In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at SpaceX’s hopes for healthcare, the AI drug discovery startup Lilly and Pfizer are betting on, the greatest living immigrants in healthcare and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

The drumbeat to Elon Musk’s SpaceX mega-IPO this Friday is impossible to ignore. But beyond the company’s potential $1.8 trillion valuation for its hodge-podge of businesses from rockets to X (formerly Twitter) to artificial intelligence company xAI, its registration statement filed with the SEC gives a glimpse of its current operations and potential in healthcare.

SpaceX’s biggest healthcare operation to date comes from satellite internet service Starlink, which has more than 10 million subscribers, targeting people in rural or underserved communities. These are areas where healthcare access is an enormous issue, and Starlink is enabling better remote healthcare in them. In Ecuador, for example, SpaceX is working directly with the government to provide remote connectivity for healthcare.

To be sure, SpaceX, which reported $18.7 billion in revenue last year and a net loss of $4.9 billion, doesn’t break out financial details on its healthcare business so it’s impossible to see how big a bet this is.

But there are more opportunities for SpaceX to push into healthcare in the future. In its SEC filing, the company told investors that it wants to manufacture pharmaceuticals in orbit. The microgravity environment of space “enhances drug solubility, purity, crystallization, and stability,” it wrote in the filing. While SpaceX isn’t doing this commercially yet, it’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. Merck, Novartis and Lilly have conducted drug production experiments on the International Space Station, and El Segundo, Calif.-based Varda Space has run multiple test flights to further development of its orbital drug manufacturing technology.

SpaceX also said, not surprisingly, that it sees big opportunities for AI in healthcare and life sciences. In its prospectus, the company........

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