New companies and large ones
Advisory, program design, or embedded to supercharge a plan already in motion. Hire me as an ally when the biology has to keep up with the ambition.
I understand living systems, then improve them.
Consulting for companies that need regenerative medicine, stem cells, embryogenesis, or reproductive technology to actually move.
Stem Cell Reports · Sept 2019
The cover was the work, made visible.
Artwork by Michael Kime, from a visual design by Cody Kime. A hand holding induced blastocyst-like cysts — the system the paper had just shown could implant.
That image still says the offer more clearly than a slogan: see the living system, then make a new one that runs.
The offer
Biology is coded. We have not decoded it well enough to control it. I work at that layer: see the system, find the actual constraint, design the method, and move the program.
That is cell program hacking in the original sense. Not a specialty in one protocol. The ability to read a living system and change what it does.
Consistent progress is rare in biology R&D. That is the reason to hire me.
- Regenerative medicine
- Stem cells
- Embryogenesis
- Reproductive technology
- Living systems
Past, as proof
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Gladstone Institutes · Yamanaka lab
CIRM Scholar and research associate. Human iPSC methods, genome engineering in pluripotent cells, and naive pluripotency. Trained where induced pluripotency was still being made practical.
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Kyoto University · RIKEN · Takahashi lab
Doctor of Medical Science, 2018. Then Special Postdoctoral Researcher, reprogramming team lead, and Organoid young investigator at RIKEN BDR. Built embryo and retina systems from first principles, and ran the team that executed them.
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Trans Ova Genetics · Director of R&D
Livestock reproduction at the executive table, not only at the bench. Embryo production, donor programs, and breeding architecture taken into practice, including a path to several times more unique offspring per mating.
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Vision Care / Genentech · consultant
In vivo retina regeneration. The system was originated in Japan; the work now runs through rodent and nonhuman primate studies.
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Vertility Health · consultant
Highly utilized consultant to Vertility Health, led by Bonnie Maven. Genetic sperm selection for livestock breeding — reproductive technology at the company-building layer, not a side conversation.
Who it is for
Livestock and reproductive technology
Extensive executive-level communication in this industry, including ongoing work with Vertility Health. I can sit with scientists and with the people who own production, cost, and the next product.
The transistor side of tech
Compute, tools, and hardware are now pressed against living systems. Those programs need biologists who can conceptualize a system and invent the method, not decorate a slide. That is a seat I take.
Selected work
A synthetic blastocyst system from one starting cell type
Implantation-competent blastocyst-like structures from primed pluripotent cells, through a 2C-like state, in defined conditions. Posted April 2018, among the first such embryo models. The method is still underused. It induces the system. It does not assemble it from mixed stem-cell stocks.
Livestock reproduction as an operating system
Trans Ova R&D, then Vertility Health with Bonnie Maven. Production, molecular methods, and genetic selection taken into a company that has to ship. Systems work with an executive audience.
Retina as a regenerative system
Human retinal pigment epithelium–like cells induced from somatic tissue, and an ongoing in vivo regeneration program. Same habit: find the constraint, design the method, keep the program moving.
Record
Selected first and corresponding work. The full list is on Google Scholar.
- Implantation-competent blastocyst-like structures from mouse pluripotent stem cells
- Induced 2C expression and implantation-competent blastocyst-like cysts from primed pluripotent stem cells
- Reprogramming epiblast stem cells into pre-implantation blastocyst cell-like cells
- Synthetic embryology: early mammalian embryo modeling systems from cell cultures
- Inducing human retinal pigment epithelium-like cells from somatic tissue
- Autotaxin-mediated lipid signaling intersects with LIF and BMP signaling to promote the naive pluripotency transcription factor program
- Practical integration-free episomal methods for generating human induced pluripotent stem cells
- Efficient CRISPR/Cas9-based genome engineering in human pluripotent stem cells
Patents
- Induced totipotent stem cells and methods for making and using the same
- Reversion of primed pluripotent stem cells to naive pluripotent stem cells
- Suicide stem cell support cell line and methods for making and using the same
- Production method of retinal pigment epithelial cell