On December 18, 2024, Korean pharama company Boryung announced the final winners of the 3rd Humans In Space (HIS) Challenge.
Now in its 3rd year, the HIS Challenge is a global space healthcare competition initiated in 2022. The program aims to gather innovative ideas to address healthcare challenges arising during space exploration and solve healthcare problems on Earth by leveraging the space environment. Outstanding teams are selected and offered investment opportunities through this initiative.
A total of 56 judges from esteemed organizations, including NASA, the French Institute forof Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES), the Harvard Center for Space Medicine Research, Axiom Space, and Redwire, conducted the application and final evaluation. In October, the 11 startups and researchers advanced to the final round and competed in the final stage at the 75th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held in Milan, Italy. A panel of 22 judges selected the 4 teams of the final winners and the 2 teams of the HIS Catalyst through the evaluation based on the necessity of their research objectivesimportance, scalability, feasibility, and the validity of the expected outcomes.
In the equity investment group, ▲ Exobiosphere, a Luxembourg-based startup providing services to validate drug candidates using microgravity; ▲ Prometheus Life Technologies, a Swiss-based startup producing high-quality organoids utilizing microgravity in space; ▲ Ejenta, a U.S.-based startup offering AI-powered remote health monitoring and diagnostic solutions for astronauts, will receive USD 50,000 in funding, respectively.
