Otto Biosciences, a biotechnology company founded by Michael Polansky, is combining AI with the living human tissue experiment in an attempt to improve skin research and composition screening. According to the company, its system allows ionising human skin to remain active in vitro for up to one month, which is significantly longer than the industry ' s usual several-day cycle.
Sample from post-operative tissue.
This company was founded in 2022. The practice is not to cultivate synthetic organs, but to take samples from human skin that would have been abandoned after the operation, mainly from plastic surgery. Polansky states that the samples were obtained through a reviewed non-profit organization, a consortium of organizations and an intermediary channel and flowed within the framework of ethical review and donor consent.
He states that the sample was de-marked before it was delivered to the company and did not contain direct identity information such as name, contact information. The company does not buy the organization directly, but pays the supplier the cost-recovery nature. In order to allow samples to reach and remain active within hours of the operation, the company spent approximately two years setting up supply and processing processes.
In vitro survival extended to one month.
Polansky states that the team developed a proprietary support system to provide continuous nutrition to the organization and remove metabolic waste, thereby extending the availability of skin samples to about one month. In contrast, traditional in vitro skin experiments can normally be sustained only for a few days.
This distinction directly affects the scope of the experiment. It is usually only sufficient for a few days to observe acute toxicity, and it is difficult to cover processes such as gelatine remodeling, color change and skin barrier repair that take weeks to show. According to the company, the samples in its system will retain the initial structure, as well as the skin, matrix and immuno-related molecular characteristics, after 30 days.
In the case of sunburns, researchers can apply UVB injuries to the skin of the living body and follow up on stress, inflammation and recovery over the following weeks. Polansky states that the system is not “therapeutic” for skin, but a complete biological process after the injury has occurred.
AI for predicting candidate ingredients
The core objective of Outlook Biosciences is to provide continuous feedback to the AI model on the results of these experiments. The company allows the model to predict which untested chemicals may improve a skin function, then to test the candidate in the living tissue system, and then re-enter the model and continue to train for the next round.
According to Polansky, the company ' s value is not at a single technical point, but rather at the integration of long-lived human tissues, diverse supply samples, controlled experimental conditions and continuous molecular measurements into a closed ring system. In this line, AI is not just a data analysis tool, but is directly involved in the selection of components and in the experimental design.
Additional information:It was mentioned that Lady Gaga served on the board of the Outer Biosciences Board; its make-up brand Haus Labs also cooperated with this company on research consultants and some projects.