By Eve Herold – Healthspan Compass Editor in Chief –
Healthspan Compass (HC): Frontier Bio wants to revolutionize medicine through tissue engineering aimed at alleviating the global shortage of organs for transplant. What’s the company’s current focus, research and disease modeling or tissues and organs for transplant?
Eric Bennett (EB) CEO of Frontier Bio: Our long-term goal is to produce tissues for transplant, but we also develop tissues for research and tissue engineering. We’ve developed a blood-brain barrier model on a chip for studying traumatic brain injury, disease modeling and drug development. We start with human cells and put them on a chip that forms the blood-brain barrier, and then we can use that brain tissue in research. This replaces work on traumatic brain injury using animals. It’s less cruel, and there are big advantages to using human cells because it produces better data that is human-specific. Another current focus is the development of implantable blood vessels for various clinical applications.
HC: Are your engineered tissues currently being marketed for research?
EB: Yes, for industrial research by startups and pharma.
HC: From where are the human stem cells sourced?
EB: We use induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, which can be obtained from skin cells.
HC: One of the goals of medicine is to create patient-specific treatments that are genetically matched and don’t require immune suppression. How realistic is it to use patient-sourced cells in transplant tissues for personalized treatments?
EB: It’s feasible, but still costly. We’re exploring various possibilities. For example, there’s also the possibility that in the future, a new technology could come along that modifies the genetics of cells so that immune rejection is not a problem. Various groups are currently working on this. When that’s developed, we could have widely applicable banks of cells and won’t need stem cells from every patient.
HC: What are the advantages of using human cells as opposed to animal studies?
EB: It’s cruelty-free, and there’s better translation of research. We can obtain human data without testing on a human or animal. The cost is lower, and it has the advantage of speed in generating human data, given that animal studies frequently fail to translate well to humans. With the small bits of tissues we use, you can create a lot of data. With our human tissues on a chip, you could do hundreds of tests in parallel. This would be extremely expensive and slow to do in animals. Our technologies will dramatically speed up the discovery of new therapies.
HC: One of the overarching goals of Frontier Bio is to ease the shortage of donated organs. Could replacing failing organs with engineered tissue eliminate the need for organ transplants? How close are we to making that a reality?
EB: This will become routine in several years. People won’t have to spend years on the transplant waitlist. We’ve started with creating blood vessels, because they are the foundation for all tissues and organs. From there we would create parts of tissues and organs… think “cardiac patch” or tissue-specific vascularized cell therapies. But our long-term vision is to create whole organs. We expect the first human trials for full functional tissue-engineered organs to happen in 8 to 10 years, and we expect our implantable blood vessels to be tested in humans in 2 years, followed by commercialization within six years. Our vessels will have multiple applications, including use in cardiac bypass surgery and peripheral artery disease. Synthetic grafts for peripheral artery disease have about a 65% failure rate within two years. Because our grafts are composed entirely of the patient’s own cells and contain no permanent synthetic materials, we anticipate a much higher success rate. Our vessels will also be used in cases of traumatic injury and hemodialysis.
HC: What kind of tissues do you make now, and what techniques do you use at Frontier Bio?
EB: We’re currently developing human neural tissue, lung, and blood vessels, with blood vessels being the farthest along in development. We use a variety of tools and techniques here, including 3D bioprinting, scaffolding, bioreactors, and robotics. We also rely on a kind of “self-assembly” of tissue in which the cells work together to form their own complex structures, similar to how tissues form naturally during development.
HC: How close is FB to creating whole organs?
EB: We expect to be using lab-grown organs in humans within 8 to 10 years. Achieving that goal will require close co-development with strategic partners and mission-aligned investors.
HC: What should readers remember most about Frontier Bio, and how can they get involved?
EB: Engineered human tissues will soon end the donor-organ shortage, and Frontier Bio is building the technology to make that a reality. If readers have complementary science, clinical expertise, or investment interest, they should connect with us and help bring lab-grown organs to patients faster.
