Milad Khorrami
What sparked your interest in tissue engineering?
“When I started my undergrad, I went to the material science engineering department. From there, we had to choose one topic to research. At that point I was back home in Iran, and I wanted to apply for US Universities, and I knew that the biomedical applications are a hot topic here. And I was very interested in bioengineering and biomedical science. I chose to do research in the field of biomaterials and polymeric materials for biomedical application. So I pursued that realm and I got admitted to the PhD Penn State University department of material science and engineering. However, my PhD advisor was working on biomaterials for biomedical applications, and that's how I found my way towards tissue engineering. I found it super fascinating, and the more I got involved in the field, I got more interested. That's how I kept learning and finally I got my job in a tissue engineering based company in SF.”
What drew you to Prellis?
“When I was searching for a job, I was searching for different companies all over the United States. Based on my experience doing an internship at United Therapeutics, I got to know that there is a company working on 3D printing the human tissues based in SF. I was interested. The technology that Prellis was working on was very similar to my PhD thesis at the University of Houston. They both were working with similar topics. And I found Prellis to be a very good match with my PhD thesis. And I reached out to them, and I got a response. And that’s how I got here. I chose Prellis because of the fascinating technology they have and how well it matched with my background and experiences.”
What would you say is unique about the team at Prellis?
“The team members, my coworkers, and the people here are the most unique part about Prellis. What we are doing at Prellis is multi-disciplinary. It’s a startup company; however, we have scientists from different backgrounds. We have optical engineering, cell biology, mechanical engineering. I’m here as a chemist and materials scientist. We have people from all different aspects and we all get along together to solve one problem, which is how to fabricate a functional human organ. How top-notch scientists from different fields are gathering together here is truly amazing. Tackling one big challenge from many different angles.”
How will readily available tissues change the world?
“Tissue engineering, organ manufacturing, this is my dream job. To contribute my knowledge and experience; to contribute in the field of tissue engineering for fabricating functional human organs. As you may know, right now in the United States, there are 30,000 people in line for organ donations. There is a huge waiting list. So, fabricating functional human organs like kidneys and livers and lungs...these can significantly change the world and meet the demands of those patients. I’m very positive that in the near future, maybe in the next 3-5 years, we can fabricate functional human organs. This is my perspective for the future of tissue engineering. Once it’s out, it’s going to change the world. I really enjoy every day when I’m at work. I feel like every day, every experiment, every meeting, every brainstorm, we are getting one step closer to fabricating that final functional human organ. I’m super happy to be contributing to this field and I'm part of these super fast-paced scientists at Prellis Biologics. I’m hoping sometime soon we'll be able to fabricate something functional.”
Ishan Khan
What sparked your interest in tissue engineering?
“My undergraduate degree was in mechanical engineering, and for my graduate school I wanted to do something interesting, something a little out of my comfort zone, but still related to engineering. So, I jumped into biomedical engineering, and although my focus was biomechanics, like cellular mechanics, I did a bunch of coursework in tissue engineering. I was familiar with the scope of the field. It was never so much about what the field of tissue engineering has achieved, but rather what it can do in the next 10 years. Right now, things like scaffold design, 3D printing, and bioprinting are all common words in the field, but I think in 10 years we will see things that blow people’s minds. So, being a part of that movement, this radical change in how we understand organ transplantation is a big thing for me. So, I wanted to get on that boat. When I read about the company, I didn’t fully understand how cross-functional it is. I have never seen a lab where a team is so diverse. We have optical engineers, cell biologists, chemists, microfluidics, computer science. It’s as if we’re all from different planets and we’re trying to solve a set of problems in the same team, which is mind-blowing. The language the optical engineers use and the language the cell biologists use are so different. It’s interesting, it’s exciting, it’s challenging.
What drew you to Prellis?
