Systemic Bio, the 3D Programs subsidiary working to rework drug growth with bioprinted tissue fashions, has formally closed. The information got here in an emotional, private, and highly effective weblog submit by its founder, Taci Pereira, who mirrored on the journey from a childhood loss to pioneering innovation in 3D bioprinting.
“I’m closing a chapter at the moment,” she wrote, “however the mission continues.”
Taci Pereira in 2022 after which in 2025 along with her staff. Picture courtesy of Taci Pereira/Taci’s Substack.
Pereira’s story started in Brazil, the place she misplaced all 4 grandparents to most cancers at a younger age. That heartbreak motivated her to make a distinction: “I promised myself I’d dedicate my life to preventing the illness I imagine is humanity’s largest problem. I labored laborious to make it potential. I turned the primary child from my metropolis to get into Harvard – certainly one of solely six from Brazil that yr. With ~90% monetary assist, some further scholarships, and aspect jobs (canine walker, babysitter, bartender, barista, dorm-room cleaner, mailroom sorter…), I studied bioengineering to construct applied sciences that would at some point assist hundreds of thousands of docs deal with sufferers like my grandparents.”
Her early analysis in most cancers immunotherapy led her to Allevi, a bioprinting startup, the place she rose rapidly from scientist to Chief Scientific Officer. However whilst the corporate grew, she started to assume greater.
“I began obsessing: may we generate higher information from bioprinted tissues produced at scale?” she wrote.
The purpose was to create high-quality, human-relevant tissue fashions that might be utilized in AI-driven drug discovery, changing the unreliable animal and cell-line information usually used at the moment.
However there was a significant hurdle: the present bioprinting instruments weren’t constructed for scale. Most methods had been designed for small-scale analysis, producing just a few tissue samples at a time. They had been too sluggish, inconsistent, and restricted to ever assist the sort of high-throughput drug testing she had imagined. Pereira defined that to make actual progress, she knew the know-how needed to transfer past the lab and into industrial-scale manufacturing.
On the time, nobody in bioprinting was fixing the size drawback. So she appeared past the sphere and located 3D Programs. After reaching out, she helped orchestrate Allevi’s acquisition by 3D Programs.
Pereira briefly left to start out a brand new enterprise centered on AI and tissue information, however 3D Programs requested her to return. She got here again to steer a brand new bioprinting division as Vice President/Common Supervisor, working by day and prototyping at night time. In 2022, she formally pitched her imaginative and prescient. With $15 million in inside funding, Systemic Bio was created.
What started as a shared lab bench and a telephone sales space “workplace” quickly grew into Systemic Bio, a fast-scaling biotech enterprise. The corporate launched its h-VIOS™ platform (brief for human vascularized built-in organ methods), constructed a 15,000-square-foot facility, grew to a staff of 30, and filed seven patent households. Its bioprinting course of may produce 6,000 vascularized hydrogels per thirty days. Systemic additionally landed partnerships with main pharmaceutical companies, and acquired a $10,000 innovation award recognizing breakthroughs in lab automation and screening.
h-VIOS2 containing two perfused vascularized hydrogels. Inside this chip’s footprint, any vasculature might be created. Picture courtesy of 3D Programs.
However the price of constructing this sort of deep tech was excessive: “The issue we had been fixing is huge, requires important funding, and the business is present process great challenges,” Pereira wrote. “3D Programs is laser-focused on profitability and might now not maintain this cost-intensive guess.”
She thanked her staff, calling them “the center of Systemic Bio,” and credited 3D Programs leaders Jeff Graves, Menno Ellis, and inventor Chuck Hull for his or her assist of her imaginative and prescient.
To her staff, she wrote: “Watching you develop, be taught, innovate, construct households, and pour yourselves into this mission has been one of many biggest honors of my life.”
Systemic Bio might have closed its doorways, however Pereira made it clear that her journey is much from over.
“The scientist who as soon as stood by her grandfather’s hospital mattress, decided to alter the way in which we combat illness, nonetheless has that very same fireplace,” she concluded. “This isn’t the top. It’s the house between chapters.”
Subscribe to Our Electronic mail Publication
Keep up-to-date on all the newest information from the 3D printing business and obtain data and affords from third social gathering distributors.
Add your 3D Fashions and get them printed rapidly and effectively.
