Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive

A startup is training AI models on human skin tissue that remains alive outside the body for extended periods. The company sources skin that would otherwise be discarded after surgery through vetted biobanks operating under institutional review board oversight and documented donor consent, then uses a proprietary support system to keep the tissue viable for up to a month, far longer than the industry standard of a few days. This matters because scientists currently lack ethical ways to test drugs and treatments directly on people, so they rely on poor substitutes like animal models and simplified cell cultures, whereas living human tissue could better represent how the body actually responds to treatments. The extended viability enables testing of slower biological processes like collagen remodeling and pigmentation change that take weeks to develop, rather than just acute toxicity that can be measured in days.