Executive Interview with Sam Moorcroft, BioOrbit

0:03
Hi everyone and thank you for joining us today.

0:06
I will be interviewing Sam Moorcroft, the Director of Partnerships at BioOrbit a unique company looking into the benefits of microgravity, a large scale crystallisation of protein drugs.

0:18
So Sam, great to have you with us today.

0:21
And I guess to start things off, could you tell us a bit more about yourself and what inspired you to explore space manufacturing and join BioOrbit?

0:30
Yeah, absolutely.

0:31
So, yeah.

0:32
Hi, I'm Sam.

0:34
My, so my initial background was as a physicist, so that's why I did my undergraduate and master's degrees in.

0:41
And then I kind of realised that it was the application of the physics to material sciences, nanotechnology and, well, ultimately medical technologies.

0:53
So I completed a PhD and I worked in between industry and academia in healthcare technologies.

1:02
So when I found out about this opportunity at BioOrbit where it could combine my original kind of love of physics and science with what I had about my expertise in healthcare, it was an opportunity.

1:20
Well, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up really.

1:22
I heard about it and was like, this is an opportunity that very few people actually get.

1:32
I feel that there are a few chances in your life where you can work on something that is or has the potential to be genuinely world changing.

1:43
So I could never forgive myself if I let this opportunity pass up really perfect.

1:49
And I think briefly we touched on your experience beforehand with nanotechnology and assay development.

1:56
And how has this kind of been useful in your current role?

2:02
Yeah, it's been super useful.

2:04
So my background in nanotechnology generally more in the academic setting has been invaluable in figuring out the scientific strategies, figuring out what milestones we need to hit in order to achieve certain goals and move the product towards something that could be marketable and something that could genuinely have an impact.

2:35
Then alternatively stepping away from the nanotechnology and towards the, as you said, my background in lateral flow development and manufacturing that was in an industrial setting.

2:48
So I learnt a huge amount about quality control, quality assurance and well, quality management systems in general.

2:56
And the level of precision and traceability is required in all pharmaceuticals manufacturing.

3:11
I don't think you really kind of get to grips with how traceable everything has to be until you've been in that environment.

3:21
Yeah.

3:21
So I think the two different areas have come together and stood me in good stead for this role.

3:29
I'd say that's great.

3:32
And I guess some for the audience who may be unfamiliar with BioOrbit, could you summarise their mission and why micro gravity manufacturing is so important today?

3:45
Absolutely.

3:46
So our mission is to well we want to reformulate antibody therapies, protein therapies that have to be injected intravenously, a long and painful process.

3:59
We want to reformulate these into an injectable format.

4:04
So we want to take these protein therapies and have them administered how a diabetic would inject insulin.

4:12
So we are fundamentally reformulating these solubilised drugs into a crystal format and this enables you to get these ultra high concentrations that enable this injectability.

4:29
Not only this, but these crystal format of drugs are more thermally stable, meaning you don't need to store them in an ultra low temperature freezer, but they can be stored in a fridge.

4:43
That means that you might not have to go to a hospital to have this therapeutic administered.

4:50
You can just store it in your own fridge and you can treat yourself at home.

4:55
So that's the end goal.

4:57
So we use microgravity because you can't actually make these crystals to a pharmaceutical grade on Earth.

5:05
So you get gravitational induced sedimentation and convection currents on Earth, but if you do exactly the same process in space where there's microgravity, you can get a really uniform crystal size distribution and you can actually grow them to larger than you can on Earth.

5:26
Thank you very much.

5:27
Yeah, it definitely sounds like a patient centric approach.

5:31
And I guess could you maybe share a practical example or a recent milestone that just kind of reemphasises the importance of the work that you do?

5:44
Yeah.

5:45
So I think in answering this question I'm going to go for something a little take a step back away from the science and talk about life sciences in microgravity and healthcare and microgravity as a whole.

5:59
So we have recently completed a pre-seed and we are completing our seed funding round any day now.

6:06
And I think this is really important because in we are one of a handful of microgravity life sciences companies in the UK.

6:22
So we want to show that it is possible to get backing to VC backing Angel backing the like to back life sciences in space in the UK and in Europe.

6:38
So a lot of the current work is work in this area is being done in North America.

6:45
But given our incredible capabilities in the UK, our world leading life sciences research facilities, we need to be making the most of this opportunity because microgravity in space has never been more accessible and it's only going to get more accessible.

7:06
I think we need to be at the forefront of the of this wave of innovation.

7:13
Perfect.

7:13
And has it been challenging to attract VCs and gain this seed funding or how have you found the process so far?

7:23
And I guess kind of what if you have a strategy that you've developed, what would that be?

7:31
Well, we are finding, we're finding the VCs are willing to back our ventures.

7:39
I'm not sure there's a strategy say at the moment that's not for me to say really.

7:47
But we're finding that in general we are getting a lot more VCs are a lot more receptive than we thought they would be.

8:01
In fact, the same actually goes for pharma.

8:04
And when we talk about engagement with external people outside the company, we always expect the worst.

