Startup aims to cure blindness with drugs made in space

Drug startup LambdaVision is shooting for the stars with an ambitious plan to develop the world’s first cure for genetic blindness — from space.

LambdaVision was founded in 2009 with a mission to develop a protein-based artificial retina for patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic cause of blindness, and macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in adults over 55, according to Bloomberg.

However, to manufacture a retina — the layer of tissue located at the back of the eyeball that converts light into optic nerve signals, then the images you see — lab workers need to deposit 200 paper-thin layers of light-sensitive protein in a polymer mesh, Bloomberg reported.

The company’s artificial retina is lightweight and only as big as a paper hole punch, according to Bloomberg. Should all go to plan, it could be ready for human testing in three to four years.

This tedious process is hard to get right on Earth, so the company has turned to the International Space Station in the hopes that less gravity could help production quality.

In space, “you get nice even layers” of the protein with less wasted material, Nicole Wagner, LambdaVision’s CEO, told Bloomberg.

“The goal is to be one of the first products manufactured in space that would be used here on Earth,” Wagner said.

Should LambdaVision’s artificial retina hit markets, it would be the first drug to have been produced in space.

It would also mark the first option for treating retinitis pigmentosa, which affects around 100,000 people in the United States and about 1.5 million people worldwide, per a news post on ISS’s website.

And though vision aids can help older adults dealing with age-related muscular degeneration, there is currently no pointed treatment or cure for the condition.

Since 2018, LambdaVision has sent eight experiments to the US National Laboratory at the ISS, and has found that developing its novel retinal implant in space results in a higher-quality product that requires less materials and production time, as well as lower costs.

In 2020, the company received a $5 million award from NASA to advance its research.

As part of the award, NASA supported a series of flight projects to bring LambdaVision workers to the ISS over three years, according to ISS’s news post.

Representatives for Farmington, Conn.-based LambdaVision did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

Should LambdaVision’s retinal implant make a successful debut, it paves the way for a slew of other drugs that use a similar layer-by-layer production process.

Drug companies have been sending protein crystallization experiments into space for decades, Bloomberg reported, with many focused on producing disease-promoting protein crystals, which are then used to develop drugs that bind to the crystal’s unique shape.

One of the first experiments of this kind was to develop a potential muscular dystrophy drug, which is now in its final stages at Japan’s Taiho Pharmaceutical, according to Bloomberg.

Eli Lilly is also participating in an ISS experiment, analyzing how to advance marketed and experimental drugs for diabetes, pain and cardiovascular disease.