Varda to Participate in AGM of American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists and Institute of Chemical Engineers

Varda Space Industries, Inc., the world’s first in-space pharmaceutical processing company, today announced participation in the annual meetings of two professional societies, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS).

Varda Chief Science Officer Adrian Radocea will give an oral presentation at AIChE of his paper describing Varda’s hypergravity research, “Gravity as a Knob for Tuning Particle Size Distributions of Small Molecules.” Varda’s hypergravity platform investigates the ways gravity impacts nucleation and growth kinetics of small molecules and improves our understanding of gravity as a variable for improving drug substance properties.

At AAPS, Varda Senior Product Engineer Haley Bauser will participate in the Manufacturing and Analytical Characterization track by presenting a poster detailing the successful crystallization of a metastable form III of Ritonavir during Varda’s first mission in orbit. Bauser will present alongside Varda partners Improved Pharma, a leading solid state and crystallization research company, who will present their own posters on research addressing the chemical and physical stability of the Ritonavir samples.

“We’re looking forward to the opportunity to share our initial findings with industry peers about the benefits of microgravity for crystallization,” said Varda CEO Will Bruey. “We are particularly excited to showcase our collaboration with Improved Pharma to bring transformative technology from orbit to support life on Earth.”

“The collaboration between Improved Pharma and Varda has delivered groundbreaking advances, including the discovery that a new form of Ritonavir can be manufactured in space and safely returned to Earth,” said Stephen Byrn, Chief Science Officer of Improved Pharma. “The posters and presentations illustrate some of the additional novel strategies being developed jointly to allow the manufacturing of unique solid state pharmaceutical materials in space.”

Varda Space Industries is expanding the economic bounds of humankind by designing and building the infrastructure needed to make low Earth orbit accessible to industry, from in-orbit pharmaceutical processing to reliable and economical reentry capsules. The company operates out of El Segundo, California with office and industrial production space. 

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