New York, (Newswire.com) – TARA Biosystems is proud to announce that TARA CEO Dr. Misti Ushio has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the Top 100 Most Creative People in Business today. The annual list honors an influential and inspiring group of leaders from a wide range of industries, who are shaping the future of business in creative ways.

Dr. Ushio is the founding CEO of TARA Biosystems, a fast-rising star in the emerging organ-on-a-chip industry, which is disrupting the lengthy, expensive, and error-prone processes that plague conventional biopharmaceutical drug discovery and development. Today, decisions regarding safety of biopharmaceutical drug candidates remain reliant on the use of animal models that are poor proxies for human biology, potentially leading to costly failures discovered years later after hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and, in some cases, adverse human health outcomes. TARA is poised to transform this paradigm by offering a less costly, faster, and more effective way to predict human response to drug candidates using engineered human heart tissue that mimics the function of human heart tissue as nature designed it.

“I am deeply honored to be named to Fast Company’s Top 100 Most Creative People in Business,” said Dr. Ushio. “I founded TARA with the vision of addressing a big, global issue that affects every one of us: accelerating the pace of developing new medicines that will enable us to live healthier, more productive, longer lives. Each of us, personally, as a family member or member of society knows what it’s like to have someone that we care about suffer from ill health or disease. At TARA, delivering on the promise of safer, more effective drugs, sooner, is everything I’ve trained for as a scientist, entrepreneur and mom – it’s personal and professional – it’s what I strive to do every single day, with purpose and integrity.”

Dr. Ushio has over 20 years of experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, and early stage life science company building. Previously she was Chief Strategy Officer and Managing Director of Harris & Harris Group, where she worked with, and invested in, life science companies to help them realize their transformational science into commercially successful companies. Earlier in her career, Dr. Ushio held management roles at Merck & Company, where she developed vaccines and biologics products, and Columbia University, where she managed the intellectual property of several scientific and engineering portfolios. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University (B.S., Chemical Engineering), Lehigh University (M.S., Chemical Engineering) and University College London (Ph.D., Biochemical Engineering). She also serves as a Director on the Boards of private and public life science companies.

See Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business

Press Contact:

Donna See

TARA Biosystems, Inc.

917-512-2027

donna@tarabiosystems.com

New York, (Newswire.com) – TARA Biosystems, Inc., a company offering physiologically human relevant “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for drug discovery and development applications, announced the appointment of Donna See as Chief Business Officer. In this newly created role, Donna will drive the company’s commercial operations, building upon TARA’s strong and growing base of revenue-generating partnerships with leading biopharmaceutical companies. She will also develop strategy and opportunities that leverage TARA’s ongoing investment in the production and analysis of large high-fidelity human-relevant datasets.

TARA Biosystems offers bioanalytical testing services on its human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue platform. The company’s Biowire™ II platform enables the maturation of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived cardiomyocytes into cardiac tissues that achieve an adult-like phenotype. These physiologically-relevant in vitro models facilitate early cardiac risk assessment of drug discovery candidates and accelerate discovery efforts for novel heart medicines via disease modeling and phenotypic screening capabilities.

“We are thrilled to welcome Donna to TARA. As we enter our next phase of rapid company growth, Donna’s proven leadership abilities, make-it-happen energy, and shared vision will be critical to TARA’s growth and commercial partnering efforts,” said Dr. Misti Ushio, CEO of TARA. “Her extensive network and two decades of experience developing, investing, and operating early-stage ventures will be immediately leveraged as TARA executes, scales, and grows.”

“TARA has developed a first-in-class capability with its Biowire™ II platform, creating ‘heart-on-a-chip’ technology that is uniquely positioned to become the industry standard for high-fidelity human in vitro cardiac tissue biology. There is tremendous potential in the development and application of these data for in silico drug discovery,” said Ms. See. “I am very much looking forward to working with the TARA team and our biopharma partners to fully realize this potential.”

Donna brings demonstrated executive leadership experience in translational science, business development, and operations with an emphasis on early-stage life sciences companies. Donna most recently served as Chief Business Officer of Allied-Bristol Life Sciences, a $110 million therapeutic development fund between Allied Minds and Bristol-Myers Squibb, where she was instrumental in all aspects of sourcing, diligence, deal negotiation, and project management across multiple therapeutic areas, including heart failure, oncology, immune disorders, and fibrosis.

NEW YORK, (Newswire.com) – TARA Biosystems, Inc., a company offering physiologically relevant “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for drug discovery and development applications, announced today that it has appointed pharmaceutical industry innovation leader, John M. Baldoni, Ph.D. to its Board of Directors.

TARA Biosystems offers bioanalytical testing services on its human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue platform. The company’s Biowire™ II platform enables early cardiac risk assessment of drug discovery candidates and accelerates discovery efforts for novel heart medicines via its disease modeling and phenotypic screening capabilities. TARA continues to develop a proprietary analytics platform, leveraging data from internal development programs on its Biowire II tissue production platform.

“TARA Biosystems uniquely enables the production of large amounts of high fidelity human relevant data,” said Dr. Baldoni. “This provides foundational information for machine learning and nextgeneration computational approaches that are fundamentally shifting the way drug development is done today.”