“I think organ transplantation in particular—there’s a social angle to it. I grew up in Bangladesh. My Grandfather’s younger brother was an organ donor, and he was very progressive. He was listed for kidney and liver. Although he was progressive, after he died, his family members did not allow it to happen. Even if you raise awareness, you won't see organ donation eventually happen. Because there’s a lot of social obstacles and religious obstacles as well. So, to me, this was something that was more than just a job. Like if I can play a tiny role in developing an organ that could save one persons human life, to me that is a life worth living for. That’s why I joined Prellis. ”
What would you say is unique about the team at Prellis?
“The most unique part about working for Prellis is that it does not get boring. The things I worked on 2 months ago are very different from what I’m working on right now. You keep seeing different problems thrown in front of you, and you tackle them on a daily basis with a fresh mind and a fresh approach and you learn from them. That’s the most fun part for me.”
How will readily available tissues change the world?
“It will change the world drastically. If you think about going from a tiny replacement of a tissue to an entire liver or kidney, a patient won't have to wait for an organ donor. A patient won't have to wait if he has a rare blood type. They don't have to worry about those conditions. Basically, a patient won't have to suffer for just being a human.”
Hoang Nguyen
What sparked your interest in tissue engineering?
“I’m more of a CAD person — I really enjoy designing and 3D modeling. So, when I first saw that the job offer had the possibility of designing tissues and arteries, I always wanted to apply my skills in as many fields as possible. I can find a way to branch out and apply my skills to elsewhere, and that’s how I got interested in tissue engineering. It’s fun, too, printing organs and all that stuff.”
What drew you to Prellis?
“I found Prellis through my professor. He went to a conference and he found out about Melanie’s presentation and he reached out and eventually got in touch with the hiring team, and eventually we got involved with buying their products, and they told me that there may be an internship there for me and told me to apply. I had the CAD experience, so I thought I would be a good candidate to apply, and here I am.”
Have you enjoyed your experience at prellis?
“Absolutely. This is the first startup that I’ve worked at in the longest time. I’m 2 months away from a year of interning. It’s been my most amazing, longest internship. I got it extended twice. Everyone’s really nice, I learn something from everybody. I’ve never worked so closely with so many PhDs before, and it’s been a great learning experience. They’re amazing thinkers and hard workers. I’m learning a little bit from everyone.”
What’s your favorite part of the team?
“My favorite part of the team is the cohesiveness. The idea-sharing. The collaborating. Anybody can bring up an idea they have, and we’ll tackle it together.”
What do you see in Prellis’ future?
Hopefully, the future of Prellis will be 3D printing organs. Being able to print any compatible organ for that patient would be a game-changer. With printing speed and resolution off the charts—everything is just quick and efficient. To 3D print biocompatible organs would prolong life. It would especially eliminate the black market. It would make the world a much better place. Who knows, we could be going to Mars with Elon Musk.”
Gavan Wilhite
What sparked your interest in tissue engineering?
“I built a lot of skill sets around doing things virtually, like manipulating and creating content virtually, writing real time code that runs virtually, but i've always cared a lot about having positive impact on the world, and there are ways you can do that virtually, but it’s oftentimes easier to have direct impact when that can have impact on actual atoms rather than bits. So, tissue engineering...and particularly the challenges that we were having around building 3 dimensional typology for tissue engineering seemed like a clear place where I could apply that virtual knowledge to solving real world problems that would actually physically impact people in a positive way. From a technology perspective, I think there is something so profoundly powerful about being able to leverage all of the technology stack that we have built to date in order to physically synthesize life and we have explored a limited subset of things that one can do with that and that's already way more than we will probably ever do as a company. The sky's the limit on that. It is a brighter future in which we are more integrated closely with biology. A lot of our environments in tech are sterile and nonliving; but, a world that is more living, I feel like, would be a brighter one.
What drew you to Prellis?
“I tend to prefer smaller startups. It is rare to have the intersection of both being able to deliver something incredibly unique to a company and having that company also recognize that that is valuable because it is difficult to see the value in something that is so different from where you’re coming from. When you see such a perfect fit of what you want to bring and what a company does and the intersection of those two things. It was a no-brainer.”
What would you say is unique about the team at Prellis?
