Photo credit: Ralena Gordon
Vitro3D, a 精品SM在线影片 startup pioneering volumetric 3D printing for life sciences, just closed its first . The hard-won vote of confidence from the investment community will allow the promising new venture to pursue ambitious technical advances while continuing to build critical business capacity.聽聽
The backing from an investment group that includes the means 鈥渨e聽can start building the company quickly," said co-founder and CEO聽Camila Uzcategui.
Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert, now serving as chief technology officer, started Vitro3D together when they were PhD students in Professor Bob McLeod鈥檚 lab in 精品SM在线影片鈥檚 College of Engineering and Applied Science.
The company has licensed a portfolio of intellectual property from 精品SM在线影片 based on foundational work developing a novel volumetric 3D printing technology. Vitro3D anticipates producing complex聽objects in seconds, far exceeding what the industry can currently deliver.聽The approach has potential applications in聽industries such as dental, medical聽and drug development.聽
The successful investment round is just the latest milepost in the sometimes unpredictable, always fascinating journey of the company and its co-founder and CEO Uzcategui.
Video: Printing a sample dental aligner in real time using Vitro3D volumetric printing technology, algorithms and materials. Photo: An聽example of a complex shape聽that can be printed quickly using Vitro3D technology.
Uncommon origins and surprising pathways: 1990s鈥�2010s
At only nine years old, Uzcategui embarked on the first 1,184 miles of her journey when she traveled with her mother to Miami, Florida from Caracas, Venezuela. While the rest of the family remained in Venezuela, Uzcategui and her mother sought new opportunities in the U.S. Still, they faced the economic challenges of making their way in a new country鈥攅xperiences that were important in shaping聽Uzcategui's interest in creating聽positive impact for those living less-advantaged circumstances.
To Uzcategui, who would soon discover a passion and emerging aptitude in the sciences, this meant aspiring to make the world a better place through caring for others. Even in elementary school, she saw her future self as a doctor helping communities in need in the U.S. and around the world.
Uzcategui鈥檚 talents and global perspective blossomed through middle and high school, eventually leading her to Florida International University (FIU), where she hoped to study biology in preparation for medical school.聽
In an early course-correction along her planned journey, Uzcategui聽was swayed by a trusted physics professor to pursue a degree in biophysics rather than in biology. She eventually graduated Magna Cum Laude from FIU with bachelor鈥檚 degrees in both physics and anthropology. Though an unconventional combination for medical school, for Uzcategui the pairing seemed natural.聽
鈥淏iophysics gave me a view into the smallest, most narrow parts of people, and anthropology gave me a broader understanding of people and communities,鈥� Uzcategui said. The contrasting fields helped her develop an interdisciplinary perspective and gave her an outlet to 鈥渨ork on very specific quantitative problems while also being able to have a broad impact in health care.鈥澛�
The global health nonprofit chapter she started while at FIU was an early creation of Uzcategui鈥檚 maturing vision of that kind of聽impact. Through the organization, she helped start a health clinic in Guatemala where she learned firsthand that effective, affordable medical equipment and supplies were often the limiting factor in providing adequate medical care, rather than shortages of doctors and nurses as she had imagined.
鈥淚 came to the realization that doctors can help people one on one, but I wanted to work at scale,鈥� she said. 鈥淭o have larger impact, I wanted to work on medical devices to make them more affordable and more accessible.鈥澛�
Uzcategui again set a new course to reach her destination.
Exploring intersections and entrepreneurship: 2016鈥�2020
Instead of聽applying to medical schools, Uzcategui decided to apply to PhD programs across a range of disciplines鈥攊ncluding mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering and biomedicine鈥攈oping to find a single program that聽could accommodate her cross-disciplinary aspirations to improve medical device efficacy and access.聽聽
She found a perfect opportunity in Professor Bob McLeod鈥檚 lab in 精品SM在线影片鈥檚 College of Engineering and Applied Science. Unlike many of the programs she explored, the Materials Science &聽Engineering Program and McLeod鈥檚 lab thrived at the intersection of disciplines.聽
鈥淚 could get a PhD in materials science, but I could do it while working on whatever聽I wanted,鈥� said Uzcategui. 鈥淭he program was made for someone who had an application in mind but needed to work across disciplines to accomplish it.鈥澛犅�
Even before joining the McLeod lab in 2016, Uzcategui suspected she would ultimately need to start a company to achieve the impact she envisioned.聽
鈥淏ob had a problem-solving mindset, a history in medical device research, industry experience and had started companies of his own,鈥� said Uzcategui. His commitment to interdisciplinary work made the lab fertile ground for Uzcategui, whose interests were coalescing at the intersection of a number of fields: materials science, optics, physics, 3D printing, photopolymers, biomaterials, tissue engineering and more.聽
While pursuing her PhD in the McLeod Lab, Uzcategui worked increasingly closely with fellow PhD student Johnny Hergert, who joined the Materials Science & Engineering Program at the same time. They often sat together in class, collaborated on papers and explored innovations with 3D printing. In late 2019, they jointly disclosed their first invention, "Orthogonal 3D control of properties in 3D printed structures," to Venture Partners at 精品SM在线影片, the university鈥檚 commercialization arm.聽
Uzcategui and Hergert saw the potential to print larger and聽more detailed parts, achieve faster speeds, and reduce cost and waste in 3D printing applications.
