During the largest health care conference in the year, JP Morgan and Biotech Showcase, Legal Drugs Podcast host, Angela Stoyanovitch, meets with visionary Ping Yeh, CEO and Co-Founder of StemoniX at a café in downtown San Francisco, CA,. StemoniX converts skin cells into stem cells for brain and heart cells that are referred to as human organoids or human microOrgan.

You know we love to highlight the innovative aspects of the legal drugs business, so we are taking it up a notch! As an engineer and a survivor of cancer, Ping was trained in this business as a patient. He brings a unique mindset and experience to the table by thinking systematically and programmatically. Thanks to his project management experience, he creates a new approach that leads to a way to test cancer drugs never done before.  Today, much of the industry has adapted some of the ideas he had envisioned in 2014.

Ping explains, when he had cancer, his heart had to be monitored due to the danger of the drugs. He wondered if there was a way to test these drugs to ensure they were safe and effective on humans without humans or animals playing the role of “guinea pig.”  He started doing his own research and reading as much as he could about the topic. At that time, he learned about a Nobel Prize winning method to convert skin cells to stem cells. He wondered why the industry wasn’t using this on a massive scale? This question led to the founding of his company.  He explored how to grow a lot of stem cells and how to use them to create safer drugs with the use of technology and software.  

Today, Ping has been able to leverage champions in the industry to create a major swing in standard practices. He has been able to convert 80 customers (representing some of the top pharma companies in the world) who were previously (and predominately) using animal models. With augmented AI and a lot of software, such as machine learning (equations that predict which drugs are going to be safe or effective or not) Ping’s company, Stemonix, approaches products that reduce and refine the legal drugs business by skipping research steps through the converging of software and biology! 

For more information, go to www.stemonix.com. Interested in supporting our podcast? Please consider making a monthly pledge as low as $1 by going to www.patreon.com/<wbr />legaldrugspodcast.  Thank you for your support in advance!  

This episode of Legal Drugs Podcast was edited and produced by Margaret Beveridge.