199. Space, the Final Fermenter: Mario Maggio Brews Biology in Orbit with Ambrosia Space

Mario biology is what we use on Earth. It's probably what we're gonna be using in space, and I think that's really the best, commercial use case we have right now.

Erum Hey, Carl. How's it going?

Karl Iram, welcome back from Omaha. what do you think of Omaha?

Erum Oh my gosh, you guys. So Carl and I went to Omaha, Nebraska, to attend the Bio-Innovations North America Conference. This is our first time going there, and I'll have to say, you know what, Omaha? It's not that bad.

Erum Inside joke, you guys.

Karl Yeah. Do you want me to explain

Erum it? Yeah. Yes.

Karl Iram, Omaha is not that bad. That was, like, a saying that we saw or, uh, a shot glass that said, "Omaha's not that bad." And then we were texting our friends, and our friend Steve Reddy said, it could be Omaha, it could be worse." Yeah. But we had a really nice time in Omaha, and Bio-Innovations was a great

[00:01:00] event.

Karl So it was great to meet a lot of our old friends, like Moji Karimi of Cemvita, who's doing biotech for natural resource operators. Alex Rossey of Cascade Bio, who's been on the podcast. Actually, both Moji and Alex have been on the podcast before.

Karl And Cascade is focused on enzyme mobilization, cell-free manufacturing. And then Luke Carrigan of Calidan, who has been developing a desktop 250 milliliter bioreactor, which they were showing off. And we've been watching Calidan for a while. Luke is in our neighborhood in Brooklyn, so great to run into him. And then there were just so many new people that we met. Iram, do you wanna talk about some of them?

Erum Yes, a lot of new friends. And of course, wanna give a shout-out to the folks at Bio-Innovations, Leo, Kevin, and Ellis, who are on the ground working, connecting everybody, making sure the conference went off without a hitch, and it was great. and also to give you guys a little background, Bio-Innovations is a very unique conference because it's really [00:02:00] about commercialization and industrialization. And so you have everyone from those that are creating feedstocks, the corn providers, to the demand providers, which I will say are brands. So everyone, and everyone in between.

Erum it is a really great conference. I want to give them a shout-out. but also want to give a shout-out to Misty Welling. She is a biology instructor at Southeast Community College in Beatrice, Nebraska. she's also chief workforce officer at the NFS Rural Stamina. It's one of the engines, that focus on biomanufacturing, and there's one in particular is, biomanufacturing across Iowa and Nebraska. And she came up to me, and she sat down next to me during lunch, and she's like, "I love your podcast." So I love when people do that, when I see them. Thank

Karl you, Misty.

Erum Thank you, Misty. You're the best. And she's like, "I recommend your podcast to all my students," so love that. You're the best. Thank you so much.

Erum I also met Kyle Larson of Bioworx. He's director [00:03:00] of operations there. And what they do is very interesting. They have a pilot plant facility in South Dakota, and they have relationships with, South Dakota University. They have a lot of innovation coming out when it comes to biotech, so they work really closely with early innovators. And then finally, we move over to Illinois and Chicago, so a lot of Midwest representation here of course. And I had a wonderful conversation with Beth Connerty, and she is the regional innovation officer for the Illinois Fermentation Agriculture Biomanufacturing Tech Hub, which we call IFAB for short. And that is designated by the Economic Development Administration there in Illinois. But they have a wonderful consortia, and that's gonna be a big theme of bio innovations, and that was a topic that has been on the top of everyone's tongue, and action's actually happening there. So, we'll give you guys a couple of highlights before we get into the episode today.

Karl Yeah. I [00:04:00] just want to do one other shout-out to Chad Pastor of BioMade. we previously had Doug Friedman of BioMade on the podcast many episodes ago, and BioMade had a nice group of people there in, uh, Nebraska.

Karl And, as Erum pointed out, a lot of people, were there from Indiana, from South Dakota, from Montana, from Kansas, but there were a lot of people internationally that were there. There was a, a Swedish economic development group that I didn't get to talk to. I don't know if you talked to them, Erum.

Karl but the really the representation was, U.S. national with, I think, a heavy leaning on the Midwest, and the reason is because there's a lot of space and a lot of feedstock, and there's a lot of places that are turning soybeans or corn into ethanol, and that ethanol in turn becomes a feedstock.

Karl So there's a lot of opportunity there. we're gonna do a full episode on bio innovations and some of the insights that we gained there. But there's so much to go into there, but I just wanted to point out one thing that I was really fascinated by, and that was the [00:05:00] fact that the governor of Nebraska opened the conference, and I thought that was very cool to have him there to talk about how, all the resources that Nebraska has for scaling the bioeconomy. So again, we'll talk about this a little bit later. Erum, you had a couple of quick things that you wanted to talk about before we get into today's episode.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. Just a quick reflection. I have to give you a shout-out, Carl. Amazing moderation of a panel. I was like, you know, standing ovation. It was just me standing, but- Thank you.

Erum But it was incredible. I really liked the panel even for the content, right? So, it was really about thinking very thoroughly about biomanufacturing and doing your homework and not just focusing on the strain, but really doing the thinking around downstream processing because it is very expensive. And everyone on your panel, they all do that [00:06:00] aspect of preparation and planning for biomanufacturing and mentioned, you know, 30% of cost goes to downstream processing, and if you don't factor that in, if you don't think about it, it's just gonna delay a lot of work and, then you might end up in the graveyard report.

Erum So like- Right. So it's super-- It was a great,panel, a lot of great lessons, a lot of great tips, I would say, so that people can accelerate their path to biomanufacturing products. So wonderful job.

Karl Yeah. And you're-- Well, thank you so much. and, when we do the episode, I'll shout out to the panelists because they were really the ones that made that possible. and as Erum mentioned, there were several brands that were there because brands clearly are interested in the products that are being developed by biotech companies and that are being scaled up. when we had, our friends from P&G come on, they talked about, you know, realizing what P&G scale looks like. It's not lab bench scale, it's hundreds of millions of liters

[00:07:00] of a product. And so to have brands, represented was really useful, particularly for the innovators and particularly for the companies that are talking about scale because they want to develop those relationships with them. Erum, do you wanna talk about who stood out for you?

Erum Yeah, for sure. so there was a representative from the Smucker Corporation, Keith Marcinowski, and he's principal scientist and of technology innovation scouting, so both the science and the business side. great content. for those that don't know, Smucker isn't just jams, right? They also do coffee, so they do Folgers, Dunkin's coffee, Cafe Bustelo. they also have, of course, peanut butter Jif, for the Uncrustables line of products. and then they also have a pet line, so Meow Mix, Milk-Bone. It's a big corporation, and so they have a lot of products that need to be innovated. And he really talked about the innovation activity, that there's a lot of consumer research led [00:08:00] Then open innovation led, which is really important for demand, right?

Erum You need to know what consumers want, what they will actually purchase. So he talked about that. I mean, I had a side conversation with him about colors, because again, he went down the world of bio dyes, and he mentioned they're very interested in white. So titanium oxide is like the last gap, the Holy Grail, but we know that there's a lot more gaps, but they have done a lot of work in the natural color space.

Erum And then of course, I have to give a shout out to Greg Hocking, VP of Global R&D, New Innovation Territories of Mars Corporation. I had him on a panel during SynBio Beta when, we talked about bio colors and dyes and what Mars is doing. and again, just for those that don't know, Mars is a privately held company. they have 150,000 employees, and the top brands are M&M, Snickers, Dove, Wrigley, and then they have a- also a pet care line of,for the brands, Pedigree and Royal, Canine. but then it expands actually. So then they also [00:09:00] just acquired Kellanova, which includes Cheez-Its, Pop-Tarts, Eggo waffles. So they have- Wow. ... quite the portfolio of products. And Gregory was a wealth of information, which we'll go into in the following episode. But I just wanted to say that they both pointed out that they are working with innovators. They have their own ways of really engaging with startups or people that are bringing new biotech online. And they both talked about these fit for purpose agreements, which I think is really interesting, and I just want to put that in everyone's ear, is that they are open, they are excited, they want to work. They're trying to be as transparent as possible, and we should definitely have Gregory and Keith on, at some point.

Erum We know Gregory, at Mars, they just launched their accelerator program with Unreasonable Group, so they've been a little bit busy, but we'll get them on and see what's going on.

Karl Yeah, that'd be great so speaking of [00:10:00] Mars, today's episode is about space and biomanufacturing.

Karl Iram, you had met Mario Maggio, the founder and CEO of Ambrosia Space, at Beta, right?

Erum Yeah, I met him there, which we had a great conversation. We were talking endlessly about space 'cause I'm so interested in space and what's going on there, especially when it comes to biotech and, what could be made in space for interstellar travel.

Erum Just out of curiosity. I'm not trying to go anywhere, but I just, um, I just love thinking about it. It's a great thought experiment. And actually, I met Mario, alongside Greg Hocking of Mars, so we had a wonderful conversation. you know, obviously when you have great conversations with great people, you have to invite them on the podcast.

Karl Totally. So just by way of background, Ambrosia is building biomanufacturing systems for space and, we have had a number of space related biotech episodes, so this falls into that category. And what they're trying to do is bring laboratory capabilities to space, and what they're planning to do is

[00:11:00] scale and pilot full biomanufacturing systems off planet.

Karl He previously worked on the Nova-C, lunar lander at Intuitive Machines, and he also built life support systems for spacesuits and spacecraft at Paragon and Axiom Space.

Karl I think with that, let's let Mario take it over.

Erum Mario Maggio of Ambrosia Space, welcome to the Grow Everything podcast. We are so excited to have you.

Mario Thanks for, having me, Erin, Carl. It's, great to see you guys again.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. we met each other at SynBio Beta this year, and when you told me what you're up to, I'm like, okay, I have so much to talk to you about.

Erum I have so many ideas to share, and of course, we have to have you on the podcast. So we did a lot of talking, but now we're gonna open that up to... First, Carl wasn't a part of a lot of those conversations, and now to our audience. And it is going to be so awesome, not only because [00:12:00] of what you're doing, you also were from Philadelphia.

Erum I was, so we have that kindred spirit. Go Birds. Go Birds. And so, go Birds. So let's get into it a bit. so you know, we've had guests on the podcast that are involved in different types of space innovation when it comes to biotech. But for anyone who thinks space tech is strictly about rockets and satellites, your company turns that on its head.

Erum Can you kick us off by painting a picture of what Ambrosia Space does, and how are you transforming orbit into live-in biological factory floor?

Mario Yeah. So, Ambrosia Space is founded on the idea that biomanufacturing is gonna be incredibly important as we continue to explore and, settle and commercialize space.

Mario So what we're doing is we're trying to build hardware that, takes us outside of research and starts looking at how we build that into scalable systems, bioreactors, centrifuges, and the downstream processing [00:13:00] systems needed to, turn biology into something that's actually useful in space.

Karl so you know, give us a little bit of your background. What I understand is that you were working on hardware for lunar landers and spacesuits, and now you're working on automated bioreactors that will work in space. What made you realize that the future of space exploration belonged to biology, even programmable biology, more than just metal and propulsion?

Mario Well, I'll, say my background, so I did, undergrad in aerospace engineering, but my master's was in a very specific niche of aerospace engineering called bioastronautics. I like to call that how you keep people alive and thriving in space. And that, even though I immediately used none of it when I first went out of school, I went to work on propulsion systems and eventually, basically the IKEA manual for building a lunar lander at Intuitive Machines.

Mario I always wanted to work in that. And so as you work on life support systems, you understand the biology of human, uh, systems [00:14:00] is very important. But when we start looking further out, when we start looking at how we're going to be having longer term missions, you start realizing that biology is the best CO2 scrubber that's available.

Mario It's the best way to add oxygen into the system. and when I started really digging in and seeing whether that was a viable path, now it sort of opened up all of these doors into what programmable biology can be used to do. I think the one that sort of struck to me was like, you can use it for like making chemicals and plastics that right now are made from petroleum.

Mario there's not really any oil that we know of on the Moon or Mars, so it, obviously is gonna be something that's very important as we go, and explore and sort of it cascaded from there and that's,become some of the most important, I think, industrial capabilities we're gonna have

Erum Yeah.

Erum Yeah. absolutely. I mean, this whole idea of using biology to support biology, which we are biology, is a strong one. I feel like I'm stating the obvious. but it's, it is the ultimate [00:15:00] enabling technology for space, we believe here on the "Grow Everything" podcast, and you obviously believe too.

Erum But what is actually going on in the aerospace industry? What is the truth right now? 'Cause we're hearing things from like, you know, SpaceX, and everything just still seems to be metal and propulsion. are they still, obsessed with traditional aerospace engineering for all solutions, or is biology being embraced?

Mario for the life support systems, it's really when, when you start looking at further on missions. You know, where biology is starting to come more and more prevalent is in the research and lab work that's happening on the space station and the future commercial space stations, as well as the commercial industry.

Mario when we start looking at the immediate use cases, you know, research has been incredibly limited in volume. I have no doubt that some of the folks that listen to this podcast are bench scientists and are used to working with, you know, 250 milliliter flasks, and that is actually bigger than anything that's flown to the space station.

Mario Most of the work that's been [00:16:00] done is under, you know, 10 to 20 milliliters, and the biggest thing that's flown is 150 milliliters. So that incredibly limits the kind of science we can do. And as we start looking and trying to understand the biology around us, what we're looking at is how do we actually build that bigger?

Mario How do we make the lab ex- lab equipment that you see, how do we make a bioreactor that looks like the Sartorius two-- Ambr 250 or Biostat? You know, like these things are obviously very different than when you take away gravity, but how do you actually make it operable and usable in a lab-like environment?

Mario 'Cause that's really what the stations are right now.

Karl Yeah. help our listeners visualize the hardware you guys are building. If an astronaut or researcher floated up to an Ambrosia space laboratory module that was in orbit today, what would they see? What would they interact with? What would it be capable of doing?

Mario Well, for the first one, it, it's actually gonna be very uninteresting for the astronaut. there's a box, and they plug the box in, and that's really all they

[00:17:00] see. Too, too much, they get to inoculate it. They get to pull samples out once a day. But that's really it. what's going on behind the scenes is much more interesting.

Mario It's a two-and-a-half liter bioreactor, and then that will flow into a centrifuge. The bioreactor looks a lot like a traditional bioreactor. It's fed batch. It is about two and a half liters. It's sparged. It's agitated. It has a suite of sensors ranging from pH to dissolved oxygen to total cell density, all of the traditional things.

Mario It's really in our methodology of how we actually control our system that looks different. And really, that's, on the inside, so it makes it a lot easier for us to, you know, show off our hardware sometimes.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, you're talking about, a bioreactor. There's liquid-based cell cultures in there, and I'm sure they behave erratically without gravity to anchor them.

Erum So can you share, was your approach? And can you tell us, maybe about a failure that happened where there was, like, a fluid mess everywhere

[00:18:00] and, you know, you figured out a solution, and we would love to kind of hear how you've been, approaching designing something for space but that requires liquids.

Mario So the nice part is,I will say a lot of our lessons learned had come from testing on the ground where gravity still is here. a lot of our understanding of how the fluids are actually gonna interact, how our gas is gonna interact, how all of those things happen is actually mostly driven through computational modeling.

Mario but we've built some really sophisticated models and have been able to sort of do initial testing here on Earth, on that. has anything gone wrong? Yeah, we definitely have learned a lot. I mean, this is, building a bioreactor from scratch. strangely, glass is not the most, favorable, piece of hardware in space station.

Mario They really don't like anything that shatters, and that is anything ceramic, including glass. And so they really don't like that. And so we are-- we're actually building, stainless steel and aluminum bioreactors. You know, we had to learn how to handle those systems, and we obviously, dealt with leaks, dealt with, you know, interesting...

Mario 'cause [00:19:00] we're agitated, so there is, um, stirring and mixing. And so we've learned how to build those systems in ways that don't leak. and if you ever build that kind of hardware, you learn very quickly that there always will be leaks. There's always gonna be, a contamination.

Mario We've grown bacteria intentionally, but we've also grown bacteria unintentionally. and so that's probably the one that probably stands out the most.

Karl Uh, and just give us a sense in terms of what's the size. if I'm looking at it, the module head on.

Mario the entire system, I try and call it a large like microwave, so it's the size of an industrial scale microwave, if you've ever seen those.

Karl Okay. So space, the final frontier, I mean, requires a lot of engineering. and you are navigating this kind of tension between being an aerospace engineer who probably demands rigid, predictable hardware outcomes. But then on the other side, you're being a facilitator for living cells that mutate and adapt and are sometimes inherently unpredictable, especially in microgravity. How do you

[00:20:00] navigate that tension?

Mario I don't really see it as a tension. I see, their error bars. That's what I see it as. You know, you can put biology in a certain environment, and the goal of what we're building is just to change that environment. It's no different than building a bioreactor here on Earth.

Mario we're trying to keep the cells and keep them happy and healthy. And there's wiggle room in there. If anything, it's a little bit more-- the ambiguity is better from engineering standpoint. You know, you can deal with, the tolerance being a little bit off. It's also one of the perks of starting with yeast.

Mario It's, uh, I call it easy mode compared to working with a CHO cell or mammalian cell type

Erum Yeah. Yeah. And so what are the specific things you guys are making or, the different astronauts will wanna make? I know we talked about this before, but what's going to be the first thing being produced, and wh-what else can be produced? What have you thought about? What's on the roadmap?

Mario So, we're actually mostly working on the hardware. The biology is really with the partners that we find. Our first flight is gonna be, [00:21:00] producing a biofuel, and that's more of a scientific experiment just to validate our hardware. but the range of use cases range from everything like growing cyanobacteria or algae to enable life support systems to yeast that can make vitamin C or other nutrients because those don't stow very well for long duration missions.

Mario medicine is obviously one that's incredibly important and,you know, as we start looking from a more commercial lens, there's a lot of interest in, biopharmaceutical research and development. one of the big things we see is that's incredibly limited by volume. And so, building the full biomanufacturing facility enables you to look a little bit bigger picture in how do we take research and actually turn it into, manufacturing

Erum so, you know, one of the things we talked about is, you know, collaborating with NASA, and you recently won the NASA TechLeap Award for your continuous CellSep centrifuge. So tell us a little bit more about how automating the separation [00:22:00] of cell cultures in space fundamentally changes the logistics of keeping an astronaut crew alive.

Speaker 4 So this technology, our centrifuge technology, is really all focused on providing a continuous flow from our bioreactor into the next steps of the process. And some cells are able to secrete things, and when they're secreting things, we want to keep the rest of the cell away. And if the cell holds onto whatever they made that's valuable, we want to just grab the cells and not waste everything

Speaker 2 So this allows us to sort of begin that next step of processing. I have no doubt that it's gonna be incredibly helpful for when we start using this for food production, 'cause one of the things I do see being incredibly important for astronauts as we live on the Moon, Mars, or really anywhere in between production is we're not gonna have farms, we're not gonna have, you know, cattle.

Speaker 2 We're gonna have big silver tanks that make food. And so we think that's gonna be incredibly important for those steps

Erum Yeah. Really quick follow-up question. So, like one of the things we talk about here too is, kind of the analogies [00:23:00] that biology affords when you think of different organisms like us humans and, how we've built biological manufacturing has been in steel vats and and that's just not how biology operates.

Erum Have you thought of using other materials besides steel? And I know this is a centrifuge and this is very specific, but like just for a bioreactor, think of the craziest dreams of like using all sorts of materials. I'm just curious, like if you've looked at other types of materials to make, you know, a bioreactor.

Mario probably not in the sci-fi way that you're thinking. we've looked at like aluminum and other things because they're lighter weight. and, you know, that's sort of the way we've thought about it. you know- Even though nature doesn't use stainless steel, it's been really, really good for manufacturing and keeping things sterile and being able to clean in between batches, which nature doesn't really need to do.

Mario And so I think that stainless steel is gonna have a pretty large presence for a long time when it comes to biomanufacturing.

Erum [00:24:00] Okay. I'm gonna blame Neon Bio and Sam and Dimi from that because they've got me thinking about chickens as bioreactors.

Mario Okay. Yeah. That's-

Erum Yeah. So - ... that's some really cool technology it's their fault. I... That question came up because they're putting, you know, they got that in my own mind, so that's my bad,

Mario Yeah. we will not be using chicken eggs. I, I think that mostly it's the, chicken laying the egg that has more trouble in the microgravity environment.

Erum That's a cool, that's a cool experiment. How do chickens lay eggs in space? I mean, that would be very interesting. We'll put that in the idea box.

Karl Yeah, exactly. So you guys are working on these small lab modules, and those are g- gonna become full orbital pilot plants. What's the biggest challenge physically that you're facing when you move a delicate biological process from a discontinued to an automated factory, particularly a factory that's in low Earth orbit?

Mario So, scale up is always a challenge, and I have no doubt that it will be something that we'll learn a little bit as we grow as well. but our intent is to build a bioreactor that operates [00:25:00] just like one on Earth. That in a perfect world, if everything goes exactly to our plan, our bioreactor is going to be, basically transferable.

Mario You know, the bioreactor data that you'd use on Earth and parameters that you try and grow at, those would be the same ones you maintain in space. And so that's sort of the way we like to think about it is, okay, this is a huge benefit if we can maintain those same environments. So we think we'll see a lot of the same challenges as, as you see on Earth, but we think we're gonna be able to mitigate them with the exact same practice and recipe.

Erum Yeah. I, and I know you've been looking at- A lot of other things that are happening in, you know, space exploration and what's happening at NASA. also maybe the commercial spaceflight or companies. how do you see yourself, partnering with them? And I know right now you're doing a lot of research and you're getting this, the reactor right. But I would love to kind of just hear your, level thoughts on how you would partner with them. What are you seeing them doing when it comes to [00:26:00] biotech? and then one of the things we were jamming on when we were hanging out at SynBioBeta is, what kind of experimentation can be done in space that NASA might be interested in? Like you mentioned bubbles before. I just would love to hear kind of, over-overview of what, what you're seeing because this is your, bread and butter.

Mario Yeah. So I think that there's sort of-- There's two parts to that question. The, the spaceflight world is still sort of learning about the value of biology.

Mario A lot of it, is a lot of the interest in biotech and and the bio world comes from stem cells and sort of three thrusts. It's either stem cells, protein crystals, or trying to understand, regular biology better, what actually happens in spaceflight. And I'm gonna sort of pass over the stem cell part just because it's a little bit beyond what we've worked on thus far.

Mario we think that protein crystals are gonna be incredibly valuable for drug companies and how we actually look at better formulations. But we think there's an inherent limitation in, trying to replicate those crystals [00:27:00] here on Earth. There's inherent challenges around crystallization caused by gravity.

Mario And even if there's a good nucleation point, it's proven to be incredibly difficult to propagate, better crystals here on Earth. And so to me, the obvious answer for partnership is how do we go and build bigger systems so we can make more protein crystals in space. biology is what we use on Earth.

Mario It's probably what we're gonna be using in space, and I think that's really the best, commercial use case we have right now. And, it's important to notice we're talking a lot about what's being done in space. the getting there is always gonna be important. How do we ride up? And right now, SpaceX is running that, pretty well.

Mario But there's, you know, a lot of other competitors coming on-online like Blue Origin and Stoke. And then, at the same time, there's, you know, a number of re-entry companies looking at how do we get back down. So they're sort of becoming the, shipping, you know, DHL or UPS or FedEx and, you know, we're trying to be the factory that they all stop at, and that's sort of the way we see it.[00:28:00]

Karl Yeah. That's amazing. when we started the conversation, we talked about Varda, creating these, bioreactors for producing drugs, and you mentioned drug crystallization, which I think is, super interesting... And I love the idea that you guys would be the place where people would stop, you know? FedEx would stop, pick up stuff from you, whether it's gonna go out further into space or, come back to Earth, I think is a really interesting, idea. but how do you balance commercially, this idea of serving markets here on Earth with what's really gonna happen as we start to move off-planet?

Mario So it's all in the hardware. So that's really what I find so important about building bioreactors focused on cell growth and downstream processing and all of that kind of technology is something that is very transferable across different cell types, across different products, and across different use cases.

Mario So, you know, the same, bioreactor that grows yeast that can make, beer on [00:29:00] Mars can be the same one that's, you know, that same technology will be the root of what's being used to make better biopharmaceuticals here on Earth. And it'll be what's enabling, you know, everything from chemicals, plastics, all of the fun things we talked about, on the trip to Mars.

Mario And so we see it as a technological development that's really necessary, more so than how do you balance it. you know, anybody that can build an engine will find a way to put it in a car, a plane, or a, you know, or a motorcycle. It doesn't really matter what type of engine it is.

Erum Speaking of engines, you're building for, low Earth orbit, microgravity, but my question is, have you seen any efforts in creating artificial gravity? being an aerospace engineer, I know it's like a big challenge. I get, there's the fine line between science fact and science fiction.

Erum I watch "For All Mankind," you know, they created this, gyroscopic effect, so they had the artificial, gravity. But have you seen any effort happening on [00:30:00] that side?

Mario I've seen some effort. I think the, biggest challenge there is really actually not about creating a gravity that's, you know, in regular Earth gravity or close to it.

Mario It's about how do you deal with the gradient. if you're in space, you can't be so tight that even though you're spinning at one Earth gravity at your, you know, chest, your feet might be at a higher gravity, your head would be at a lower gravity. And that is really where the challenge comes in, and you have to be quite far out to do that.

Mario And it just doesn't make sense right now with our technology, with our launch cadence, to build that and then you can't really build on Earth and launch to space for that. That's going to be a built in space for space kind of exploration. And I think that's part of the reason why it's really important to go back to the Moon.

Mario That's part of the reason why I think Artemis has such an importance there is, when you have a lot of metal, you have a low gravity environment to already start at. it'll allow you to build the fun, you know, large [00:31:00] space vehicles that we kind of imagine.

Erum Yes. I mean, I, I love the Artemis mission.

Erum I mean, I would love if we could have had stopped by and hung out at the moon rather than just- ... you know, going past it or going around it. but that will remain to be seen. And of course, I would love to, like, have you share more about what you're seeing in the roadmap to Mars, 'cause I know there's a lot of different efforts happening there.

Erum and maybe you could talk about that now. I mean, like tell us like what do you think that needs to happen technologically to make vertically integrated biological factories the baseline requirement for space station rather than just an experimental luxury? Doesn't seem to be the topic of conversation, and I know the attention is going to, getting, spaceships out and back.

Erum But when is it going to be like this is how things are operating, we need to make sure we have biological factories?

Mario So I think it's gonna be most important for longer duration missions or further out from Earth. you have to assume that [00:32:00] prices are gonna continue to go down for low Earth orbit.

Mario you're gonna have, sort of an inherent what is the most reliant, what is the most robust, what is the easiest to fix, and easiest to build, methodology for a lot of the current stations, and the upcoming stations. You know, The question really becomes when you have somewhere that needs to be, more self-reliant, and that's when biology becomes super important.

Mario You know, right now they can afford to throw the waste away, on the station, and they can afford to ship up oxygen every couple of months, and that is acceptable because we're so close, right? you're still a suburb. And the further out you get, you know, that's when you start to have to be able to make your own food, make your own, water,

Mario and if there's limited carbon around you, you have to find a way to make sure that we don't throw away every, piece of carbon or piece of oxygen that we breathe out or, you know, create waste from.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. We are bioreactors, you know?

Mario Yeah. Exactly.

Erum So it's like, how do we [00:33:00] leverage ourselves and,the human body, to be able to help?

Erum 'Cause, I just don't feel like it's in, the zeitgeist of space. You know, like, For All Mankind, Project Hail Mary, like, Biology, it didn't really come up in the travel aspect. It came up in the alien when it came to, the,the xenon-based alien, which is interesting. But like, again, sci-fi, all right, fine.

Erum Like, you think, you know, a spaceship. And actually what we talked to, uh, when we talked to Lynn Rothschild and, Chris Marr, who's from,Red House, I believe?

Erum Yeah, Red House Studios, you know, it's an architectural firm that is also designing different, materials and, infrastructure for space travel.

Erum And they thought about, you know, putting cyanobacteria, in a rocket that has, like, an inflatable, that's a foldable, then inflates, infrastructure when it lands on Mars. But just, I think for people to really grasp it, besides listening to this podcast, is to see it in in like movies and talking about it more.

Erum on the research side, yes, but [00:34:00] just, this is a part of our plan and, you know, what are those plans? And like you had mentioned also different space stations, what are those going to be like and where will they be located? And I feel like I, I read, a NASA report and they had some, thought about that, but then I heard that there's a lot of, private commercial space exploration companies that are also looking to make stations outside of the Moon.

Erum So anyway, I know I went, kind of all over the place here, but I'd love to, for your commentary on that.

Mario So, right now there's, At least three, uh, stations that are being, developed for low Earth orbit. There was a NASA program called Gateway that, I believe was recently canceled, that was around the, lunar orbit.

Mario But they're prioritizing the lunar base, right? And While it's not in pure microgravity, it still faces a lot of the same challenges, as all of that. So I think that will be, really important there. And I think that biology does always sort of show up in every single one of the sci-fi shows.

Mario It sort of is hidden just below [00:35:00] the, main focal points. There's always the ag dome. There's always the, you know, cyanobacteria or algae tanks where they're talking about how they're, you know, making it. There's a lot of times you'll see, the gruel or the slop the astronauts have to be eating because they're, living on an asteroid or something, or they have to be eating something that's more yeast or fungal based.

Mario And so, biology has its place there. It's just something that isn't always directly addressed as much as a, hardware solution would be or talking about the engines or something like that.

Karl Yeah.

Erum yeah. We can change that. I'm gonna call Netflix right now. I'm like, "Yo, Netflix."

Karl but what it reminds me of is, like, there is a kind of a older movie, five years or so, called Stowaway, where I don't remember where they're going, but they find out that it's a flight for four people or three people, and they found out an extra person is on there, and they have to figure out how to, like, scrub the oxygen and...

Karl So it kind of presents these kinds of challenges that I'm not sure they overcome,to my satisfaction [00:36:00] as a science fiction biologist, you know. but it does bring that up in terms of like, oh, we've gotta grow more algae if we're gonna scrub the air.

Mario Yeah. And

Mario I hadn't heard of that movie, so I'll have to go at least look it up and put it on the queue.

Karl Yeah. It's definitely on Netflix, so you can watch it there.

Erum Nice. Okay, Mario, we're at the point of the interview where we're going to do our quick-fire questions, okay? answer them as fast as possible

Erum so here we go. All right. One sci-fi movie trope about space food that needs to be permanently retired.

Mario that's a hard one. I'll flip it on its head and sort of say the one that we need to keep going is that they're, astronauts are not gonna have gourmet meals. They're not gonna have steaks.

Mario They're not gonna have, this, really nice food. They're going to be eating mostly something that looks like a gruel or polenta or a soup. And maybe if they're lucky, they get a, a little bit of cultured meat or some, small amount of veggies or herbs grown on top of it.

Mario And so, I think that's, you know, something that they talk about, but we shouldn't expect the [00:37:00] astronauts to have really good food, at least in the first couple of missions.

Karl Wow. Yeah. I hear the protesters outside, uh, knocking the door, trying to knock the doors down.

Karl Wait, the astronauts don't get steak? What do you mean?

Mario Special occasion suddenly.

Karl Yeah, exactly. Okay. True or false: NASA safety boards are more intimidated than an erratic microbial mutation.

Mario So I haven't had to deal with the second one, so I'm gonna say the latter, because that sounds kind of terrifying.

Erum All right. Well, you're gonna be dealing with them soon if you haven't dealt with them yet. Okay. If your orbital bioreactor had a spaceship style voice assistant, who would voice it? Me, me, me, me, me.

Mario I, I have no idea. that's a great question. I, maybe I, I think you can't really put a David Attenborough voice or something like that. And, but I don't know. That's a great question. I'll have to think about that. you know, [00:38:00] that or Hal from, that's the immediate thought process.

Mario you know, you immediately think space, voice assistants, you, you think Hal.

Erum That's a good one. I like Hal.

Karl What is a zero gravity biological superpower you wish your engineered microbes could magically develop by tomorrow?

Mario I actually...I think that biology is going to work just fine in space.

Mario I think it's more about making them live in an environment that keeps them, happy and healthy, and I think that you'll see that they're gonna be just fine. They're used to being in a,regular, you know, solution. I think that as long as you keep that solution at the right environment, I think they'll be just fine.

Mario So I'm happy with them as they are.

Erum Nice. Okay. All right. One everyday product we use on earth that should definitely be manufactured in orbit instead

Mario I'm gonna talk my book a little bit, but, you know, biopharmaceuticals have a really, really interesting capability if they're made in space.

Mario I think that, you know, it might be [00:39:00] something that not all of us have every day, but, if we're able to make better biologic drugs in space, specifically monoclonal antibodies, that could have a huge benefit for humanity, and I think that is really what's gonna be first. partially because as much as it'd be cool to have, skin cream or something else made in space, I don't think the unit economics are there just yet.

Mario So until that happens, I'm gonna say that, biologic drugs are the answer there.

Erum Nice. Awesome. Cool. So, what's next for Ambrosia? Do you have, anything you wanna ask of us in our community? We're here to help. We love what you're doing.

Mario Yeah, of course. So, we are looking forward to our first flight. So the hardware is getting built right now. So like, that's really what we're building. what we're going towards is prove that we can grow this in space, that we can, you know, we're gonna compare it to a traditional bioreactor here on Earth and see how our yields and, titers stack up and see if we can maintain the same environment.

Mario So we're really excited about that. that's gonna be happening more than likely,late this year or early next. And then, beyond that, yeah, we're actively,

[00:40:00] trying to get more involved in the biology side of this. So bioprocess engineers, if any of you are listening, we're more than happy to, learn and, you know, we'd love to talk with more of you and, see what's next for us.

Erum Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mario, for coming on the Grow Everything podcast. What you're doing is fascinating. We definitely need more life in space. We need life to support life. We have lots of people that are very interested in using their biotechnologies in space to see how that they can maybe leverage some NASA research funding for that, you know.

Erum it's great to be able to speak with you about that. But again, thank you for taking the time to come on our podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation when we first met now and then maybe later this year after get your product in space. We wanna hear how that goes.

Mario That sounds great.

Mario Thank you guys for, having me. It's great seeing interest coming from the biology community into space because, you know, there's a small group of us that are really interested and wanna bring out the space, world into

[00:41:00] biology and start to bond these two, and it's gonna be really interesting as we see, where it all leads.

Karl Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much, Mario.

Erum Thank you.

Mario Thank you, guys. Have a great day.

Karl Iram, I know we covered a lot of ground in that episode, but what did you think about our conversation with Mario? I was super happy to meet him, by the way.You had talked about him, you'd raved about him, so I was happy that we finally had the conversation

Erum Yeah, same here. [00:42:00] And, you know, the conversation we have on the podcast sometimes is different than conversations we have off the podcast.

Erum I really, I think I really try to take it to, a crazy place with thinking of how to do dirty biology in space. Right.

Erum which is a bit of a challenge. And for those that don't know what dirty biology is, it's just getting away from the steel tanks and thinking about how biology is done, like on Earth.

Erum You know, not everything's sterile here. but no, it was a great conversation.To me, one of the, beautiful things about talking to people working in space is that they can really pinpoint where the bottlenecks are. And what Mario did, he said space biotech's bottleneck is hardware.

Erum It's not just biology. So there's a lot of hardware that needs to be made. and Mario's core thesis is that research needs larger, familiar bioreactor systems in orbit, not just the small, tiny ones that are, 10 to 20 milliliters. They need liter volumes, kiloliter volumes to figure out what's actually happening on that scale.

Erum [00:43:00] So, brilliant on Mario's part to be able to, like, up with a solution for that.

Karl Yeah, and I mean, that reminds me of, you know, the interview we did with Kate Rubins, the astronaut, because she also said, you know, we need to really rethink the hardware that is used in space, for doing biology experiments.

Karl And in turn, as those devices become made for space, they can have a big impact here on Earth. And, one of the things that I liked that Mario said, which is a reminder, and I mean, it makes a lot of sense, biology becomes much more essential the further missions move away from Earth. And, that makes sense because, you can't carry everything with you.

Karl I think, I don't know if it was Kate who had said it or Erica DeBenedictis talking about how right now space is like a camping mission. You have to pack everything with you. That really becomes impossible when you're gonna do these longer duration lunar missions, when you're going to Mars. If you have the right biology, it can support [00:44:00] oxygen and carbon recycling.

Karl You can use it to create food, medicines, chemicals, and materials when you can no longer resupply them or carry them with you, which is very expensive.

Erum Yeah, absolutely. And with Mario and, Ambrosia Space, they're really thinking of what are the nuances and how to create a bioreactor that has a significant volume that can be useful.

Erum So, what does a continuous flow centrifuge look like, and how do you do this type of biomanufacturing in space with their first biofuel validation Targeted for late 2026, early 2027, which is right around the corner, so we'll definitely have to check in with Mario about that. But I love the fact that, you know, Mario and the folks at Ambrox are thinking about function versus like small testing that can't really translate so quickly.

Erum And so how [00:45:00] can you make biofuels? Because you need to refuel. That is kind of, the biggest thing. Like, where are you gonna get fuel after you use it? and it doesn't have to be a lot, you know, obviously in space, like there's no gravity, so you see that in all the sci-fi movies or actually the most recent one, "Project Hail Mary," and, you see a little, little burst of acceleration, so it doesn't have to be that much.

Erum but if you land somewhere, you might need a little bit more. Anyway, I'm, I'm going down a rabbit hole, but I just love it. I love talking about this stuff.

Karl well, the other thing too is like you just mentioned, the need for volumes, and what's interesting is that near term, it seems like the strongest commercial cases for space are biologic drugs, like our friends

Karl of Varda, who are also doing space biomanufacturing, but they are very much focused on the drug industry, and they have deals with several large drug manufacturers, because I think that protein crystallization or monoclonal antibody production in space gives you different kinds of molecules.

Karl So very exciting to [00:46:00] really hear Mario talk about bigger volumes as opposed to those tiny ones for these drugs.

Erum Yeah. And bigger volumes, of course, means food. what does space food look like? I loved that conversation. I mean, of course, like Mario tempered my imagination, and he was like, food needs to be functional versus luxurious.

Erum But- Man ... I'm like, it has to be. I-- talked to somebody. Actually, I talked to Mario before, when we first met, and we talked about, foods that need to motivate and keep astronauts and people that are traveling in space, excited and, happy. like I'm sure it does a lot to your, mentality being in space far away from everything you know.

Erum So you gotta have some good food to keep things going. So, I hope that there's a way to make, more delicious foods. I think, we've been talking about food tech and innovation recently, and if for anyone that's going out into space, they deserve the best. hopefully no gray soylent green meals.

Karl Ugh.

Erum [00:47:00] And, you know, we have some luxurious texture, temperature, sensorial foods that are, not only nutritious, but delicious as well. So hopefully, you know, Mario, we'll get some application engineers, some food application engineers to work with you to develop something that could be biomanufactured.

Karl Yeah. Gray slurry and/or algae-based, liquids, while those are easy to grow, and I think they're essential, particularly the algae for, you know, oxygen recycling, I just don't think that you wanna be eating those for the seven months it takes you to get to Mars. And hopefully, you know, you've got like a nice lab grown steak waiting for you when you get there.

Erum Yeah. what food would you want, if you were traveling out of space?

Karl What would I want personally?

Erum Yeah, yeah.

Karl Yeah. I, I think I want some bacon.

Erum Oh. We could get some of my bacon, mycelium bacon. Yeah. I would- I'm sure that's fine ...

Karl I would be, I would be happy with that because it does taste really good.

Karl Some bacon and some bread, I think.

Erum Yeah, bread. Yeah, pizza. I was thinking pizza. Kind of [00:48:00] hits, you know, you got the vegetable, which is actually more of a fruit, the tomato, the cheese, which is a little bit of protein, a little bit of fat.

Karl Yeah, and you have to make the crust, so yeah, that's a lot.

Karl Those are a lot of things. who's working on the, you know, easy pizza oven for space?

Erum Yeah. Mario, let's get on that. Maybe that's a, the side project. but no, this was a great episode. We'll definitely have more people that are working on space biotech on because we're just so interested in it, and I think it's a great, forcing function to be able to think of how to do something in, you know, restricted parameters when it comes to low Earth orbit and long duration flights.

Erum And, it's a great conversation always.

Karl All right, so with that, you know, that's the episode. If you're in New York City during, uh, New York Climate Week, which is September 21 to 25, Reach out to us because we will be attending several events throughout the week.

Karl There's gonna be a lot of interesting technology discussed, and what are the impacts of [00:49:00] climate, and how does biotech enable it? How do you finance climate -related technologies? We're very excited. we'll report on that afterwards.

Erum And also, we'll be going to Biomimetics International, which is November 9th and 10th in Minnesota. it's a conference, it's a fairly new consortia or association that brings together brands and thinkers and people working on solutions, leveraging biology.

Erum I know they have some great working groups coming together on specific projects, which we'll share more about, once we have another conversation with them.You know, Carl and I always get the inside intel, so we've got to be careful what we say before we are allowed to say it.

Erum and then we might be doing a special event towards the end of the year. We'll be here in Brooklyn. I'm teasing it now. I'm not going to tell you much about it, but when we get those details, we'll also share that. So, a little bit of secret call to action here. We're teasing you guys.

Erum But we'll keep you posted. Thank you so much for tuning into the Grow Everything podcast. If you [00:50:00] have any questions or comments, please reach out to us. Our contact information is in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe to our Substack and, you know, all those other channels.

Erum we love to hear from you. So, let's grow.

Karl Let's grow. Thank you.