ZERO-G BIOLOGY

An El Segundo company has a novel solution to creating complex pharmaceuticals - using space tech to launch them into orbit

- David Nusbaum

The next frontier for medicine is closer to Los Angeles than San Francisco but feels like another galaxy. That's because it's about 300 miles straight up above sea level - in low-Earth orbit.

Varda Space Industries, an El Segundo microgravity enabled life sciences company, uses low-Earth orbit to develop unique drug formulations. It's a space-age approach to medicine that launches a capsule containing chemical compounds beyond Earth's atmosphere, where microgravity allows pharmaceutical formulations to be created in a process differently than on the surface. The capsules then reenter the atmosphere with their precious cargo.

It became the first company to complete a manufacturing mission conducted outside of the International Space Station last year. Two more missions followed in early 2025 and a fourth launched on June 22. Varda plans to launch one more capsule this year and has four scheduled in 2026, which are all booked to capacity.

"What's special about next year is that the last two capsules will be going up on the same rocket. It will be the first time where we have two spacecraft in orbit at once, and we'll start to move into a fleet mentality," said Will Bruey, chief executive and co-founder of Varda.

Bruey, a former SpaceX engineer co-founded the company in 2021 with Delian Asparouhov, a former principal at Khosla Ventures. The company's growth is supported by a new round of investment. In July, the company announced a $187-million Series C round led by Natural Capital and Shrug Capital, with participation from Founders Fund, Peter Thiel, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Lux Capital and Also Capital. That brings total funding to $329 million.