Translational Innovation
Turning Discovery into Medicine
Allon Klein, PhD
Professor of systems biology, HMS
Olivier Pourquié, PhD Professor of genetics and pathology, HMS
One of the most enduring goals in regenerative medicine is deceptively simple: replace a person’s damaged or dying cells with healthy new ones grown in the laboratory. Researchers at HMS have made striking progress toward that goal, but only a small fraction of these advances have moved beyond the lab. The difficulty lies in controlling the process by which stem cells develop—small missteps can cause cells to stray from their intended path, leaving them immature, inconsistent, or unsuitable for therapeutic use.
To address that challenge, HMS researchers Allon Klein, PhD, professor of systems biology at HMS, and Olivier Pourquié, PhD, professor of genetics and pathology at HMS, co-founded Cellular Intelligence. Building on large experimental datasets from developmental, systems, and computational biology, the company is developing a machine-learning system to improve two requirements for turning cell replacement therapies into viable treatments: predictability and scalability.
Q-FASTR—HMS’s milestone-based translational research fund—supported the early work that made this possible.
By combining large experimental datasets with machine learning, Cellular Intelligence is working to uncover the rules that guide cell development and help researchers predict how cells behave under new conditions.
The Quadrangle Fund for Advancing and Seeding Translational Research identifies, supports, and expedites early-stage research with eventual commercialization potential.
About Q-FASTR
