The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved Merck‘s new vaccine designed to protect adults from a bacteria known as pneumococcus that can cause serious illnesses and a lung infection called pneumonia, the drugmaker said.

Merck’s shot, called Capvaxive, specifically protects against 21 strains of that bacteria to prevent a severe form of pneumococcal disease that can spread to other parts of the body and lead to pneumonia. It’s the first pneumococcal conjugate vaccine designed specifically for adults and aims to provide broader protection than the available shots on the market, according to the drugmaker.

Healthy adults can suffer from pneumococcal disease. But older patients and those with chronic or immunocompromising health conditions are at increased risk for the illness, especially the more serious or so-called “invasive” form. 

Invasive pneumococcal disease can lead to meningitis, an infection that causes inflammation in the area surrounding the brain and spinal cord, and an infection in the bloodstream called bacteremia. 

“If you have chronic lung disease, even asthma, you have a higher risk of getting sick with pneumococcal disease, and then being in the hospital, losing out on work,” Heather Platt, Merck’s product development team lead for the newly cleared vaccine, told CNBC in an interview. “Those are things that have a real impact on adults and children, their quality of life.”

Around 150,000 U.S. adults are hospitalized with pneumococcal pneumonia each year, Platt said. Death from the more serious form of the disease is highest among adults 50 and above, Merck said in a release in December.

Even after the FDA approval, the company’s single-dose vaccine won’t reach patients just yet. An advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on June 27 to discuss who should be eligible for the shot.

Platt said Merck will support the committee’s decision and is ready to supply the vaccine by late summer. 

Some analysts view Capvaxive as a key growth driver for Merck as it prepares to offset losses from its blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda, which will lose exclusivity in the U.S. in 2028. 

The market for pneumococcal conjugate vaccines is currently around $7 billion and could grow to be worth more than $10 billion over the next several years, according to a November note from Cantor Fitzgerald analysts. 

Merck’s newly approved shot could boost its competitive edge in that space, which includes drugmaker Pfizer. Merck currently markets two pneumococcal shots, but neither is specifically designed for adults. For example, the company’s existing shot Vaxneuvance is approved in the U.S. for patients 6 weeks of age and older.

Pfizer’s single-dose pneumococcal vaccine, Prevnar 20, is the current leader in the market for adults. But Merck expects its new shot to capture the majority of market share among adults, Platt said. 

“We do expect there to be rapid uptake of” Capvaxive, she said, adding that the company is confident that data on the shot will “really resonate” with clinicians and policymakers. 

Merck’s pneumococcal vaccine protects against eight strains of the bacteria that are not included in any other approved shot for the disease. Those eight strains account for roughly 30% of invasive pneumococcal disease cases in patients 65 and above, according to a release from Merck, citing CDC data from 2018 to 2021. 

The 21 strains included in Merck’s shot account for roughly 85% of invasive pneumococcal disease cases in adults 65 and above, Merck, citing the CDC data. Meanwhile, Pfizer’s Prevnar targets strains that only account for roughly 51% of cases in that age group, based on the same CDC data. 

The FDA’s approval is partly based on Merck’s late-stage trial called STRIDE-3 that pitted the vaccine against Pfizer’s Prevnar 20 in adults 18 and up who had not previously received a pneumococcal vaccine.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect 150,000 U.S. adults are hospitalized with pneumococcal pneumonia each year.

In-space manufacturing may sound like science fiction but it’s happening already, albeit on a very small scale. It’s a fledgling market that analysts and several startups are projecting will take off. 

“If you look at pharma, semiconductors, beauty and health products and potentially food in the sense of like new crops, we estimated the market to be above $10 billion at some point in 2030, depending on the speed of maturation,” said Ilan Rozenkopf, a partner at McKinsey.

Space offers a unique environment for research and development because its higher levels of radiation, microgravity and near vacuumless state allows companies to come up with new manufacturing methods or materials that are not possible on Earth.

The practice is not entirely new. The International Space Station has hosted several experiments from academics, government agencies and commercial customers for things such as growing human tissue, making purer semiconductors and developing new or better drugs. In the 2024 fiscal-year budget, President Joe Biden even set aside $5 million for NASA to pursue cancer-related research on the ISS.

But access to the ISS has always been competitive and interest continues to grow. Now, several space startups see an opportunity to satisfy in-space manufacturing demand using compact space factories. One company is Varda Space Industries in Southern California. Varda’s mission is to help pharmaceutical companies improve their drugs or come up with new drug therapies by taking advantage of the unique properties of space, and then return those materials back to Earth.

Key to Varda’s business proposition is a phenomenon known as protein crystallization. 

This occurs when super-saturated protein solutions are essentially evaporated to form a solid so scientists can study a protein’s structure. Understanding the crystal structure of a protein can help scientists get a better idea of disease mechanisms, identify drug targets and optimize drug design. Think drugs that have less side effects, are more effective or can withstand a greater array of conditions such as not needing to be refrigerated.

Years of research have shown that protein crystals grown in space are much higher quality than those grown on Earth. The plan is not to make the entire drug in outer space, just what is known as the primary active pharmaceutical ingredient, or the portion responsible for the therapeutic effects of a drug.

“You’re not going to see us making penicillin or ibuprofen or these types of very generic mass consumption targets, given the amount of crystalline you need to create is far beyond our current capabilities,” said Delian Asparouhov, co-founder and president of Varda Space Industries. “But there is a wide set of drugs that do billions and billions of dollars a year of revenue that actively fit within the manufacturing size that we can do even on our current manufacturing facility.”

Asparouhov said that in the U.S. in 2021 and 2022, of the hundreds and millions of doses of the Pfizer Covid vaccine administered, “the actual total amount of consumable primary pharmaceutical ingredient of the actual crystalline mRNA, it effectively was less than two milk gallon jugs.”

Across the Atlantic in Cardiff, Wales, Space Forge is working on designing its own in-space factory to manufacture next-generation semiconductors. Space Forge’s goal is to make semiconductor substrates using materials other than silicon to manufacture more efficient, higher performing chips. 

“This next generation of materials is going to allow us to create an efficiency that we’ve never seen before,” said Andrew Parlock, managing director of Space Forge’s U.S. operations. “We’re talking about 10 to 100 X improvement in semiconductor performance.”

Just like with pharmaceuticals, the secret sauce to achieving this type of performance improvement in semiconductors lies in creating the perfect crystals in space. These types of advanced chips are important for industries such as 5G and electric vehicles. Similar to Varda, Space Forge plans to manufacture only part of the chips in space.

“Once we’ve created these crystals in space, we can bring them back down to the ground and we can effectively replicate that growth on Earth,” said Josh Western, CEO and co-founder of Space Forge. “So we don’t need to go to space countless times to build up pretty good scale operating with our FAB partners and customers on the ground.”

To learn more about in-space manufacturing as well as Varda and Space Forge’s plans to make the practice a viable business, watch the video.