CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Cellino and Polyphron said they have entered into a strategic collaboration aimed at making personalized tissue replacement a routine part of medical care by addressing one of regenerative medicine’s biggest barriers: scalable, reliable manufacturing.
Cellino, a regenerative medicine company focused on autonomous manufacturing systems for personalized cells, is partnering with Polyphron, which is developing an autonomous tissue foundry for engineering functional human tissues. The companies said the collaboration is designed to build end-to-end manufacturing capabilities for personalized tissue therapies.
Most chronic and age-related diseases are driven by tissue failure, as cells lose function and structures degrade over time. While modern medicine has advanced in modifying biological signals, it remains limited in its ability to reliably rebuild damaged or worn-out tissue. According to the companies, the primary obstacle has not been biology alone, but the absence of manufacturing systems capable of producing living tissue at the consistency and scale required for widespread clinical use.
Polyphron approaches tissue formation as an engineering challenge. Its autonomous tissue foundry uses closed-loop optimization and non-destructive phenotyping to reproducibly generate native-like tissue structures, replacing bespoke laboratory protocols with scalable, quality-controlled manufacturing processes.
Cellino contributes the cellular foundation to the partnership through its ability to produce induced pluripotent stem cells that can be directed into a wide range of tissue types. The company’s platform combines lasers, image-based artificial intelligence, and a closed cassette system to manufacture patient-derived cells with precision and consistency.
Under the collaboration, Cellino will manufacture iPSCs at scale, while Polyphron will engineer those cells into functional tissues, creating an integrated pipeline for personalized tissue replacement.
“Regenerative medicine is proving it can reverse late-stage disease in Parkinson’s patients, heart failure, and spinal injury,” said Nabiha Saklayen, Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of Cellino. “The next challenge is manufacturing: producing patient-derived cells with the precision and scale required for routine clinical use. That’s what we’ve built Cellino to do, and why working with partners like Polyphron matters so much.”
Matthew Osman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Polyphron, said the collaboration reflects a shift toward industrialized tissue engineering. “The era of artisanal tissue engineering is over,” Osman said. “To make regenerative medicine real for millions of patients, tissue must be treated as a manufactured product with defined tolerances, not a bespoke laboratory experiment. Cellino delivers precise, patient-derived cellular inputs, and Polyphron provides the systems that organize them into reproducible tissue.”
The companies said their shared goal is to transform tissue replacement from a laboratory process into a scalable medical infrastructure, enabling broader access to regenerative therapies and changing how tissue degeneration and failure are addressed in clinical care.
