Michael Polansky, CEO and co‑founder of Outer Biosciences, runs a startup that combines living human skin samples with machine learning to identify new skin‑active ingredients. The company keeps surgically discarded human skin viable for weeks and uses repeated molecular measurements and AI feedback loops to generate and prioritize candidate compounds for commercialization.
Concept and methods
Outer Biosciences was founded in 2022 by Michael Polansky (CEO), Kyung‑Jin Jang (chief scientist), Chris Hinojosa (CTO) and Stanley King (chief business officer). The company’s premise is that biological and chemical innovation has lagged behind software in part because ethical constraints prevent direct experimentation on people, and common proxies — animal models, simple cell cultures, organoids — do not always replicate human organ behavior.
Instead of engineering synthetic organs, Outer Biosciences sources human skin that would otherwise be discarded after surgery, primarily from plastic surgery procedures, via vetted nonprofit and commercial biobanks and brokers operating under institutional review board oversight and documented donor consent. Polansky cites the National Disease Research Interchange and the Cooperative Human Tissue Network as principal suppliers; both receive NIH and National Cancer Institute funding but are not federal agencies.
All samples arrive de‑identified: the supplying organizations remove names and direct identifiers before delivery. The company pays fees on a cost‑recovery basis and says it spent roughly two years building the logistics and protocols needed to receive living tissue within hours of surgery. A proprietary nutrient and waste‑removal support system extends tissue viability beyond industry norms.
While typical ex vivo skin samples remain viable for days — enough to test acute toxicity — Outer Biosciences’ platform keeps tissue functional for up to about a month, which allows observation of slower processes such as collagen remodeling, pigmentation changes and barrier repair. Polansky describes that 30‑day samples preserve day‑zero architecture and epidermal, stromal and immune‑associated molecular programs well enough to be informative, though not indistinguishable from fresh tissue.
What the extra time enables
The extended viability lets researchers induce an injury — for example, UVB damage — and then track stress, inflammatory and recovery responses over weeks. The goal is observational: to see how an injury unfolds and how biology responds over time, rather than to “heal” the skin immediately.
The startup links three elements in a single closed system: living human tissue kept viable for weeks, a diverse donor pool subjected to controlled conditions, and repeated molecular measurements. An AI model predicts which untested chemicals are most likely to improve a given skin function. Those candidates are tested on living tissue; the results — success or failure — are fed back into the model to improve future predictions.
Polansky says that after an early, literature‑mining and natural‑product phase that produced a few leads in roughly 18 months, layering AI into the process now yields a new candidate roughly every six weeks. At the time of reporting, the company had six active leads in its pipeline and several dozen additional hits recorded.
Market context and regulatory path
Outer Biosciences focuses on cosmetic ingredients, not drugs, so its pathway does not require FDA drug approvals. The practical steps are: securing a standardized industry name for an ingredient, then performing safety testing under OECD guidelines, whose member countries accept properly conducted studies from one another. A partner company would then commercialize the ingredient by formulating and marketing it as a consumer product.
Polansky says four of the six current leads appear likely to progress to commercialization. Meanwhile, the company generates revenue from collaborative research partnerships, including a pharmaceutical partner studying why certain cancer drugs cause severe skin rashes, and consumer beauty brands validating whether Outer Biosciences’ data align with their product development needs.
Funding, team and competitive landscape
Outer Biosciences has raised about $23 million to date, with early backers including Wing Ventures, Initialized and Polansky’s own Hawktail. The company employs 19 people; most of the team is based just outside Cambridge, Massachusetts.
There are other companies working on organ models and microphysiological systems. For example, Vivodyne, a Philadelphia‑based competitor developing lab‑grown human organ tissue, has raised close to $80 million to date. Some rivals pursue organ‑on‑a‑chip and similar approaches.
Polansky emphasizes that Outer Biosciences’ data are unique and therefore the company’s position may be defensible even if building it is slower than typical software startups. The company also notes that its compute demands are modest compared with large language model training; their AI runs on‑premise because they do not want to store raw data in the cloud.
Next steps and long‑term goals
Polansky says the company has not fixed on a single long‑term business model — whether to become a standalone ingredient manufacturer, to license discoveries, or to reorganize around a single breakout compound. The more important aim is a predictive model accurate enough to point to promising directions in skin biology without physically running every conceivable experiment.
For now, translating a promising compound into a marketable product — formulation, manufacturing scale‑up, supply chain and safety testing — is still handled manually by the same scientists who discover the molecules. Building a dedicated product‑development team with experience in those areas is next on the roadmap.
Outer Biosciences combines living human tissue, carefully managed donor privacy, and iterative AI learning to accelerate discovery in dermatology and cosmetics. With roughly $23 million in funding, 19 employees and six active pipeline leads, the company is moving from stealth toward public engagement as it accumulates data and confidence in its approach.
