When Ping Yeh was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, he made a promise to himself. If he beat the disease, he would use his skills to help people in a meaningful way.
Yeh was told four months into treatment that his body was not responding to chemo. His best bet, the doctors told him, was to take the maximum dosage of a newer, different kind of chemo that could potentially be toxic to his heart.
The new procedure worked, but his experience as a drug testing guinea pig left a lasting impression.
"I was told I survived the cancer, but they had to see if my heart survived the treatment," Yeh said. "Luckily, I did. But that doesn't always happen."
One year after he went into remission, Yeh, a nanotechnologist by trade, set out to see if there was a way to test a drug's effect on a body, outside of the body. He teamed up with inventor and serial entrepreneur Robert Petcavich to found StemoniX in 2014, a company that uses stem cells to create micro-organs for drug testing and development.
StemoniX's tech is built off a patent Petcavich filed for the mass printing of living cells. After months of research, Yeh and Petcavich determined that they could convert skin cells into stem cells, which could be used for scientific testing.
Yeh said StemoniX's process could potentially reduce the need for animal testing. It also allows researchers to test potential drug effects on people that never would be put through clinical trials, like children or pregnant women.
Above all, Yeh hopes to take the danger out of drug testing. Adverse drug reactions are among the leading causes of death in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Studies by the FDA estimate that around seven percent of hospitalized patients experience adverse reactions to medication each year, resulting in more than 100,000 deaths.
It can take more than a decade for some drugs to be approved by the FDA and reach the market, according to Yeh. And when it finally becomes available for use, it still isn't always safe. In Yeh's case, there was no technology in place to test the potential effects how the chemo treatment would impact his heart.
"Most drugs, especially neurological ones, are trial and error," he said. "And there are so many drugs that it can take a year or more to figure out what works. We can't make you, but we can make thousands of replications of your brain, which takes out some of the guess work."
StemoniX took home the grand prize at last year's Minnesota Cup. Less than a month after the win, the biotech company closed on $2.5M in funding. StemoniX now has 30 employees, and is moving into a new 16,000-square-foot office space in Maple Grove later this month.
Earlier this summer, the company announced a new partnership with genetic research company Pairnomix to create a model for studying epilepsy. Using StemoniX's tech, researchers can induce seizures on miniature brains and observe the effects of different treatments.
"We're working together because they understand epilepsy and disease. We bring the human brain model," Yeh said.
Yeh has big plans for the future. Eventually, he hopes Stemonix will lay the groundwork for personalized medicine.
"Doctors could test what concentration of drugs will work best for you, or evaluate the percentage chance of something working," he said. "If we can put your heart on a plate and make sure that combination doesn't have a bad reaction, that's a pretty good sign."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of the story said that StemoniX's new office will be in Northwest Minneapolis. The office will be in Maple Grove.
