Ajay Vishwakarma 2

Ajay Vishwakarma is a biotechnology entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Cell BioEngines, Inc.. He is an internationally recognized expert in stem cell and tissue engineering and has made several original contributions that have influenced this field. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor of Translational Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University.
==Early life and education==
Born in Bombay, Ajay graduated with a doctor's degree in dental medicine at Maharashtra University of Health Sciences. Ajay graduated with a master's degree in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine from Cardiff University in 2011. He performed his post-doctoral work in immune-engineering at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As a 22-year old, Ajay served as a volume editor for two authoritative publications in his field by Academic Press (an imprint of Elsevier, one of the world's largest publishing houses for academic and scientific literature) with a foreword by Robert S. Langer (co-founder of Moderna) and Hans Clevers (head of pRED of Roche). He later joined Harvard University, MGH Cancer Center and Broad Institute to study doctorate in cancer immunology but dropped out to establish Cell BioEngines during COVID-19 pandemic.
==Career==
Vishwakarma moved from the UK to Boston in 2014. Vishwakarma and colleagues developed biomaterials for controlling the behavior of human immune cells at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They demonstrated how micro- and nano-scale technologies could be used to design cell-instructive immunomodulatory biomaterials that are able to control the behavior of immune cells - in particular of macrophages, a type of immune cell that are integral to body's identification and destruction of bacteria and other organisms that are 'harmful'. They embedded M2-type macrophages, and stem cells to enhance bone repair. During his PhD, Vishwakarma discovered unique functional immune cell genomic signatures directly in renal cancer patient tumors with colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine|Carver College of Medicine that led to identification of several possible treatment targets for solid cancers. The discovery advanced the field several steps in this regard. Additionally, his seminal work on TANK-Binding Kinase 1 (TBK1) led to the discovery of TBK1 as a novel cancer immunotherapy target
Cell BioEngines was established to leverage Vishwakarma's expertise in, and achievements toward use of single-cell genomic strategies that identified rare immune cell-subtypes including cDC1 dendritic cells, Natural Killer memory cells and Ki67+ T cells in human cancer patients, understand their function using ex vivo patient-derived organoid models, and to further develop scalable manufacturing technologies to mass produce them from stem cells for therapeutic use. It is backed by SOSV and named as one of the 2024 SOSV Human Health 100 most exciting companies in the SOSV portfolio transforming human health through deep tech innovations. As Chief Executive Officer, Vishwakarma leverages his expertise in stem cell and tissue engineering therapy to execute an ambitious growth strategy for the company.
Category:Biotechnology
Category:Founders
Category:People from Bombay
Category:Indian people