What you’ll hear in this episode:
- What TruPigment is and how it works
- How skin can lose pigmentation
- The way TeVido BioDevices works with the ACC Biosciences Incubator
Skin can lose its pigment for any number of reasons. Scars, burns or conditions like vitiligo can cause the skin to lose its natural color, and while this doesn’t cause any medical problems the loss of pigmentation can be very emotional for some patients. But, according to Laura Bosworth, it doesn’t have to be this way. She founded the biotech company, TeVido BioDevices, that is changing the world’s approach to reconstructive surgery by combating the loss of skin color caused by disease or scarring.
“You’re not going to die of having a pale scar,” Bosworth explains to host Dan Dillard. “You might be really emotionally unhappy if you have a big scar on your face or something like that. So in this case, you don’t want to go through something traumatic just to fix it. So, our process helps with that. It’s pretty easy on the patient.”
The process Bosworth is referring to is called TruPigment. This process is done by moving living pigment cells from a healthy part of the epidermis to the unhealthy part. The doctor caring for a patient will send the sample of the healthy epidermis to TeVido and they will separate the pigment and other helpful cells. Those cells are then turned into a liquid that can be applied to unhealthy parts of the epidermis and over the course of about six months will help the skin regain its natural color.
Listen to the fourth episode of Science in the Mall, Y’all to hear more about the revolutionary work Bosworth and her team at TeVido BioDevices are doing and how they are taking advantage of the resources that the Austin Community College Bioscience Incubator offers. If you like what you hear, leave us a review and share this episode with a friend or colleague! And, if you haven’t already, be sure to catch up by listening to the first three episodes of Science in the Mall, Y’all.
Science In the Mall, Y’all is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with the ACC Bioscience Incubator.
Host: Dan Dillard, founding_media
Guest: Laura Bosworth, TeVido BioDevices
Transcript:
This is a founding media podcast produced at Austin community college district welcome to science the mall y’all I’m your host Dan Dillard Laura Bosworth and I have a lot in common for my choice in vehicles to grown up doing the hard work on ranches as a rugged tough work in Texas we are also people who started our own company Laura is the CEO and co founder of tributyl bio devices have you do is build a dedicated and standardized laboratory that turn skin samples into true pigment I have seen a gap in the market Intel folks can better recover from reconstructive surgery to view has a vision to change the current approach to reconstructive surgery starting with the loss of skin color caused by disease for storage so here’s one example of science happening in the mall we all thank you for coming to the show Laura I really enjoy look forward to the show in the things that you do nothing I’ve read some really great stuff about the work that you’re doing a minor already mapped and kind of anticipating the show so thank you for coming on so well thank you so much for giving me this opportunity it’s pretty exciting one of the reasons that we’re doing science in the mall you know is is to understand or for the honest understand that that things are much things that we imagine him coming into different medical or science used to be where you had to go work for big pharma big science in court right and make your path through there and a lot of times there’s ideas that are right there at your fingertips and maybe the thought process is I have got to go down this other route but incubators as you mentioned are a great resource because they’ve got all the equipment that could you know so how how’s that been we just talked about how a species been brighter journey and and and and how that makes it more efficient for small business owners yeah it’s actually interesting because we received a grant from the National Science Foundation in I think it was at the end of twenty fourteen and we needed to build out a lab we needed a facility an ACC didn’t have their incubator yet in that mall there was a group of George town that had some facilities and so we went up there but they they were full and they were supposed to be building out something else but you know construction delays you know yada yada yada so we ended up having to go into our own facility and you know buy our own equipment we we were frugal we bought all our stuff up at the auctions you know UT the the school’s auction off all their old stuff and so that’s what we bought a bunch of really old equipment but it was what we needed it the only thing we could afford so in fact we wrote letters of support to ACC and all those when they were writing their grants because it’s so difficult for a biotech type of company to afford all this yourself so your journey now as far as the science goes I went I went take a deep dive for someone to put super deep into into the pigmentation and the changes and and on those issues how does that work so it’s actually scientifically relatively straightforward you know everybody’s heard of a transplant you know you get a a liver donated a kidney donated the idea is to get healthy one from someone else and in an implant that transplant that in this case the probably also heard of skin transplants right if you had a really bad burn in one area and you move your skin to the other area so the same holds true if you’ve lost your skin color and there’s some diseases like vitiligo that can cause that but you can also get it from a lot of traumatic events you know burns or injuries scars often lose their skin color and so what you do is you move the healthy cells from one area over to the area that’s lost the color in the graft in overtime the color comes back well now the science he side of this is that in most of those cases you know you’re taking a whole liver you’re taking a big chunk of whole skin what we’re able to do is take a very small sample and then separate the living cells that have that produce pigment Moser melanocytes and and then transplant just the cells and sweet by taking a small sample that’s much easier on you and we can cover a much bigger area so that makes it in what some people might consider kind of cosmetic right I mean you’re on