Vision

To enable the routine practice of drug formulation and synthesis in space towards developing novel active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) or improving the properties of existing ones which cannot be ensured under Earth conditions.

What is SpaceMedChem Project?

In the last years,the space industry has progressed significantly in recognizing that performing chemistry in space is increasingly essential. More and more space companies & agencies consider chemical applications as organic components of their long-term business strategy.

In parallel, numerous research studies have recently shown that microgravity is a promising and emerging tool offering a novel approach to develop and/or improve pharmaceutical compounds and processes either for space purposes or applications on Earth. For example, space medicinal chemistry was proven to be a potential tool to fight against the epidemic: the first study on COVID-19 drug research has recently been carried out on the International Space Station.

This effort can be considered as a key initiative for the pharma industry to widen their development opportunities via space research.

The SpaceMedChem Project is a consortium of internationally renowned scientists from academia and industry specifically targeted towards enabling and studying the practice of drug formulation and synthesis in space. It offers research solution for the pharmaceutical industry for advancing their products and syntheses methods on a highly innovative but cost efficient way.

Targeted challenges

  • contribute to novel chemistries and new molecules, also to the design of drug molecules with enhanced properties in space
  • open route to develop so far unknown chemistry
  • develop novel drug candidates highly efficient for treating COVID-19 and future epidemic diseases
  • initiate & realize integrated standardization efforts for drug discovery experimentation in space
  • implement one of the first instruments in space which will show the conceptual way towards good practice of on-demand pharmaceutical syntheses and related in-space manufacturing

Research areas

  • novel APIs development: microgravity can ensure faster, more efficient reaction routes, even novel reaction products which are difficult to synthesize on Earth
  • drug discovery under microgravity may provide solution to solve stability problems of new APIs emerging in the late phase of drug development pipelines
  • API production for long-term space travellers and astronauts: it is an unavoidably important task to re-produce numerous active compounds with enhanced stability properties since space is generally known to diminish drug stability
  • exploration of contingently diverse decomposition routes of APIs in space and on Earth – promising one of the most significant discovery in 21st century’s chemistry
  • chemistry research in outer space environment may allow to perform so far unknown syntheses via quantum tunnelling

Project partners

Are you interested in joining or support our team? Contact us at: info@spacemedchem.com


© International Consortium for Space Medicinal Chemistry