Microgravity is not the story.
Better outcomes are.

LambdaVision is leveraging microgravity to manufacture next-generation artificial retinas designed to restore sight for patients with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. On Earth, gravity-driven sedimentation and convection limit the uniform assembly of the protein layers their retina depends on; in orbit, that constraint disappears, enabling highly uniform thin-film assembly via an automated, closed-loop fluidic system built with Space Tango.

Merck is leveraging microgravity to optimize the crystallization and formulation of pembrolizumab (Keytruda), its blockbuster PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor. Aboard the ISS, the absence of convection and sedimentation produces more uniform, higher-quality protein crystals — as shown in the comparison above — enabling higher-concentration formulations that could support a long-acting subcutaneous format and reduce dependence on hospital-based IV infusion.

The Sanford Stem Cell Institute is leveraging microgravity to enhance stem cell growth, organization, and therapeutic potential. Removing gravitational load lets stem cells self-assemble into more complex, three-dimensional structures than is typically possible in standard Earth-based culture, helping researchers study differentiation pathways under conditions that more closely mirror native tissue formation — unlocking new pathways for scalable regenerative medicine.

Redwire is utilizing microgravity to construct viable cardiac tissue, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in tissue engineering. Bioprinting in orbit avoids the gravitational settling that distorts soft tissue scaffolds on Earth, allowing thicker, more uniformly vascularized constructs to take shape — a step toward lab-grown tissue that could one day support heart repair without donor transplants.

Eascra Biotech's Janus base nanomaterials — self-assembling scaffolds that deliver fragile RNA drugs into hard-to-reach tissue — suffered from uneven assembly on Earth due to gravity-driven convection. Partnering with Axiom Space and the ISS National Lab, Eascra flew production to orbit and saw the nano-matrix come back up to 40% more uniform and denser, with RNA cargo that stayed bioactive at room temperature for months.

Cedars-Sinai is leveraging microgravity to investigate the growth and maturation of brain organoids — three-dimensional, stem cell–derived neural tissues that recapitulate key aspects of human neurodevelopment and disease. Without gravity-driven sedimentation, organoids can grow more symmetrically and reach greater structural complexity, offering a clearer window into early neurodevelopmental processes and disease onset.

LinkGevity is leveraging microgravity to investigate the biological mechanisms that drive aging, with a focus on cellular stress, DNA damage, and regenerative decline. Microgravity acts as an accelerant for many of these processes, compressing years of gradual age-related change into the timeframe of a single mission and giving researchers a faster, more tractable path to identifying interventions that could slow or reverse them.

In 1998, Abbott's HIV drug ritonavir spontaneously crystallized into a less-soluble form and had to be pulled from the market, costing an estimated $250M and becoming pharma's textbook polymorph crisis. Varda recreated that same metastable crystal form aboard its W-1 capsule, where the absence of convection and sedimentation allows more controlled crystallization, and returned it to Earth intact — the first proof that pharmaceutical compounds can be processed in orbit reliably enough for a real manufacturing pipeline.

Encapsulate's tumor-on-a-chip system grows a patient's own tumor cells outside the body and tests chemotherapy on the replica before the patient takes a dose. Flying the chip to the ISS as an autonomous CubeLab with Space Tango compresses what takes about a year to observe on Earth into a few weeks, since microgravity accelerates how cancer responds to treatment — with blind trials on archived samples already matching clinical outcomes over 96% of the time.

Aspera is developing Rebecsinib, a first-in-class inhibitor targeting ADAR1, the protein cancer stem cells use to evade the immune system and drive relapse across more than 20 cancers. In microgravity, those stem cells age and adapt up to seven times faster, letting Aspera's nanobioreactors compress years of relapse biology into days, while parallel ADAR1p150 crystallization flights using Redwire's PIL-BOX hardware are mapping the protein's structure to guide an oral formulation now headed toward clinical trials.

Auxilium Biotechnologies' AMP-1 orbital bioprinter produced kidney and liver tissue aboard the International Space Station in June 2026 — the first time either tissue type has been manufactured in space. Working from cell and tissue designs developed with the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the mission also bioprinted cartilage and 28 nerve repair implants, with the printed materials returning to Earth intact aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. WFIRM director Anthony Atala pointed to the uniform cell distribution achieved in orbit as a real path toward manufacturing medical devices and tissues in space.