This profile is part of the Sacramento Business Journal's Inno Under 25 feature.
Sacramento Inno Under 25 recognizes entrepreneurs, innovators, founders and scientists in the Sacramento regional business ecosystem.
These talented young people are trailblazers who have seen opportunities, created new products or started their own companies at an age when many people are still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. The candidates are all under 25 by the end of this year, and they live or work in local counties.
Avery Sonora Williamson, 23
Chief technology officer and co-founder, 3D Organic Polymer Silk
In 2019, Avery Sonora Williamson and two friends, all students at University of California Davis, were working on interdisciplinary research into how an organic mimic of spider silk could be used as a suture or glue for delicate operations like hand surgery to attach damaged tendons and ligaments.
That initial work turned into 3D Organic Polymer Silk, and the founders realized early on their startup company was going to be years in the making.
Spider silk has the benefit that the body doesn’t reject it out of hand like chemical or fiber sutures.
“Spiders are notoriously difficult to work with because they tend to cannibalize each other,” she said. When researchers have tried to harvest spider silk, they tape them to a table, pull out the silk until the spider dies. “For a variety of reasons, we’re not doing that,” Williamson said.
The team that would go on to be the founders of 3D Organic Polymer Silk decided to mimic the biological and chemical processes in the spider’s abdomen, adding and separating proteins in a proprietary process to create a liquid glue or silk fiber. Williamson started dismantling desktop 3D printers, repurposing their thermos-couplings and creating a biological printer. She’s got patents on that technology.
She built one of the variations on her kitchen table during the pandemic. Williamson is currently completing her M.S. in robotics design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which she will complete this year, and then she’ll spend two more years there getting her doctorate in mechanical engineering. She’s still the chief technology officer with the Davis and Sacramento-based 3D-OPS. She flies back to Sacramento at least quarterly to meet with the team, researchers and to spend time in the lab.
“We knew when we started this that our journey is going to be on a really long timeline,” she said, adding that the team, which includes CEO Haley Noelle Bergman and Chief Operating Officer Preston Vanderpan, knew that getting Food and Drug Administration approval would take years. “We are at all times planning many years out.”
The company’s funding includes winning money in pitch competitions and getting grant money. The company is avoiding taking dilutive investments in these early days to retain ownership. “We think it is better the longer you can go without giving up control," she said. The company is working with teams of researchers and orthopedic surgeons at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
Once 3D-OPS gets FDA approval for surgical repair, she said her dream is to create 3D printed implants as organic scaffolding to help repair damaged tendons and ligaments.