forty nine died of having a pale scar right you might be really emotionally unhappy you know you have big scar on your face or something like that so in this case you know you don’t want to go through something traumatic just to fix it and so our process helps helps with that he pretty easy on the patient yes I was watching the video on your website it was the little cartoon happens really combative it because it makes it seem very approachable it doesn’t seem like it’s a heart procedure at all right he was allowed to explain it because I need to do better than I was right with the but sounds like the truce whatsoever yeah I mean they’ve actually been doing this type of procedure for about twenty five years again very much like a skin transplant what we do is that the actual processing is is difficult that’s where a lot of the science kind of comes in in the net effect is unless you have a huge or big research budget mmhm you can’t prepare the skin cell transplants and so that’s what we do we have a lab where we prepare them for for the doctors for the patients okay so a person goes into the doctor the ticket small skin grafting get you get you the sample of the healthy cells right like that that’s right and your processes yep and then we ship it back to the doctor and the doctor and then they use a very there’s some procedures that are used a lot in cosmetic that these lasers and they take away a very small level the service your epidermis the set it’s like about as thick as a sheet of paper one of them and in fact they do this all this time to treat wrinkles and things like that very common so they use that to prepare your site that doesn’t have any color and then we put the cells they’re they’re in a liquid on top of that site and covered up with a bandage it heals usually about a week or less and it takes up to six months for this the cells they sort of know what they do right you’ve moved back into the body they recognize all the other cells and all the other components they attach and then they start to grow and what melanocytes do is they produce a protein called melanin on up and then that’s what gives your color so just takes the six months for it to happen I think the body’s incredible and what it can do but then also the the people like yourself that have looked at what how can we help the body identify the ways of writing self right it’s just it’s just really fascinating there’s a you know this is kind of up in it’s much simpler than what some people are doing today and regenerative medicine right where they’re trying to use stem cells to regrow your liver in my stead of having to transplant it and you know I think over the next twenty to twenty five years there’s gonna be some really amazing things are gonna happen so yeah you mentioned three D. printing is that still part of what he has to we have a follow on product that would have some additional features and capabilities beyond this one that we have out on the market and it would use a three D. printing type of concept to prepare who’s your clients like who who is a doctor services yeah we actually we sell to the doctor because doctors are the you know advisors to their patients and so we sell mostly to dermatologists and also plastic surgeons right because it this can be in sort of a reconstructive phase of them and then they sell to their to their patients now one of the key things is we do have to start working on kind of awareness so that patients no because for the last however long if you’ve gone in and ask Hey is there anything you can do about this car right they’ll tell you know I mean I can make it the texture better and can make it softer more pliable lasers are actually fantastic for for that but I can never fix the the loss of color is kind of what they say today so now people need to go back out there and start asking again because that’s that’s changing technology changes everyday mumbles answers change as well right I want to get into we we were chatting a little bit about you know where we grew up in that kind of thing but I want to get into you know the work that you’re doing now which is you want to talk about some of that I read some interesting things about skin pigmentation and how your you saw that as as an issue that you wanted to tackle can you tell me about when you have that idea and and what led to that it was actually an interesting happenstance I would say I had left a large corporate America and I was working to help entrepreneurs just like you know there’s a bunch of entrepreneurial programs and this was ten or twelve years ago so they weren’t quite as common but it was just getting rolling and me I grew up in el Paso so I was on the advisory board for the college of engineering at UT el Paso and helping to look at their innovation programs and met a professor who was doing three D. printing which is very cool as you can imagine ten or fifteen years ago that list like nobody was really talking about that it’s everywhere now and but he was doing it was skin and hello so we started to look at well what could you do with that and my background is hi tech okay so the whole world of medicine was completely foreign to me and when I started to think about the impact you can have on people’s lives I just got really excited so no intention to be an entrepreneur okay the further I got into it then I went to him and dean and said you know we go start a company coincidently along that line you may remember this but at the time I was growing up people used to Sunday then you’d use baby oil exactly you know for this we we were climate deniers of sunscreen and skin cancer time like nobody really believed it and so of course have a lot of people who are impacted by that and I myself have had melanoma and so that was kind of all at the same time so I think the you know coming across something that was related to skin at the time that I was experiencing challenges was scanned in trying to understand it I think it just now sometimes these things happen and they’re meant to be and you just have to go for it yeah when it does so so what’s really instances entrepreneurship journey but I’m always fascinated by because you know you have people that just like yourself and in corporate America doing whatever it is that the the people do and then they move on the second one ago tackle something so there’s there’s a certain there’s a certain fear that many have salesmen I don’t have a road map I mean obese tell me what