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Harvard's Office of Technology Development and LabCentral invite you to the latest event in the Guppy Tank series, where Harvard life-science innovators will pitch their early-stage concepts to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors for constructive, in-depth feedback.

Please join us on Wednesday, November 4th, from 4 PM to 6 PM at LabCentral to hear the presentation, learn from experts on startup formation, and participate in giving audience feedback. The event is accompanied by a reception with food and drinks. All are welcome!

Our speakers welcome constructive feedback from the Guppy Tank panelists, and from the audience, on the commercialization strategy for this innovation.

Register Here

Presented by:

Manoj T. Duraisingh, PhD, 

John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Mahmoud Mikdar, PhD, 

Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Blavatnik Fellow in Life Science Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School

About the Project:

Red blood cell transfusions are among the most essential and widely used therapies in modern medicine, yet the donor-dependent blood supply faces persistent challenges, including shortages, aging donor demographics, infectious risks, and difficulty finding compatible blood for patients with rare or complex blood types. We are developing a renewable, donor-independent platform to manufacture transfusion-quality red blood cells from engineered erythroid cell lines. Our approach combines scalable cell production with genetic engineering toward universal blood group compatibility and improved cell quality, proliferation, and enucleation. Our goal is to create a reproducible, scalable, and broadly compatible allogeneic cultured red blood cell product, initially addressing chronically transfused and alloimmunized patients for whom safe, compatible donor blood may be unavailable or difficult to source in a timely manner, while ultimately helping create a more reliable and accessible blood supply and enabling broader erythroid-based biomedical applications.