Our investment in BioOrbit

BioOrbit looks like a space company, but it is really a pharmaceutical infrastructure company.

Modern biology has created some of the most valuable medicines in the world, but many are constrained by how they’re manufactured and delivered. A large share of blockbuster drugs are administered intravenously in hospitals, because high-concentration antibodies are often too viscous for simple injection. That creates enormous cost, limits access, and ties patients to clinical settings.

BioOrbit is building the pharmaceutical factory that changes this. By using microgravity in Low Earth Orbit, BioOrbit can crystallise protein drugs into more ordered, uniform forms that are difficult or impossible to produce on Earth. These crystals enable existing IV biologics, including cancer therapies, to be reformulated into subcutaneous, self-injectable medicines. The result is a shift from hospital infusion to at-home treatment, enabled by their compact, autonomous manufacturing unit, BOX.

Merck & Co.’s work on Keytruda shows why this matters: Keytruda is the world’s top-selling drug, generating ~$30bn annually, and faces a patent cliff from 2028. Merck has already explored microgravity crystallisation and is actively pursuing subcutaneous formulations to extend the product lifecycle.

We believe that if converting one drug protects tens of billions in revenue, improves patient access, and removes hospital infrastructure, then the platform that enables this across many biologics becomes generational.

BioOrbit is building a new manufacturing layer for pharma, with a significant commercial opportunity across crystallisation-as-a-service, co-development contracts, royalties on reformulated drugs, and ultimately mass manufacturing in orbit. In a world where monoclonal antibodies generate £10–20bn annually, even a small royalty on a single successful reformulation can be worth hundreds of millions per year. Across multiple drugs, this compounds into a generational business.

There is a real “why now”: launch costs have fallen, re-entry infrastructure is emerging, and space is shifting from exploration to production, with companies like Open Cosmos making access to orbit increasingly routine. At the same time, pharma is under pressure from patent cliffs, rising costs, and the limits of existing formulation techniques.

And this is an area where the UK can genuinely lead, given the depth of talent and regulatory leadership that is actively prioritising and accelerating this pathway.

As always, it comes down to the founder and team to turn science fiction into reality.

We’ve been blown away by Dr Katie King who saw early that microgravity was not just a research environment, but a production one. Alongside Katie and her co-founder Dr Leonor Teles, the company is now supported by world class operators who bridge pharma and space, including Dr Molly Mulligan and Dr Ken Savin, Chief Scientist and former Eli Lilly chemist, who has spent decades working on microgravity-enabled biology, as well as astronaut Tim Peake who is joining as an advisor.

We invested because BioOrbit sits at a structural breakpoint: where advances in biology require a new production environment to realise their full potential. If BioOrbit succeeds, cancer therapies move from hospital to home, pharma gains new ways to extend and improve its most valuable drugs, and Low Earth Orbit becomes part of the pharmaceutical supply chain. This is a new industrial layer for medicine.

Proud to co-lead this round alongside Breega, and our friends at Seedcamp, Auxxo, Type One and 7Percent.

Dr Katie King, co-founder and CEO of BioOrbit, packing up Box-E (left) and BioOrbit’s Box-E unit on a SpaceX rocket heading for the International Space Station (right)