Systemic Bio Closes, however Founder Taci Pereira’s Mission Continues – 3DPrint.com

July 24, 2025

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Systemic Bio, the 3D Techniques subsidiary working to remodel drug improvement with bioprinted tissue fashions, has formally closed. The information got here in an emotional, private, and highly effective weblog submit by its founder, Taci Pereira, who mirrored on the journey from a childhood loss to pioneering innovation in 3D bioprinting.

“I’m closing a chapter right now,” she wrote, “however the mission continues.”

Taci Pereira in 2022 after which in 2025 together with her crew. Picture courtesy of Taci Pereira/Taci’s Substack.

Pereira’s story started in Brazil, the place she misplaced all 4 grandparents to most cancers at a younger age. That heartbreak motivated her to make a distinction: “I promised myself I’d dedicate my life to combating the illness I consider is humanity’s greatest problem. I labored laborious to make it attainable. I turned the primary child from my metropolis to get into Harvard – certainly one of solely six from Brazil that 12 months. With ~90% monetary assist, some further scholarships, and aspect jobs (canine walker, babysitter, bartender, barista, dorm-room cleaner, mailroom sorter…), I studied bioengineering to construct applied sciences that might in the future assist hundreds of thousands of medical doctors deal with sufferers like my grandparents.”

Her early analysis in most cancers immunotherapy led her to Allevi, a bioprinting startup, the place she rose rapidly from scientist to Chief Scientific Officer. However whilst the corporate grew, she started to assume greater.

“I began obsessing: might we generate higher information from bioprinted tissues produced at scale?” she wrote.

The objective was to create high-quality, human-relevant tissue fashions that may very well be utilized in AI-driven drug discovery, changing the unreliable animal and cell-line information typically used right now.

However there was a serious hurdle: the prevailing bioprinting instruments weren’t constructed for scale. Most methods have been designed for small-scale analysis, producing only some tissue samples at a time. They have been too sluggish, inconsistent, and restricted to ever help the form of high-throughput drug testing she had imagined. Pereira defined that to make actual progress, she knew the expertise needed to transfer past the lab and into industrial-scale manufacturing.

On the time, nobody in bioprinting was fixing the size drawback. So she appeared past the sphere and located 3D Techniques. After reaching out, she helped orchestrate Allevi’s acquisition by 3D Techniques.

Pereira briefly left to start out a brand new enterprise centered on AI and tissue information, however 3D Techniques requested her to return. She got here again to steer a brand new bioprinting division as Vice President/Normal Supervisor, working by day and prototyping at evening. In 2022, she formally pitched her imaginative and prescient. With $15 million in inside funding, Systemic Bio was created.

What started as a shared lab bench and a cellphone sales space “workplace” quickly grew into Systemic Bio, a fast-scaling biotech enterprise. The corporate launched its h-VIOS™ platform (quick for human vascularized built-in organ methods), constructed a 15,000-square-foot facility, grew to a crew of 30, and filed seven patent households. Its bioprinting course of might produce 6,000 vascularized hydrogels per thirty days. Systemic additionally landed partnerships with main pharmaceutical companies, and obtained a $10,000 innovation award recognizing breakthroughs in lab automation and screening.

h-VIOS2 containing two perfused vascularized hydrogels. Inside this chip’s footprint, any vasculature may be created. Picture courtesy of 3D Techniques.

However the price of constructing this sort of deep tech was excessive: “The issue we have been fixing is huge, requires vital funding, and the business is present process great challenges,” Pereira wrote. “3D Techniques is laser-focused on profitability and might not maintain this cost-intensive wager.”

She thanked her crew, calling them “the center of Systemic Bio,” and credited 3D Techniques leaders Jeff Graves, Menno Ellis, and inventor Chuck Hull for his or her help of her imaginative and prescient.

To her crew, she wrote: “Watching you develop, study, innovate, construct households, and pour yourselves into this mission has been one of many best honors of my life.”

Systemic Bio might have closed its doorways, however Pereira made it clear that her journey is much from over.

“The scientist who as soon as stood by her grandfather’s hospital mattress, decided to vary the way in which we combat illness, nonetheless has that very same hearth,” she concluded. “This isn’t the tip. It’s the house between chapters.”