Zero Gravity Research Opportunities

, the firm has quadrupled its staff numbers in the past 12 months to build a diverse 20-strong team (Photo © Yuri)

Six months after opening a Luxembourg subsidiary in summer 2021, zero gravity lab-as-a-service firm Yuri is scaling from startup to small business.

For a scientist, conducting experiments in a zero gravity environment is a game changer, particularly for cell culturing. Unlike the 2D cells produced in petri dishes on Earth, in space tissue can be reproduced in 3D structures, enabling cells to grow faster and respond more accurately to experiments.

“We think zero gravity is a huge opportunity to produce and optimise new products,” says Yuri COO and co-founder, Christian Bruderrek, who joined forces with co-founder and CEO Maria Birlem after the two spotted the niche while working for Airbus in Germany.

The zero gravity experiments are currently conducted for Yuri’s customers on-board the International Space Station where they require little astronaut intervention, thanks to the firm’s specially designed hardware. With more commercial companies providing access to space, Yuri expects to be able to offer 3-4 such missions per year, “so you can get your statistics to the point that you can get a product from the results you gain.”

“We think zero gravity is a huge opportunity to produce and optimise new products.”

Christian Bruderrek

The firm, which has already flown experiments for NASA, an Australian customer, and pharmaceutical giant GSK, among others, is also selling its microgravity simulator, the Random Positioning Machine, to a number of universities.

Meanwhile, end-2022, early-2023, Yuri will launch Überflieger 2, a German and Luxembourg Space Agency cooperation containing experiments from four university teams. Among them will be the Brains experiment from the University of Luxembourg’s SnT, studying human mid-brain cell growth in microgravity.

Yuri’s work does not stop at facilitation—the firm is investing in its own bio life sciences research. In May 2022, it will send its first mission, a cell culturing experiment dubbed Hamster 1, to the ISS. And it is currently building a team to develop its own product from that research in the next three years.

Conscious that its main lab, the ISS, is due to be decommissioned in 2028, Yuri has signed an MoU with Sierra Space, which has developed a space shuttle capable of landing on a runway and has partnered with Blue Origin to build the Orbital Reef space station. In future, Yuri plans to send experiments on unmanned flying vehicles that will be interoperable with Sierra Space infrastructure. Its maiden flight, expected for the end of 2023, will carry an incubation research facility that is currently being developed in Luxembourg.

With so much in the pipeline, the firm has quadrupled its staff numbers in the past 12 months to build a diverse 20-strong team. In the near-future it plans to open other subsidiaries, in Europe, the US or Australia.


This article was first published in the Silicon Luxembourg magazine. Read the full digital version of the magazine on our website, here. You can also choose to receive a hard copy at the office or at home. Subscribe now.

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