Dr. Baldoni has over 37 years of experience of implementing cutting-edge technology to improving the development of new medicines. He is currently Senior Vice President of In silico Drug Discovery, at GSK, which uses computational methods to identify patient needs, explore molecular interventions to address those needs, and design clinical trials to test the medical hypothesis. The intent is to discover medicines at higher velocity and with greater precision compared to current approaches. Dr. Baldoni is also founder and governing board co-chairperson of Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM), which is championing a framework for pioneering applications of deep learning for drug research. ATOM aims to develop computing models that will guide researchers based on a computer’s ability to quickly vet millions of molecules for efficacy and structural relationships and that will adapt as they are applied to new data. Dr. Baldoni was previously Senior Vice President, Platform Technology and Science, at GSK. In that role, he worked across the entire drug discovery and development process.

“TARA’s objective is to greatly improve the drug discovery and development process by providing human in vitro models,” said Misti Ushio, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of TARA. “Dr. Baldoni brings to TARA a visionary perspective on how engineered human cardiac tissue data can be applied to predictive risk assessment and the acceleration of drug discovery.”

Read the full press release here

August 22, 2017. NEW YORK, (Newswire.com) –

TARA Biosystems, Inc., a company developing physiologically relevant “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for both toxicology and drug discovery applications, announced today that it has appointed pharmaceutical industry leader, Michael P. Graziano, Ph.D., as its Chief Scientific Officer. 

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June 22, 2016. NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TARA Biosystems, Inc., a company developing physiologically relevant “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for both toxicology and drug discovery applications, announced today that it has appointed biotechnology entrepreneur, scientist and engineer Robert S. Langer, Ph.D., to its board of directors.
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TARA Biosystems offers testing services on its human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue platform. The company’s platform, which is based on its proprietary Biowire™ technology, enables discovery efforts for novel heart medicines via its disease modeling and phenotypic screening capabilities. The Biowire technology is based on research from the laboratories of scientific co-founders Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D., the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences at Columbia University, and Milica Radisic, Ph.D., P.Eng., Professor and Canada Research Chair in Functional Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering at the University of Toronto. Drs. Vunjak-Novakovic and Radisic are both world leaders in cardiac tissue engineering and former members of Dr. Langer’s lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

World-Renowned Biomedical Engineer Robert Langer Appointed to Board of Directors

Dr. Langer is the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. A founder of more than 30 life science companies and the most cited engineer in the world, Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to more than 300 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He served as chairman of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board from 1999 to 2002, and is one of very few individuals elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. Dr. Langer is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including the 2015 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering; the 2014 Kyoto Prize; the 2013 Wolf Prize in Chemistry; the 2012 Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society’s highest honor; the 2011 National Medal of Technology and Innovation; the 2008 Millennium Prize; the 2006 National Medal of Science; the 2005 Albany Medical Center Prize; the 2002 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers; and the 1998 Lemelson-MIT Prize for being one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine. He is also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award. He holds 28 honorary doctorates including honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale.

“Through its cutting-edge, cardiac tissue engineering technology, TARA Biosystems has rapidly demonstrated promise to improve the efficiency of the drug development process and accelerate patients’ access to innovative therapies,” said Dr. Langer. “I look forward to working with the company through this exciting phase of growth.”

“Professor Langer brings a deep history in collaborating with our scientific co-founders, Drs. Vunjak-Novakovic and Radisic, through their early work on cardiac tissue engineering in his lab, and it is a privilege to have him join our board,” said Misti Ushio, Ph.D., CEO of TARA Biosystems. “His unique experience, from basic research to product launch, will be invaluable to TARA as we continue to validate and commercialize our unique predictive technology to test the safety and efficacy of new therapies and for the discovery of new drugs.”

January 5, 2016. NEW YORK, (Global Newswire) – TARA Biosystems, Inc., which provides physiologically-relevant “heart-on-a-chip” tissue models for both toxicology and drug discovery applications, raised $2.25 million in a seed financing to build commercial operations in New York City. Based on research from the laboratories of Columbia University Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic and University of Toronto Professor Milica Radisic, both scientific co-founders of TARA Biosystems, the company aims to capitalize on the need for more predictive technology for testing the safety and efficacy of new therapies and for the discovery of new drug compounds.

Harris & Harris Group led the financing with participation from the Partnership Fund for New York City and Alexandria Venture Investments. “We are fortunate to be funded by investors committed to NYC,” said Dr. Misti Ushio, founding CEO of TARA Biosystems and Managing Director of Harris & Harris Group. “With this investment, we will build our commercial operations in NYC and are enthusiastic to be a part of its growing life science community.”

“Growing the life sciences sector in New York City has been a top priority of the Partnership Fund, with a recent focus on supporting the spin-out of life sciences companies from New York’s world-class universities,” said Maria Gotsch, President and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City. “It is a priority for us to create new jobs here in New York City. TARA Biosystems and its ground-breaking predictive technology will be an excellent addition to the growing life sciences ecosystem in New York.”

TARA Biosystems offers testing services on its human stem cell-derived cardiac tissue platform, which is based on its proprietary, patented Biowire™ technology. Professor Milica Radisic said, “We are actively working with our collaborators in the pharmaceutical industry to commercialize the TARA technology and fulfill the industry need for predictive human cardiac safety and efficacy information much earlier in the development cycle for new medicines.”

TARA Biosystems also enables discovery efforts for novel heart medicines via its disease modeling and phenotypic screening capabilities. Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic added, “The TARA tissue also has the potential to generate new drug targets for the treatment of cardiac disease because of its ability to recapitulate adult heart biology.”

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