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CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sangeeta Bhatia said she "stumbled upon" a new way to stabilize human liver cells on artificial surfaces. The eureka moment became the heart of Bhatia's doctoral thesis, the basis for her research both at MIT and in the bioengineering department at University of California at San Diego and the origin of a biotech company she is planning to spin out of the lab she now directs at MIT.
The research has also attracted notice, specifically from the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT.
The foundation awarded Bhatia an innovation grant for the second year in a row. The monetary value of the award is $250,000 but it also provides Bhatia's lab with an opportunity to connect with a team of students from MIT Sloan School of Management, who conducted a study to determine the commercialization potential of the lab's research.
The "pre-business plan," as Bhatia termed it, so far indicates that there is a large market — over $100 million, according to Bhatia — within the pharmaceutical industry for drug development tests kits and in-house services that involve human liver cells.
Part of the Deshpande Center grant will go towards laying the groundwork for a company. Bhatia and a business partner are currently looking for a management team, meeting with investors and deciding what product and what kind of service to focus on first. The plan, said Bhatia, is that in the spring all the information will be gathered and the new company will be launched.
The company is Bhatia's first foray out of the ivory tower, but is also bringing her back to her roots. Bhatia's father was a consultant for KPMG Peat Marwick and now is a serial entrepreneur, having founded Minuteman International Co. Ltd., an import/export company and Suitable Match International Inc., a dating Web site; her mother was an accountant; and her sister is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
"I am the only scientist in the family," said Bhatia.
Bhatia's resume reads like a who's-who of academia. She did her undergraduate degree at Brown University, her master's degree in mechanical engineering at MIT, her doctorate in medical engineering, at MIT, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and her medical degree at Harvard Medical School.
After postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, she became a member of the bioengineering department at the University of California, San Diego, where she stayed for six years. In 2005, she returned to join the MIT faculty as an associate professor.
Bhatia was awarded the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship given to promising young professors in science and engineering and she co-authored the first undergraduate textbook on tissue engineering. She also holds 12 issued or pending patents.
According to Bhatia, her focus on the liver began in graduate school when she was looking for a project. "This one sounded interesting," she said.
The main focus of Bhatia's impact will be helping pharmaceutical companies to determine the toxicity level of human liver cells at an earlier stage, leading to quicker and safer drug development. In the 1990s, a diabetes drug that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration was found to cause liver failure in humans, a side effect that was not predicted because the testing is only done on animals. "Liver enzymes are different in humans," noted Bhatia. "For some drugs, you won't see [that side effect] until it gets exposed to human livers."
Bhatia's current research — her lab is comprised of 15 people — grew out of her doctoral thesis work at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital developing artificial liver machines similar in concept to dialysis machines. But because the liver does more than the kidney — like detoxification and making protein — living liver cells were required in the machine.
Bhatia knew that the liver cells didn't function well in the machine, dying within hours. "We needed to harness the function to support the patient," said Bhatia.
Bhatia discovered that if the liver cells were surrounded with other types of cells, they functioned better on an artificial surface. Bhatia's neighboring lab at Mass General Hospital was developing artificial skin for burn patients and they employed this concept as well. On a lark, Bhatia happened to try the cells they were using and it worked.
"[Since then] we spent years trying to figure out what was so special about those cells," said Bhatia. "But in the meantime we found something that could keep liver cells alive for weeks."
The technology of keeping the liver cells alive was based on microfabrication or making things micro in scale, and Bhatia's thesis used that technology to pattern the cells in such a way to keep them alive. At the University of California, San Diego, she continued to pursue her research, both the why and the how of liver cell functionality.
After her return in 2005, Bhatia and her lab at MIT realized that for pharmaceutical companies, being able to test their drugs on human liver cells, was a benefit both from an economic and a safety perspective.
The lab began developing an approach that was compatible with the pharmaceutical industry's equipment and it used the first grant from the Deshpande Center to demonstrate that they could deliver what pharmaceutical companies needed, namely that their liver cultures were stable and that the toxicity and metabolism of the liver could be measured.
The Sloan team looked at the cost of goods and the size of the markets and recommended that Bhatia's lab focus first on the in-vitro toxicology market in which Bhatia's company would sell test kits.
Non-existing markets pose another potential source for Bhatia's research. For instance, said Bhatia, there have been limited ways to develop a vaccine for Hepatitis C because it only grows in the human liver. It could possibly grow, though, in the more stable liver cells developed by Bhatia's team.
Because Bhatia wants to continue heading her lab, she can only be a consultant to the company, not an officer. "I am still interested in therapeutic fundamentals," she said. Besides, she is sure that if her lab could figure out why those molecules work to stabilize the human liver, it could have "tremendous applications."
"I think this company is the first of many that will emerge from this lab," she said. "I will continue pursuing these questions."
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