to do to begin you go into structured corporate world has all the things you have to do right but entrepreneurism is like there’s no one there tell yourself is that what was that journey like for you well it’s interesting because although there’s no when they’re telling you there actually are a lot of road maps so especially now you know they have all these accelerators and incubators come in and they’re pretty structured around all the components that you need to think about as an entrepreneur it at least from that type of road map right in a you know I’ve actually developed and run programs like that and so for myself those were even helpful because I was fortunate to have experience in a lot of the difference phases of it but how you put it together all all at once it was even new for me you’re still the one figuring it out right and you’re still the one that I remember teaching a lot of people when you get to the sort of the financial projections and start to say well you know start putting your numbers like how many of these things thing is are you going to sell and are you how many a month and what’s gonna be the cost and just put it in a spreadsheet tell you what man this is a very uncomfortable process for most people of this pie in the sky numbers you just don’t even know where to start is don’t know where to start and because the reality is you’re always wrong and people don’t wanna be wrong right and so I think it’s the that to me seemed to be the most fear that people ever had was around the financial and you know I was always send you just put in what you know and then you’ll start talking people into learn more and then you start changing your numbers and they’ll get better and better give me your best wrong answer this isn’t the right intent that’s okay but people don’t wanna be wrong so that’s a fortunately I’ve never really had a problem with taking for there’s a lot of people that will tell you the incorrect use of brick in order to some point just starting out with something gets people excited because then they can tell you all the reasons why they think that’s not the right number and that’s how you learn you know so I think the thank you you hit the nail on the head the key is starting in them and then to not being afraid to be wrong not being afraid of failure failure failure is your friend because your learning process which in a previous interview I’ve had this insight from scientists actually is like I don’t like the word failure in sensors collect testing yeah because you think about you know test test test test everything doesn’t work and then won six seats and that there is exactly right so that’s the same and it’s the same with your financial IQ testing it you know you’re putting in what you think and you’re gonna be asking people you’re testing it and then you’re gonna change it as you learn so exactly the same so before you embark to sternly I do want to touch on your your background what you did for corporate America and maybe even what you studied up in that list talk about your passion the hell that transform would you wanna text back okay well I have a degree in engineering actually odd field metallurgy it’s not very common but was it a good broad kind of kind of basics type of engineering field what is it metallurgy is out now so really literally metals yeah so it was most of the people who had metallurgy degrees went to work in the steel and treatment you know or an aluminum our you know any anything like that I had interviews like General Motors in the steering wheel division kind of it should be stricken will look alike sorry General Motors somebody’s got to and but I went to work at IBM into their manufacturing so you know it was a really good and I think a lot about engineering is it’s problem solving right right so it doesn’t matter what kind of problem you’ve been trained to solve problems business problems financial projection problems you know whatever it is man I feel like that’s how I was able to take advantage of that in my corporate life I actually had a lot of different roles so I would do well where I was and then people would give me an opportunity to move to a very different space that I didn’t have experience in which is one of the best things about big corporations is that you develop a network and they kind of stay with you but they they they make sure you get these opportunities to go over them as opposed to a lot of times today you know if you want to go get a job in the medical field team had I applied coming right out in the medical field people wouldn’t like I know you’re not qualified right but if I had wanted to go into the medical sales side at IBM or dell the Lewis said yeah because you know we know of you and we know you know how to learn these things so yes that’s I felt fortunate to have that kind of background the real life where he committed engineering to entrepreneurs and because most people think completely different things but in essence engineers are problem solvers yeah and entrepreneurs identify something that is not working society is able to tackle that right and I hadn’t made the connection until just and then I will tell you then everything else about it is a problem solving too right because you’re may your product is the first problem that you solve but then you know what’s the business model who are you gonna sell to how much you can sell it for you all those questions are all just problems that you have to test and re test and test and we’re failing Daily Mail depending on which way you like to describe it right and and then just keep tweaking your answer until you figure out the path that’s the way it’s going to be the successful one as far as your transition from when we talked about the transition from corporate America into entrepreneurism was been some of the Chetniks challenges you face that over comments on your proudest moments maybe and that’s a loaded question but and it’s always a tough one isn’t it I think one of the one of the things that’s obvious that’s hard as you go from a place full of resource to you no no resources right and I was fortunate that I’m a bit of a Jack of all trades and and you know I think that works well that that meant I was comfortable to wear multiple hats because you you you really have to unless you can build your team super fast which you know they always have those stories but I’ll tell you those are not the usual it’s usually much harder than you know than the