Outer Biosciences has come out of stealth after four years, keeping surgically discarded human skin alive for up to a month and feeding the results into an AI model that predicts useful compounds. It has raised about $23mn and employs 19 people.
A company in Massachusetts has spent four years keeping human skin alive outside the body. Outer Biosciences says it can hold surgically discarded tissue viable for up to a month, and it has been running experiments on it the whole time without telling anyone.
The point of the tissue is to teach a model. An AI system predicts which untested chemicals should affect a particular skin function, the living tissue tests the prediction, and the result goes back into the model whether it was right or wrong.
The pace changed when that loop closed. Early work using scientific literature produced a couple of leads in about 18 months, while the company now says it generates a candidate roughly every six weeks.
The material comes from surgery, mostly cosmetic. Outer sources it through biobanks and brokers operating under institutional review board oversight and documented donor consent, with identifiers stripped before it arrives, and says it pays fees on a cost recovery basis rather than buying tissue.
