Kyle of ExoBiosphere is launching an autonomous lab to space on December 25 to test cancer drugs. Cancer cells grow 100 times faster in microgravity and form spheroids that better mimic human tissue, potentially compressing pre-clinical testing from years to ten days.
Chapters
Nervous isn't the right word.
It's more like a rush, like a high.
Draper family, I'm here to tell you that the cure for cancer is in space, and ExoBiosphere is building the platform to find it.
One day I was thinking deeply about the purpose of life, and I came to the conclusion that the main purpose of life is only to continue our species to exist. And I felt that the best way to do that was to expand into space. Kind of deep. Even when I was in high school or younger, I like to be a part of a team and I like to lead teams. So I think I always knew that I would have my own company. I don't think I thought it would be in space. I always was passionate about the environment. I'm a bit jaded now, so that's why I'm looking to space. We're starting with cancer because cancer specifically grows almost 100 times faster in space. Everybody in our company has lost someone due to cancer. When you're doing research on Earth, gravity is pushing down on that cell. It kind of flattens it out. And so they're doing testing in a cell that doesn't really replicate what the cell looks like in your human body. However, in space, because everyone's falling, the cells are spherical. We're actually testing on something that is very similar to how it looks in the human body. Over the past 30 years, the International Space Station has been used to do science, but the problem was that Many of the experiments required astronauts, and astronauts are incredibly intelligent humans, but after they live in space for a few weeks, their cognitive abilities lessen, and so they tend to make a lot of mistakes. This created a tremendous amount of problems throughout decades of experiments. So the first thing we needed to do was to develop an automated machine that would conduct all of those activities themselves. So space wasn't intuitively the place that I intended to do work, and ultimately the work that we're doing doesn't really involve me going to space. I see it just as a destination to travel to, and if we can use the technology and the things that we learn to help humans go to other planets, even better. Ultimately, my younger self always wanted to make a contribution and make sure that my life had meaning and impact, and if I only have, you know, A couple more decades on this planet, I want to make sure that it's impactful.
This is my first time in Saudi Arabia. I really like it. Really inspired by the level of innovation that I see and the hope in people's eyes. We met some great potential partners, and it's been in. Truly inspiring to see the level of innovation coming out of Saudi Arabia. Really interesting to see the juxtaposition between the old and the new. I feel like there's a lot of opportunities here for companies to leapfrog and get ahead of the rest of the world. So I think it's truly inspirational that they're willing to take risks, willing to put their money where their mouth is, and just really willing to put in the effort to be a world-leading player. Nervous isn't the right word.
It's more like a rush, like a high.
Draper family, I'm here to tell you that the cure for cancer is in space, and Exobiosphere is building the platform to find it. In 2022, over 10 million people died from cancer, including both of my aunties. And there are thousands of people working on those problems, billions of dollars are spent, but 90% of drugs still fail to reach market. And the problem is the preclinical drug selection. There's a lot of inaccuracies, which results in terrible side effects and then testing on animals, which ultimately fail. In the past 30 years on the International Space Station, we've learned that cancer grows up to 100 times faster. It's much deadlier in space.
There goes my trip to the moon.
Maybe I can give you something else, because what this means is that if you test drugs on the most aggressive types of cancer in FAST, you're able to get accelerated results. What that means is that you can find drugs faster, stronger drugs, which are going to result in better drugs on Earth, ultimately saving billions of dollars and saving millions of lives. But what we've developed is the first autonomous lab in space that distributes the drugs into the well plates. We have a plate reader which is then analyzing what the drugs are doing, and we send that data back down to Earth. Scientists can understand which drugs to focus on, and we've already seen a tremendous amount of interest from the pharmaceutical companies. So we're going to be launching on Christmas Day, December 25th this year, on a SpaceX rocket with VAST, one of the first commercial—
And that will be your first launch?
It's going to be our first launch.
Ooh, that's exciting.
It's going to be very exciting.
You can get cancer to grow 1,000 times faster, but how do you get it so that you can be 1,000 times more effective?
When cancer is growing much faster and much stronger in space, you're basically testing the most strong drug that you can imagine. So if it works in space, it's going to work on Earth. Also, because it's happening much faster, it's not taking 10 years or 1 year, it takes 10 days.
Is there any FDA approvals through that process? Because it's quite different somehow.
Right. It's a very good question. So we're doing preclinical, which means that we don't need to have FDA approval. Basically, they'll give us 2,000 different drugs to test.
Right. And we're going to say, you should go to the clinic I think at the very beginning when I heard the pledge, I was worried about the competition in the market because they want to maintain traditional means and ways.
That's correct. And many pharmaceutical companies already outsource their preclinical testing to CROs. This is why they're excited about partnering with us. They know that it's going to save them billions of dollars, and ideally it's going to result in the savior of millions of lives.
Wouldn't it be possible to simulate the conditions that you have in space also on the ground?
Yeah, very good question. So we already have a number of microgravity simulators. But they don't have the same effect. They really impact the cells differently. There's a lot of pressure that's happening on them. In microgravity, that doesn't happen. And I think your question probably is, well, why is this happening in space? And the truth is that we don't know. We've just been observing it over and over again.
Well, thank you so much, Kyle, for putting together space medicine. The only thing that's missing is Bitcoin.
I'd obviously seen some of the previous episodes, so I knew that he was quite humorous. But I also could see that he is a deep thinker.
I myself had cancer at a period of time. If somebody's getting treated and they want to try something, could that be something he would test on that type of cancer? It could go to possibilities that are super huge.
Tavi, what do you think?
If there is any company in the world that can actually credibly contribute to curing cancer, they will not only be unicorns or decacorns, but they will also get Nobel Prize, that's for sure. So definitely very good team. The track record is like really rock stars.