Facebook story of them I thought that up you know so I was lucky that I was hands on I could dive into a lot of different areas and feel comfortable and and I really love to learn new stuff so I’m always attracted to that up until one of the hardest things isn’t it’s not having an admin up in a cruciate in hindsight I feel bad for my admins you know because I feel this will be dated a lot of people know this but the old Murphy brown show where she was always yelling at her admins I don’t think K. L. defected I apologize but this takes so much time in so much work all the little trivial things you know the of scheduling your flights and getting hotels in the it’s it’s crazy some so that was probably one of the bigger shocks for me you used everything is flowing and it was a mistake this this engine that I’ve got to rebuild yeah for my own company yeah which is really cool you know and as an executive you you have even more resources and you know other than the the you know you’re your staff in all this well I mean I guess those are resources for him to you know that you have administrative support you have financial support you have all these other things that you that you rely on mmhm and those are just all gone yeah we will be an extra start over what would you said earlier about everyone of the slipping a Nike commercial break is coming up in just to just do it hello I still have people he will say to me so well who who does your website I’m like oh well I do that the goal of this your accounting Michael yeah I do that well how about who’s doing the sales only okay all right now I’m doing that if it stops here that’s right L. steers it’s a complex industry and having access to other people that are going through different parts of it kind of back to your earlier statement about the road map it’s one thing to have a road map for you need a business plan you need financial projections you need this you need that but selling into this industry and or the regulatory field is very complex and so you need additional experts system people have done that yeah and so I think ACC is really done a fantastic job of calling the community together and working with folks and being accessible which community college is supposed to be S. I walked in there and also I totally did not expect everything that’s available there while the end of the stick we need to tell the stories because in the idea is as you mentioned before just public knowledge just distraught installers like did you know that these things are available and you don’t have to go spend millions of dollars buying equipment I can go do this you can start and because of the interventionism is testing and there’s values to the president failed big with lots of money then right you can go do this posturing right opportunity and also the knowledge base that houses it helps you prepared maybe a face these tests with a long list some more opportunities so because of the knowledge base and they are connected right so there was sometime last year we were running into a problem with the piece of equipment and you know one of the first things I did is called the folks at ACC I’m like Hey do you know anybody who might be selling one of these right now he’s only just because who is in the center of it that that knows what’s going on and and so that was very helpful they connected me up with a few people and conversely when we’re selling something or doing something we we tell them you know in case that might be something they can help connect us with the other area I want to mention is we actually now have three people on our staff that went through their biotech program for us the skills they’re teaching in that program are exactly what we need to let you know so it’s fantastic to he’s call down there and like Hey who’s graduating this semester restore we think we think we’re gonna have another higher and and almost all cases we’ve had them come in as interns first mmhm an ACC is a great intern program sometimes they personally pay that every one of their students in that biotech program has to do an internship in their last semester so that’s huge for entrepreneur to be able to get some access one of the girls back to that it goes back to you as I’m hearing news Aust ACC is a community program right so it’s it’s involving the community at the small business owners as yourself that are getting started and embark in all these challenges and to have a community resource that you can that they actually helps offset some of those costs as there isn’t placing people because that’s our mission as well as friendly place so it really is a great community service it is at a minute I think we probably had so excluding the folks who are not working for us we probably had three or five four other interns come through our program so it’s some it’s a good it’s a good one well that’s that’s really interesting good to hear and validate because I I see the deficiencies and what things are being done there yeah so as as we talk about yeah the audience and some people that are out there listening maybe students or maybe just people that are in the corporate professional world like trying to figure out there’s this issue want to solve how do I go about it what would be your advice as far as like what you’ve gone through in so that’s them thinking I want to solve it by being an entrepreneur right potentially some I would say a I think one of the biggest challenges I see for a lot of and entrepreneurs is you don’t realize how long it’s gonna take in Seoul for you personally you need to know that you have the finances to get you through for that length of time some you know so I advise an accelerator incubator that can you know maybe in three or four months you can go through one of those that where you look at every one of the stages of a company so then at the end of that you can decide do I actually have something or not and and you need to really listen to people how has the weather because sometimes the answer is no you know you don’t have anything that’s viable and I think that goes along with the everyone you know you’re probably gonna have to raise money if you don’t if you can bootstrap it that’s really good but it’s hard to raise money I feel like the one thing you get trained a lot about this idea of raising your first amount of money from friends and family because they know you the best and I trust you the best and so if you can raise from friends and family