Prometheus Life Technologies brings biotechnology into space

The UZH spin-off is developing innovative methods for producing human tissue in weightlessness, aiming to accelerate drug development.

Prometheus Life Technologies (PLT) is a spin-off of the University of Zurich (UZH), founded in 2022 to commercialize an innovative biotechnology for producing human organoids in weightlessness. The company builds on pioneering research from Oliver Ullrich's research group at UZH, including two successful missions to the International Space Station (ISS) that demonstrated the feasibility of producing human organoids in space.

Organoids are miniaturized, functional human tissues that closely replicate the structure and function of natural organs. They hold great potential for drug development, disease modeling, regenerative medicine, and future cell-based therapies.

PLT's current biological focus is on the scalable production of liver organoids to advance regenerative medicine and develop future therapies for liver diseases. Together with CSEM, the company is developing an automated platform for this purpose that will enable industrial-scale production of organoids in space. The platform is initially being optimized for liver organoids, but is designed so that numerous other organoid types can also be produced in the future. The hardware being developed serves both PLT's own production needs and as a versatile technology platform for industrial and scientific applications.

PLT's headquarters are located at Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich in Dübendorf. There, the company operates its laboratories and makes use of direct access to the airfield for prototype development and the validation of new hardware. In addition, PLT maintains a site in Strasbourg (France), where its research focus is on brain organoids (neural organoids).