Scientist turned entrepreneur founds nanoengineering startup

Brazilian biochemist Margaret Magdesian founded a startup in Canada to make organ-on-a-chip devices that enhance the efficiency of experiments using cell cultures.

By Maria Fernanda Ziegler  |  Agência FAPESP – Unhappy with the way microorganisms and cells were grown in the laboratory for research purposes using Petri dishes, Biochemist Margaret Magdesian decided to become an entrepreneur. In her view, the standard method is unsatisfactory as a means of modeling human tissue.

“Science moves forward, yet the Petri dish is the same as it was over 100 years ago,” she said in a presentation delivered at the Butantan Institute, São Paulo, Brazil, on June 26, 2017. “The cells we grow in the lab today using this instrument don’t properly represent the cells of the human body. They aren’t an efficient model, let alone for neurons.”

Magdesian graduated in pharmacy and biochemistry (1996) from the University of São Paulo and was awarded a PhD in biological sciences (biochemistry, 2001) by the same university. In 2008, she was invited to join the laboratory of David Colman, Director of the Neuroengineering Program at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

In Canada, Magdesian began developing an alternative to Petri dishes. The result is a line of silicone microdevices, similar to molds, with channels for cells to grow in an organized way, as they do in the human body.

Her innovation has won prizes in Canada, the United States and France, and it was rated one of the top ten discoveries of 2016 by the magazine Québec Science. In response to growing demand from other scientists, Magdesian founded Ananda Devices, a startup of which she is CEO, to produce the biocompatible devices for research that requires cells.

One of her inventions is the Neuro Device, designed for neuronal cultures. It consists of two chambers connected by microchannels. Cells are seeded in the chambers, and the microchannels help to direct axonal extension. Different populations can be cultured in the different compartments, facilitating co-cultures and the study of how neurons interact with other kinds of cells.

The company is only one year old and has already sold more than 3,000 devices to scientists in Canada, the US and Brazil to help their research in neuroscience, immunology and parasitology, as well as research involving cancer and stem cells.

Magdesian’s June 26 presentation at the Butantan Institute was titled “The future of cell cultures.” In it, she described her invention to an audience of researchers and students. The talk also had an emotional component. Referring to the academic career that began with her PhD research at the University of São Paulo (USP), she recalled: “It was in Brazil that I learned to grow any type of cell in any environment, which was of fundamental help in developing the devices for cell culture.”

Here is the interview given by Magdesian to Agência FAPESP .

Agência FAPESP – What led you to develop these devices for cellular studies?
Margaret Magdesian – The main reason was the need for an instrument in which cells could be grown more efficiently and accurately. Without that, you have problems with the reproducibility of research results. In a survey of 1,576 researchers conducted by Nature, more than 80% said they had tried and failed to reproduce experiments performed in other laboratories. Over half said they had failed to reproduce their own experiments. In biological sciences, for example, this happens for several reasons, but one is because every cell culture is organized or standardized differently. We have to improve this. I went to Canada in 2008 as a visiting professor at McGill and to do research on the brain. Basically, we were trying to test how each neuron reacts individually to an injury. We wanted to reconnect damaged neurons, but it was impossible to study them because, in a Petri dish, neurons aren’t organized as they are in the brain. Instead of growing straight, they become tangled, and it’s very hard to identify individual axons. Even with a high-precision atomic force microscope at our disposal, the limitation remained the cell culture, which doesn’t represent the original tissue. I knew that if the culture wasn’t organized as it is in the brain, I’d spend years without getting any results at all. That’s when I had the idea of making a mold with compartments so the cells would grow in a manner that more closely resembled the way cells grow in the human body. We worked with engineers and physicists to develop these new devices.

Agência FAPESP – How can you study the behavior of structures as complex as neurons outside the brain, using a synthetic device?
Margaret Magdesian – Most researchers use plastic Petri dishes with a smooth synthetic surface. Our devices are biocompatible silicone molds, similar to those used in implants, with 3D structures that enable cell cultures to be better organized and standardized. We use cutting-edge technology for microfabrication of microstructures and nanostructures. By selling the finished devices, we make this technology available to any laboratory. To create a new mold, you need sophisticated technology, but once you have the molds – and that’s why I’m here in Brazil – even without the structure for fabricating them, many people can use them. The devices cost 47 Canadian dollars each, on average. That’s not expensive compared with the cost of an electron microscope, and there are several other advantages, such as a reduction in the use of reagents, imaging time and the use of animals for scientific experimentation.

Agência FAPESP – How has the invention affected your own research?
Margaret Magdesian – With these devices, we’re able to work with isolated axons at last. Instead of testing one or two axons per day, I can test 120 axons per day. Moreover, the results are much more reliable and less subjective, because the model lets all the neurons be more or less the same size, and the numbers of connections between them are also similar. It’s a far more organized system and similar to the human body. Also, the results are much more reproducible. They’re obtained 50% faster than before. The cost of reagents is 90% lower because our device is smaller in volume than those used before, so you need much less reagent. And reproducibility increases to 95%.

Agência FAPESP – At what point in this story was Ananda Devices founded?
Margaret Magdesian – I’d been in Canada for six years, and a German firm called me to say they wanted to buy 10,000 devices. Sounds great, right? Except that I was doing everything by hand. So the people at McGill said I should set up a business if I wanted to make a large amount. I’d spent my entire life with a microscope. I asked, “How do you start a business?” They said I should go to the business school, McGill’s Faculty of Management. When I got there, I found out they had a competition for startups. I just had to submit a business plan. I had no idea what a business plan should be like, but I did my homework and was one of the winners of the Dobson Cup Innovation Competition. One of the judges was one of the founders of Yahoo. Another was a high-tech professional from Silicon Valley. They both offered to invest in my idea. In October 2015, I left McGill and put all my chips on Ananda.

Agência FAPESP – Why do you think so few scientists become entrepreneurs?
Margaret Magdesian – I think it’s a matter of focus. When you start on your doctoral thesis, you think of nothing else. Then you focus on publishing it. Very few scientists think of patenting. They think a company will get the patent and the product will sell itself. But it’s not like that. As scientists, we don’t value entrepreneurship, or we don’t understand it, we don’t realize how hard it is to sell something, how much time it takes to develop products, manuals and so on. That’s the stage I’m at now.