bit more off-world living. So the current target is obviously lunar, cis-lunar. And so there is a big push to really think about how do we establish and colonize something that has never been established and colonized before, but you can't really do that without a waystation. So part of this is that LEO orbit, low earth orbit, that microgravity orbit is if earth is the first station, that microgravity is really the longer distance jump off point. Moon is really a proof of concept of off-world living. And then once that moon colonization has advanced, now we can think about, geez, how are we going to go beyond that? Whatever that means, whether it's Mars or who knows? I've been a Star Trek fan for a very long time.
Micah Schweizer:
And when you talk about the International Space Station or its successor in low earth orbit as sort of a waystation and as a place where therapeutic production could take place and so forth, what kind of timeframe are you imagining here?
Mari Anne Snow:
Well, it's interesting because the ISS National Lab has actually been hosting science experiments almost since inception. And I would argue before the ISS, because there were other structures that were in space were actually performing rudimentary experiments before anything had been implemented around the International Space Station. But there's been 25 years of really uninterrupted science happening. And we also need to acknowledge the extraordinary job that the Chinese folks have done putting their station up and also the work that they've done to advance the technologies in these environments. And as you have these platforms that are in these unique environments, one of the things that's absolutely happened is what a surprise humans are now saying, "What's the market opportunity here?" And so I think about five years ago, there was a big shift where it went from we're a science platform, but can we translate and transform some of that science into commercial product and is there an economy here?
So from the moment that Rocket Lab became a commercial venture, the moment that SpaceX had reusable parts, then all of a sudden there's been a very rapid upward trajectory. So we're not talking about one or two companies in a particular geography that are working on this stuff. Right at this particular point in time, we could take you to any place in the world. There are discussions happening, there are investments being made. So one of the things that I would say to you is given the momentum and the sort of aggressive competitiveness that comes from, geez, we have an opportunity, let's be the first and let's do these things, I see within five years something that is truly remarkable.
Micah Schweizer:
So some massive acceleration happening. Yeah.
Mari Anne Snow:
Yeah. I think once you crack that code in space tourism, whether it be hotels in space, I guarantee you there's going to be somebody who's going to do that because there are a lot of people actually want to do these things, but Blue Origin is already stuck there, reusable rocket. So it's happened twice. If it's happened twice, it's going to happen again. And then once it happens again, if you've never done it and then suddenly you do it and now you know you can, you're going to have more people doing it.
Micah Schweizer:
Well, thank you, Mari Anne, for such a fascinating look into the work that you're doing with Eascra. And we'll look forward to watching the company grow and develop over time.
Mari Anne Snow:
Yeah.
Micah Schweizer:
Appreciate your time today.
Chai Nussbaumer:
You've been listening to Balancing the Future from METTLER TOLEDO.
Micah Schweizer:
And if you found this episode interesting, why not listen to our interview with Magdalena Herová from season one?
Chai Nussbaumer:
It's linked in the show notes and it's all about the process of setting up experiments for space.
Micah Schweizer:
If you're enjoying this show, you can help other listeners find us by leaving a review. Or if you listen on Spotify, leave a message in the comments section.
Chai Nussbaumer:
Also, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
