SpacePharma

SpacePharma, headquartered in Couvet, Switzerland (Neuchâtel canton) and founded in 2012, is a Swiss commercial microgravity research company that miniaturizes laboratory experiments for operation in the space environment — enabling pharmaceutical, biotechnology, crystal growth, and materials science research to be conducted in the microgravity conditions of the International Space Station and small satellites at dramatically lower cost than traditional ISS payload systems.

SpacePharma's core technology is the SP-Lab — a miniaturized, automated microfluidic laboratory system small enough to fit within the constraints of a CubeSat deployment or a small ISS experiment volume, yet capable of running controlled multi-step biological and chemical experiments with precise temperature, pH, and reagent control. The SP-Lab's microfluidic chip architecture enables experiments that would require a bench full of laboratory equipment on Earth to run autonomously in orbit with no astronaut intervention, using programmed fluid routing through micro-channels to mix reagents, introduce samples, and perform assays at scheduled mission timeline points.

In microgravity, convection-driven mixing and sedimentation are absent — enabling protein crystallization at larger, more ordered crystal sizes than achievable on Earth (valuable for X-ray crystallography of pharmaceutical targets), cell culture without the gravitational stresses that alter gene expression and morphology, and colloidal aggregation studies for drug formulation. SpacePharma's customers include pharmaceutical companies studying protein structure for drug discovery, biotechnology researchers growing organoids and 3D cell cultures in microgravity, and materials scientists studying solidification and crystal growth phenomena.

SpacePharma has operated experiments on the ISS via Dragon and Cygnus cargo missions, and launched its own SP-Lab-equipped nanosatellites aboard ISRO PSLV rideshare missions, providing low-cost, faster-access alternatives to ISS campaigns for experiments that don't require crew interaction. The company competes with NanoRacks (now Voyager Space), CASIS managed ISS National Laboratory programs, and Axiom Space's research services.