Amel Ibrahim, MD, PhD, knows two things about herself: She likes to solve problems and she is an optimist.
She was in medical school at Imperial College London and on her way to becoming a surgeon. But another field kept grabbing her attention: regenerative medicine. "I loved medicine, but I also wanted to incorporate something innovative into my studies," she recalled.
She started pursuing research projects in her "spare time," by volunteering to help her professors in lab and clinical projects. This gave her a glimpse into how technology could be applied to drive science and improve clinical care. A professor introduced her to a principal investigator in disease modeling and tissue regeneration at University College London, who would later become her PhD supervisor.
The rapidly growing field focuses on the repair or restoration of tissues damaged or impaired due to disease or injuries. Driven by advancements in stem cell technology and tissue engineering, and increased demand for precision medicine, the global market could top out at nearly $500 billion by 2029.
"Alongside my surgical training, I started my PhD in regenerative medicine. I was working on them both full time and trying not to go mad," Ibrahim explained. "I understood the key problems impacting the patients we were seeing in the clinic and also knew the limitations of what we were doing in the lab.”
She thought she could use research to bridge these and find innovative treatments that could better target clinical needs. She completed her PhD in 2017, investigating a combined approach using computational biology and tissue engineering to create custom craniofacial bone replacement tissues.
A Fulbright scholarship in 2018 brought her to New York University Langone Health, where she propelled her research efforts toward a solution with commercial potential. "I met more clinicians in New York who made the leap into biotechnology and entrepreneurship. The ecosystem for that is more advanced here," she stated.
Bioworkshop Builds Award-Winning Biochip
She made her leap and founded Bioworkshop in 2019, leveraging her background in disease modeling, computational biology and tissue bioengineering. Headquartered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the company is developing a first-of-its-kind AI-driven 3D-printed microfluidic biochip platform to make drug and vaccine R&D faster, cheaper and more accurate.
"I knew I had all of the skills, experience, resources and team to do this, and it just felt right," Ibrahim remembered. The declaration of the pandemic a couple of months after launching presented challenges, but didn’t deter her. "I thought that now was the moment to do this. It didn't make sense to do anything else.”
Bioworkshop received an XSeed Award in 2022 for developing a biochip-based model of Parkinson's disease. The XSeed Award provides critical funding to translate scientific discoveries into commercially successful drug therapies to winning New York City minority- and women-led life science and healthcare startups working on novel drug development projects.
Research Models for Big Diseases, On a Small Scale
Ibrahim applied her experience using tissue engineering to model diseases and to create "replacement organs" to fill a gap in science: the need for better human tissue models to screen and test drugs.
"We have animal studies, human studies and cell culture. Even the biochip models we already had were very basic, and there was a gaping hole between the preclinical and clinical spaces," she contended.
She brought her knowledge of the regeneration of complex tissues down to a smaller scale, modeling tissues on microchips to see how diseases develop and to identify new therapeutic targets. The idea for her biochips was born.
With the addition of AI, in silico tools and knowledge maps, the biochips provide a platform to discover new disease markers and to screen potential therapies. Ibrahim and her team had already made biochips for skin and joint diseases and decided to focus their platform on degenerative diseases.
Improving Our Understanding of the Brain
One area where better models were needed was in the neurology space. Existing laboratory models did not come close to replicating the multicellular nature of the highly complex brain. They were unable to mimic how brain cells interact and how the blood-brain barrier functions. The Bioworkshop team built a Parkinson's disease model using Parkinson's stem cell tissues — the first of its kind.
"We were able to simulate the leakiness of the blood-brain barrier and look at the kinds of cells and their relationships with each other," Ibrahim asserted. "The model also expresses markers consistently found in Parkinson's."
She and her team are now looking at potential therapeutic targets and pathways using their drug discovery platform. The Parkinson's model may also be applicable to other brain diseases, including stroke and dementia. Bioworkshop has several models in its pipeline and is starting to commercialize them through strategic partnerships.
The company’s progress was accelerated by the XSeed Award funding. "During the early stages of a startup, it's a fantastic award to have. It gives you a bit of confidence. It pulls you into an ecosystem that you may not have had access to or didn't know much about," Ibrahim explained.
She values being able to go to Cure and to be able to ask others in that ecosystem for information or advice.
Don't Be Afraid to Take the Entrepreneurship Leap
Ibrahim advises other entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup to listen to their guts. "There's never going to be a perfect moment. You're going to have a feeling when you know you really have to do this," she noted. " And when that feeling comes, you just have to take the plunge."
She also advises leaning heavily on mentors and contacts to help make sure you cover your blind spots, overcome difficulties and get through the tough times. She concluded, "Be prepared to work harder than you've ever worked, and to be happy to do so. There may be lots of disasters, big and small, but you'll learn to take these things in stride."