Outer Biosciences: AI model trained on living human skin
Original: Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive
Why This Matters
Ex-vivo tissue AI training could accelerate drug discovery and personalized dermatology at scale.
Michael Polansky, co-founder of AI-biology startup Outer Biosciences and partner of Lady Gaga, is developing an AI model trained on living human tissue kept alive outside the body for over a month. The company has operated in stealth until now.
Michael Polansky, a Harvard-trained applied mathematician and computer scientist (class of 2006), is the co-founder of Outer Biosciences, a stealth-mode AI and biology startup. The company has developed a method to keep living human tissue — specifically skin — viable outside the body for over a month, and is using that tissue to train an AI model. Polansky's career path ran through Bridgewater Associates, Founders Fund (alongside Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery), and Sean Parker's family office, where he also helped establish the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, of which he remains executive director. He met Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) in late 2019 at one of Parker's birthday parties, introduced by her mother Cynthia Germanotta through shared philanthropic circles. Outer Biosciences had kept its living-tissue work entirely private until now. The combination of extended ex-vivo tissue viability and AI training represents a novel approach in computational biology and dermatology research.