that’s gonna look good and I’ll say I even talked about this in programs that I was part of and it wasn’t until one day I realized you know what if your friends and family are rich that’s not gonna work right so it kind of gets back to me not just your own self can you go for two years without a salary I think if you can’t say yes then you’re probably not ready so you need to be able to say yes to that you need to be able to think about how are you going to get that money and if you’re rich then it’s probably a lot easier for you to say yes or your family’s rich to to that it’s much easier for you to go get friends and family and this was a an aha moment that I had probably about seven years into being an entrepreneur maybe not put to bed in an it really hit home like what it what it means when they’re telling you you know raise money from friends and family and I think it’s a little it’s obviously it’s unfortunate we have a lot of cases where people weren’t rich and run and they made it right but I think if you look at all the statistics you probably would see that that’s it’s hard you know pressure itself one of those things and I’m glad you touched on it the having a two year runway for yourself just because I think one of the things that I see out there and young and young entrepreneurs as like a radius and someone’s gonna steal it and there’s this fear based mentality and then they and then they try to do things very very quickly which I see that as a ticket time do your planning right as he he wants to have a most chance of success and quite frankly what’s going to be a tear that down quicker is not having the brute runway to continue following that passion so you you me think I’ve got you know three months in a savings I can go to this one and as always so optimistic yeah and when you get out there and start seeing these challenges it can take two years to build something and then you then you spend a lot of time either okay to go raise money so each side tractor self but if you plan ahead and say okay I’m going to do when you get a good look sorry programs learn ask questions on bull you got to be home alone right learn from others hello but I love that you put it in two years of you making your own way so you’re not worried about that and then you can go out and look for the best and you might need more than that right depending on what you’re going into but I think if you if if you can’t come up with that you’re you’re just probably not ready Intel select the student is not ready son was not gonna happen you’re just not ready yet not right okay right everyone of us has a calling or passion and and you know slowly get started and start doing research and planning and all that kind of stuff I think it’s but research is just one of those things that you cannot write anything about anything that you’re gonna be really good and it takes ten thousand hours rights right to become current professional whether it’s a football player limits Dr leads is the you just have to put in the effort in the time and there’s no shortcuts to is nine so in building the business you’ve got to put in the time of the research to like was it today and even when you think you’ve got the number no that that number is probably wrong so give yourself a buffer so that’s right really interested in on that is I do think that’s one thing you learn in corporate America and stuff like that you know you’re dealing with really big projects and so all the planning on projects and you learn like things take a lot longer than you think they should I remember even having a team that time they would give me a schedule I would just double it my head right because I was like okay well he’s a three month so that’ll be six and then that kept us out of trouble because of that so yep so I think whatever it is you probably need to double so when I ask a question around you know obviously this is the best wrong answer right input in what issues of next five years what would you like to be accomplishing and and impacting yes so I think we have a really good shot of having the company purchased within that time frame so I imagine they’ll be some transition that I’ll be part of and then I hope I’m in a position where I can be on the investing side of the equation and helping entrepreneurs I I really enjoyed that when I was kind of doing that before I dove all in myself and I and I I regret that I can’t help all the people call and ask you know for for some of my time because it’s a lot of fun and I love it just because I get to hear everybody’s problem right like what’s the business problem you’re solving and and I love to hear about that and start thinking about well what here’s the things you have to overcome so for me that’s just a that’s just a joy I don’t even consider that work so I hope that I’ll be able to I’ll get back to that and then you know travel you know I thought I retired and then I started this company so that that wasn’t retirement at all the what you describe is the funnest part about the work that I do is interviewing entrepreneurs and founders and trying to figure out what they’re solving and help what drove them to do that and then the attitude and just do it just get out there and handle it nobody has the answers and so if you’re out there listening for the audience I understand that there’s lots of tools and resources there’s a it’s a Christmas hard work most of the answers but it’s so fulfilling whenever you’re able to build something that that can benefit and be to be of high value to society so this is why I love the work that you’re doing because there’s as you know we mentioned earlier yes it can be labeled as cosmetic but really how does it affect the mental attitude right people that they’re having to face these issues and so you’re really helping people become happier right with missiles and I think that’s so crucial to do so yeah thank you so much for being hold thank you our podcast really initial into the information to get to know your fellow west Texan answering certain stories of four women in river beds and things of that nature names thanks for being on the show yeah thank you thank you again Laura for sharing more about what inspired you to get into this field if you’d like to learn more about to be built in the Austin community college bioscience incubator a link is in the Senate’s science memorial is created in partnership between founded media and Austin communicators bioscience incubator