8:15
But we find that because people are so interested in space and it is so out there, it kind of gets people hooked.

8:24
So they are much more receptive than we believe.

8:28
So I guess the strategy is expect people to be sceptical and they are.

8:35
People are sceptical and as they have every right to be, but people are receptive.

8:42
So expect the worst and generally people are much more willing to listen than we believed.

8:50
That's good.

8:50
That's definitely promising to hear as well.

8:54
And you mentioned that there are a handful of companies in the UK working on, you know, manufacturing and microgravity.

9:01
Could you maybe explain how your approach stands out compared to your competitors?

9:08
Absolutely.

9:09
So at BioOrbit, we are very much focused on pharmaceuticals manufacturing.

9:16
So traditionally a lot of space biotech has been done on R&D levels.

9:24
So that's figuring out the all these incredible things that are revolutionising healthcare and medicine, but they're only being shown on very small scale.

9:35
And in order to actually make these, but if you're actually manufacturing, so trying to take a therapeutic from a small scale demonstration but actually turn into a product, you need specialised hardware for that.

9:49
You can't simply repeat or scale the small scale experiment that you've initially done the demo on, especially when that comes to operating in space because you need to maximise the product to hardware mass ratio in order to make sure that you're making as much product as possible with as little hardware.

10:20
So at Bio Orbit, we are focused on manufacturing hardware for scalability.

10:26
We have the capabilities to do R&D, but that's not our primary focus.

10:33
I see.

10:34
And we briefly I guess touched on in our last conversation on biologics and large molecules.

10:42
Could you maybe explain how microgravity specifically enhances crystallisation of these biologics compared to crystallisation on Earth?

10:53
Yeah, absolutely.

10:54
So when you're forming a crystal, you need effectively at any form of addition to be in a particular format, a particular structure so that it can be easily placed into this repeated structural unit.

11:12
When you're trying to do this on Earth, you have sedimentation and gravitational induced convection currents that mean for large molecules such as proteins, antibodies, actually getting these molecules in the right position and in the right shape is incredibly difficult.

11:35
If you try and do this exact process in microgravity where you haven't got these additional forces, it's much more easy to align the molecule and get it into the crystalline structure.

11:50
So that's the most probably the most basic and easiest to understand it.

11:57
And in terms of the regulatory space, I imagine there is quite a lot of regulation around these things.

12:03
So how are organisations like the FDA, MHRA approaching space manufacturing at the moment?

12:14
Well, because it's so new to us, I think it's very new to them as well.

12:20
It's something they've never had to deal with before.

12:22
So again, they are being receptive, they are listening to what we're saying.

12:27
I mean, starting to engage in these conversations.

12:29
It's obviously tricky to get started because it's so new, but they are very receptive and we really appreciate their input and we believe we needed that input from the start.

12:44
I think if you get all the way to the end and have a product that hits all the milestones but can't be assessed in a way that is standardised and can be regulated, there's no point doing that the entirety of the development progress process because I mean, fundamentally they are there to keep people safe.

13:07
So it's an important job and we're glad to have them on board.

13:14
It's here.

13:15
And as the director of partnerships and strategies, what are your current priorities for BioOrbit in the next 12 months?

13:24
And I get and I guess some what kind of partnerships do you expect to be most beneficial for you?

13:32
Sure.

13:33
So the main, well, first, second and third priority of my job are forming A partnership with a farmer supplier.

13:42
So we're hoping to form a partnership that will enable us to crystallise to demo our hardware using a protein therapy that's ideally already marketed and part of a yeah, a big pharma's portfolio.

14:03
So that's almost my entire job for the next 12 to 24 months.

14:10
I see.

14:12
And from your experience in a start up, what emerging trends in early-stage drug discovery are start-ups may be well positioned to take advantage of the larger players might overlook.

14:27
Yeah.

14:28
So I think pivoting back to that microgravity, life sciences, microgravity healthcare, because there is because it's such a new environment in terms of the actual amount of science that's been done in space is the tiniest amount of science compared to what we've done on Earth.

14:50
We are still learning so much and there are so many novel innovations and small nimble start-ups are so well poised to see a novel phenomena, something new and think, do you know what?

15:09
There's an opportunity to for me to make a product, for me to make use of this new development and act on it in a much quicker way than the generally slower moving large organisations.

15:24
So I think there's new opportunity.

15:31
Perfect position.

15:34
Perfect.

15:35
Thank you.

15:36
And I think final question from me is what if you can in a sentence or two, what take away would you like the audience to remember about Bio Orbit?

15:48
Sure.

15:49
So at Bio Orbit we are pioneering space based pharmaceuticals manufacturing for use and for the benefit of people on Earth.

16:03
Perfect, definitely a good message for the audience.

16:07
I think that's everything from me.

16:08
So Sam, thank you for sharing your insights and your work with us.

16:13
It definitely seems like a very cool company and I guess the out there nature of space is attractive to a lot of people.

16:20
So we're excited to see where you guys go with this.

16:24
And to the viewers and the listeners, thank you for listening and do stay tuned for more conversations.

16:31
Thank you very much.

16:32
Thanks.