Korean Space Medicine Startup SpaceLiintech Lands 4 Billion KRW Series A Funding
SpaceLiintech, a Korean space medicine company that produces pharmaceuticals in orbit, recently announced it has secured 4 billion KRW in Series A funding from Company K Partners and Woori Venture Partners. This investment marks a significant step in intensifying its space medicine operations.
Founded in 2021, SpaceLiintech first received seed investment from Sunbo Angel Partners and was subsequently selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ “Super Gap Startup 1000+ Project” and the DeepTech TIPS program.
The company is led by CEO Hak-Soon Yoon, a professor at Norfolk State University in Virginia and visiting professor at Harvard Medical School. With a background in space medicine research at NASA and Harvard Medical School, SpaceLiintech is developing platforms for research and production in space medicine, utilizing satellites and space stations to create microgravity environments.
SpaceLiintech also operates the first privately-owned drop tower, which is located at the Handuk Iron Mine in Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province. This tower simulates microgravity conditions on Earth. Additionally, the company plans to establish the world’s longest drop tower using the vertical shaft of Jangseong Mine in Taebaek City and to open a joint space medicine research center with Harvard Medical School in June this year.
This year, SpaceLiintech plans to carry out demonstration evaluations of its space medicine platforms in suborbital and low Earth orbits. These platforms are being equipped with new drug development devices, designed from collaborative research with institutions such as the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Harvard Medical School, and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The objective is to leverage the microgravity conditions of space to reduce costs and time frames associated with new drug development, with a focus on structure-based drugs and immuno-oncology treatments.
Global pharmaceutical companies like MERCK and Eli Lilly are actively conducting space-based new drug development research, and in February, Varda Space in the USA successfully completed a demonstration of a satellite-based production platform aimed at recovering pharmaceutical substances to Earth. The race to develop new drugs using space is accelerating, with Europe, Japan, and China leading the charge and rapidly expanding into a profitable business sector.
Lee Kang-su, CEO of Company K Partners, highlighted the potential of SpaceLiintech: “Founded on CEO Yoon Hak-Soon’s expertise from his space medicine research with NASA, SpaceLiintech is a company with boundless growth potential, extending the application of space technology to the field of biotechnology.”
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