“You have people who are just incredible experts in their field. We have 1-2 experts in any given field across a dozen different disciplines at the company. Normally, you’ll have 6 software engineering experts and 2 marketing experts, maybe 4 at the most disciplines of experts, but here at Prellis, I feel like we have a dozen at least, and for the size that we’re at that’s pretty unique.”
What’s your biggest hope for the company's future?
“I hope that we perfect the synthesis of arbitrary tissue to the point where we can create full organs or it depends how crazy you wanna get with this cause I've got some larger visions of what we could potentially be doing. I hope we perfect our ability to create tissues that are important and useful to people and along the way we’re able to sell early versions of that that continue to create a sustainable company.”
Would you say you have a challenging job?
“There are always different challenges than what you’d expect, and the job wouldn't be fun if it didn't have these challenges. The degree to which interpersonal soft skills are important in my type of role is easy to underestimate. So that has been valuable to note how work that I have done on those soft skills has been useful and also amusing to the degree of which my job mostly involves that.”
Do you have any advice for those who want to get started in the world of biotechnology?
“I haven't spent a lot of time in academia, but because biotech is a relatively early field, it is still very academic in nature. I would encourage people to look for tools and practices and metaphors and mental models from outside of biotech and academia, because I think that the most fun I've had in my career is when I find unique niches or intersection between the things that I'm skilled in and the things that people need because I think in general, especially in this day and age, it's much easier to find a job if you're somewhat unique in the way you position yourself rather than if solely position yourself as a software engineer.”
Lydia Hoo
When you first learned about Prellis Biologics and the vision of the company, what were some of your initial thoughts?
“I’ve been in biotech for many years; I’ve been with small biotech companies and large pharmaceutical companies, so I wasn’t new to the industry. However, I was definitely new to what Prellis is doing. When I look back on everything, I’m really amazed at what Melanie has accomplished and what her vision is. The work we do is kind of mind-boggling. As a Human Resources Manager and not a scientist, I think that the technology we use on a daily basis is really cool. The medical field has made big strides, but to have a vision of building organs—it’s something that is truly spectacular.”
When you reflect on your team at Prellis, does anything stand out to you as being really unique?
“Yes, everybody. Each person I work with cares so much about what they do. They are a wonderful group of people, they’re fun to work with, and they’re so bright. Everybody takes the time to explain what they’re working on and really make us feel like a team, so I think that says a lot. Greg [Sr. Manager Business Development] and I go way back. We’re a small enough company where there’s really that opportunity for us to get to know one another. Before COVID-19 hit, we ate lunch together daily and had a great office dynamic. Working from home, that’s the real downside to this situation.”
What excites you most about the company’s future?
“That we are actually able to 3D bioprint organs and transplant them into people that need them. I mean, I know it’s a long way off, but, we have the most intelligent team, so it could be sooner than we realize. That’s my big hope—that we can change the lives of everybody that needs an organ, instead of waiting unimaginable lengths of time like the old-fashioned way of organ transplantation. This way, we can reach more people at a faster speed. That’s my biggest hope for Prellis and patients in the future.”
Brian Hachtmann
How did you get introduced to Prellis?
“I met Melanie at the Pacific Science Institute in Maui through a mutual friend, and Melanie and I became friends. Although, I’ve been interested in her work over a handful of years. I was on sabbatical and finally got to the point where I was looking for some real work. Melanie hosted a really fun conference; it was basically what AI researchers can learn from biologists and immunologists and such, and what biologists can think about the computational side. A while after I met Melanie, she told me, “I want you to come have coffee with my engineers.” I didn’t even think of it as an interview process, but sure enough she said she wanted me to come and work with all these different interdisciplinary groups, trying to find a common language. Microfluidics, optics, comp sci, chemistry, cell biology — how can we get everybody speaking the same language and heading in the same direction, together? I couldn’t imagine a more enjoyable role. There has been some adjustments since COVID, but it’s been really great seeing how well everyone can work offsite.”
What initially sparked your interest in tissue engineering?
