Redwire Corporation has been awarded a NASA contract to launch four additional pharmaceutical drug investigations to the International Space Station using the company’s innovative Pharmaceutical In-space Laboratory (PIL-BOX).

The NASA-funded investigations aim to manufacture high-value seed crystals which could inform pharmaceutical manufacturing operations aboard the space station and future commercial space stations in low Earth orbit (LEO).

“NASA has been an instrumental partner and customer as we’ve scaled our pharmaceutical drug manufacturing program significantly over the last year. Additional PIL-BOX investigations from NASA and commercial partners will enable Redwire to optimize the infrastructure to launch, test, manufacture, and return high-value space enabled pharmaceutical products and establish a new market in LEO,” said John Vellinger, Redwire’s President of In-Space Industries.

With 28 units flown and processed to date, PIL-BOX provides pharmaceutical researchers with novel and flexible services to leverage the microgravity environment to grow small-batch crystals of protein-based pharmaceuticals and other key pharmaceutically relevant molecules.

Previous spaceflight investigations indicate that growing crystals in space could yield a more uniform product with fewer imperfections, which can improve the drug discovery and development process. Previous investigations have focused on unlocking insights to improve treatments for cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes.