Introducing Yuri’s Co-Founder Mark Kugel

By Andreas Riegler, Founding Partner at APEX Ventures

I’d like to introduce you to Mark Kugel, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Yuri. I recently chatted to Mark about the benefits of microgravity and the decision to bring APEX on board as an investor.

Can you introduce Yuri and explain what you do?

Yuri is a space biotech company. We use the microgravity environment of space to create biotech products that are better than those developed on Earth. We’re using microgravity as an unfair advantage because, without gravity, cell cultures grow in three dimensions, which they don’t do on Earth. There are many interesting effects you get when you leave out gravity in the life sciences, which we harness for commercial biotech products.

We organise the whole end-to-end process of getting biology into space. That means that we develop all the hardware, software, electronics and bioreactors you would use on Earth, so it is made for space, but in a tiny form, like Lego blocks, to make it quite reusable and user-friendly. We also organise the whole rocket logistics, getting up into space and making sure the biology survives and thrives in that environment.

So far, we’ve just been a space logistics company that helps other scientists do their experiments in space, and for the first two years, we’ve worked on nailing that process and making it more efficient. But since a few months ago, we are working on developing our own biological compounds; we’re becoming a life-science company. We realised that we didn’t just want to watch others doing the fun stuff in space and developing these cool experiments, but we want to do this ourselves.

How are you set up to deliver your services?

We don’t build the rocket; we partner with launch companies like SpaceX. Then you need an orbital platform, such as the International Space Station, which is the most convenient today. In the near future, there will also be free flying capsules with companies such as CRS, Varda or Spaceport.

But we build everything else, including the biological lab infrastructure inside the capsule, with the right temperature, humidity, and ambient environment that the biology inside needs. We also plan to develop a 3D bioprinter or bioreactor to grow crystals with robots that assemble whatever we build in there. And that also means we grow the biologic materials. We also organise the rocket launch back and develop products back on Earth.

Half the team is space engineers, and half of the team are biologists e.g. crystallisation and cell biology. They work hand in hand to deliver the hardware, software, electronics and bioengineering.

Why is microgravity research so important?

When humanity started out going to space sixty years ago with Yuri Gagarin, the focus was on mitigating microgravity's effects on long-term space travel. So, looking at the adverse effects and seeing how we can overcome them, we could one day travel to Mars. Over the past ten years, research has switched to understanding microgravity's positive effects, which we can use for life on Earth. That’s exactly our focus. We want to help the seven billion people on Earth by using space to improve processes.

When you leave out gravity, you have a better picture of the surface structure of a protein, for example, which can help with drug discovery and lead to a better biotech product. We have seen new species of bacteria that have mutated on the International Space Station and now have features we’ve never seen on Earth, which can be pretty interesting to apply in medicine. You can use space as a trigger to create evolutionary pressure for an organism to develop in ways you wouldn’t find on Earth, which can be exploited as a commercial asset or product.

What exciting projects have you worked on so far?

We had one project with UCLA in California working on neural stem cells, where we showed that stem cells tend to proliferate faster and differentiate lower, which means you can produce larger quantities of stem cells, which is super hard to do on Earth. Another mission with GlaxoSmithKline looked at improving the shelf life of drugs through a crystallisation experiment that increased the robustness of antibodies and, therefore, can improve shelf life. We’ve worked on marrow spheroids in German universities with 3D cell structure growth and nerve-muscle cultures. Our first own research project is called Hamster, where we launch our own cell cultures, let them grow in three dimensions and use them for drug screening.

You enjoyed a very successful seed round led by Fifty Years and APEX Ventures; when you have so much interest, how do you choose which investors to bring on board?

We were very lucky to be 3.5 times oversubscribed in the round, so we could choose those investors that we thought would be most beneficial and who could help us most on the whole life science/deep tech topic. We didn’t want just to have a generic VC but someone who really goes through that strategic pain of prioritising the bio topics and accessing life science networks. It’s also very much that the human factor is there, which is especially true with APEX. All investors that we brought in have been super helpful, and it’s like we are all in the same boat wanting to make this a brilliant success altogether.

How have you benefited from working with the APEX team?

Quite soon after the round last year, we actually went to Vienna and had a full-day workshop with our APEX partners. This was super cool that they had taken the time to lead a strategic foundation for the next level after a seed round. They have strategy consulting experience before as a partner so that definitely helps to have that high-level bird’s eye view on our case. We’ve had introductions to people in the industry and sometimes just a shoulder to cry on to talk about things quickly. A founder role is often very lonely, so having someone who’s with you in the boat and has seen it many times is a very good asset.

You mentioned that some of your projects have involved providing cell experiments to universities and hospitals — what other organisations are you open to collaborating with?

We are currently working with a large UK pharma company. We have also found that many pharma companies tend to outsource research to other companies now, so there are many potential partners there. Other sectors include government and space agencies like NASA, the European Space Agency, and more research institutes.

What’s next for Yuri? What is your key focus for the next 12 months and beyond?

We’re currently finalising and executing our bio strategy to transform from just a space logistics company to a biotech company. Specifically, that means focusing on several biotech product development projects, achieving certain milestones and working on the areas of drug discovery, drug screening, antibiotics, and so on. There are a large variety of exciting areas within the life sciences where we are playing.

Finally, how do you attract the right talent at Yuri?

On our job page, we created a very cool video which answers that in three minutes! But we’re at the intersection of space and biotech, which is the biggest argument for people applying and getting super excited about Yuri as a company. Often, ‘space people’ work on a satellite that, in 10–15 years, they may see the launch. For space engineers, in our case, we have three or four launches a year, so it’s super exciting. Combining this with a startup culture means we’re super attractive to any ambitious talent. We recently had an applicant that plans to move from Boston, Massachusetts, to our office in Luxembourg in Europe with their family, and another who worked in Barcelona, New York and Toronto before coming to Yuri. It’s crazy to see all these fantastic talents completely changing their lives and relocating for our tiny company. That really shows how committed they are and how excited they are about our vision.

For more information on Yuri go to yurigravity.com