“I’ve always been interested in the human body as a machine. When I went to Stanford for a Master’s degree, there were 2 things going on that I knew I really wanted depth in, and one of them was robotics. I was trying to build automated equipment for vascular closure, and I would do all this work, but I couldn't automate it. And I felt like that was a huge liability in my professional capacities, so when I went to Stanford, about a third of my time was spent on embedded system design in robotics. I was thinking about how the human body is probably the most interesting machine in the universe, or at least our little corner of it, so I wanted to study it, and I took cardiovascular biomechanic series, muscular skeleton biodynamics, human behavioral biology, and medical device design. I didn’t do much with it in the next 8 years while I was working at Tesla and a company that now belongs to Google, but once I met Melanie, that’s when I started getting into the biology side of things as a professional. I really love and appreciate that about working here. I get to be a part of a team that’s deeply biological. I just absolutely love working with Melanie, Courtney, and Erin. Everytime I get to hang out with them, I learn so much from them.”
What would you say is unique about the team at Prellis?
“I really enjoy that Prellis is deeply scientifically oriented. When I was at Tesla, it was hardcore engineering. Prellis is literally at the bleeding edge of what people are publishing and what they’re finding with all these different projects. The engineering world has for a long time been separated from deep biology. It’s wonderful to find places where these two powerful groups of human effort are finally merging. Tissue engineering is super interesting because at some point, you have to leave the science behind and just go for engineering. It’s a great interdisciplinary team, and I really enjoy learning from the science side of things while offering an engineering structure and approach. It’s fun to add different strengths to a community that already has so many. It’s such a pleasure to be on a team of badasses that are also truly kind people. Everybody here is really on each other's side. The basis is always respect and appreciation, and I love that about this team.”
What’s your vision for the future of Prellis?
“If we truly, masterfully execute on any of the basic things we’re trying to do, I feel like it’s a wildly profitable business to be built. Of all the things I’m here to do, the thing that truly orients me the most is building a great business — one that makes a powerful impact on the problems of humanity. The long term vision is so grand. We can fundamentally unlock a new regime of biological science research and design. It will be a huge technological advancement for an entire industry, and that’s super exciting. A lot of lives could be saved. With the ultimate vision of full replicable organs with maybe even the host’s biology itself, I could see us saving a lot of lives.”
Evan Brahms
Why did you choose to work in tissue engineering?
“At Stanford, I was working on neuroinflammatory drug discoveries, so I ran a lot of drug studies over there and then transitioned over to Prellis. Just based off of the technology that Prellis has, and the capabilities of utilizing 3D cell culture as a means to speed up research as well as further research in terms of further usage.”
How do you think that readily available tissues will change the world as we know it?
“Readily available tissues will revolutionize research in terms of how fast we’re able to execute studies. Currently, it takes a tremendous amount of time for studies to, from start to finish, especially when you have to introduce animal models, but by utilizing 3dcell culture with human tissue you’re able to speed up this process significantly.”
What inspires you about Prellis?
“What inspires me daily is I’ve always wanted to have a lasting effect in medicine, and to be able to have and potentially make a significant impact for people overall. I feel like the tech that Prellis has has the capability to do so. Also, the motivation on a daily basis is really the people that work here at Prellis. Everybody that works here is absolutely incredible and extraordinarily intelligent within their own field. The variety of people that work here, and the minds that come together to make things happen is extraordinary.”
What continues to be your favorite part about working for the company?
“The people and the environment and the attitude that everybody has makes it a lot easier and creates this environment where you really want to come in the next day and work harder and strive for those goals. Melanie and the team make it very easy for everybody to really push harder and think outside the box within their field.”
What’s your biggest strength that you contribute to the team?
“My background and skill set and knowledge within the drug discovery field adds a different dynamic to the team as well as the ability to communicate among different researchers in different fields to further and fully understand the needs of potential and current clients of Prellis so that everybody can utilize our technology to the best of their capabilities.”
When you look at the future of Prellis, what excited you most?
“The thing that excites me the most is the impact that Prellis has and the capabilities and potential impact that Prellis has on all fields within research so that we can speed up the potential for further drugs to come to market. That would be a very large component as well as how Prellis might be able to shape future companies as well for further innovations within the field.”
INSPIRED BY PRELLIS