In 2020, the duo began exploring the possibility of launching a startup together.
Refining the product and finding a fit: 2020鈥�2021聽
Image:聽From left, Rachel Anderson (Law'22), Camila Uzcategui, Johnny Hergert, Jennifer Howard and engineering professor Robert McLeod.聽
The McLeod Lab聽had been collaborating with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of California, Berkeley聽for several years with a focus聽on the volumetric 3D printing process. In that process, a printed object is created simultaneously in three dimensions by repeatedly projecting a pattern or image into a resin, in contrast to the more conventional method of printing objects layer by layer.聽
The combination of the聽LLNL team鈥檚 expertise in materials and the McLeod Lab鈥檚 expertise in optics and hardware led to significantly enhanced, novel versions of the approach. The novel verisions of the approach invented at 精品SM在线影片 became the foundational intellectual property for Vitro3D.聽
By 2020, Uzcategui and Hergert were expanding their scope to learn about the business side of their technology. They began participating in Venture Partners programs to learn about entrepreneurship, delving deeply into topics like customer discovery and product鈥搈arket fit to understand how their volumetric 3D printing methods could benefit people on a large scale.
At first, Vitro3D explored using the technology to regenerate growth plate tissue for children with growth-threatening long bone injuries by printing structures that could be infilled with cells and hydrogels to recreate cartilage. After focusing on regenerative tissue possibilities for the technology through several exploratory Venture Partners programs鈥攊ncluding more than 30 customer discovery interviews鈥攊t became clear that the marketplace could benefit from their approach but regulatory hurdles and other market characteristics would prevent the technology from reaching patients for decades.聽Eager for their advances to benefit people sooner,聽the team聽continued to look for more immediate opportunities to apply their novel 3D printing technology and flagged this聽application to explore more聽in the future.
The duo dove deeper into the entrepreneurial resources offered by 精品SM在线影片 and the surrounding community, determined to find a path for their pioneering approaches to improve patient care. Among the opportunities that were most helpful were Venture Partners鈥� Starting Blocks and Research-to-Market (R2M) programs鈥攅ach a part of 精品SM在线影片鈥檚 I-Corps Hub鈥攁nd a New Venture Launch class taught by Leeds School of Business Professor Jeff York.
鈥淲e were realizing we had a technology platform that could do many things,鈥� said Uzcategui. 鈥淭he technology development for our original vision could still take place, but we wanted聽to find a different initial market that would allow us to create our impact faster.鈥�
The technology's ability to revolutionize 3D cell culture聽led them to explore using their technology to improve drug discovery. Once again leveraging the knowledge and resources of the entrepreneurial community in and around the university, they concluded that volumetric 3D printing could also be a game changer in drug discovery, but that they would need to sell expensive equipment to other startups in the organoid and tissue engineering聽space who were least able to afford it. For a startup company that needed capital to grow, immediate entry into the drug discovery market was also less than ideal.聽
While Uzcategui and Hergert continued refining the technology in the lab, learning about entrepreneurship and researching potential market opportunities, they were also attending conferences relevant to their PhD studies. It was at one of these conferences where a breakthrough occurred.聽
After giving talks on their technology to audiences from a wide range of specialty areas, they were approached repeatedly by attendees asking if they had considered applying it to the dental market. They had been aware of possibilities in dentistry and orthodontics, but had not yet prioritized exploring them. The response from representatives of the dental market was too overwhelming to be ignored.聽
Back in Boulder, Uzcategui and Hergert participated in R2M again, this time with a focus on the dental aligner market. Having conducted more than 150 customer discovery interviews exploring different applications, they were confident they had found their fit. People needed better solutions for straightening teeth. Dentists and orthodontists needed better results for patients, and they needed to provide solutions faster and at lower costs. Vitro3D鈥檚 volumetric 3D printing approach could solve these problems.聽
Vitro3D鈥檚 exploration of several聽potential markets accelerated the process of finding the right product鈥搈arket fit. While confounding at the time, their evaluation of different initial markets聽may prove to be the secret to their success. 鈥淐ompanies can spend years pursuing research and development, or even product development, only to find out their innovative technology is not addressing a significant customer or market need,鈥� said Bryn Rees, managing director of Venture Partners. 鈥淭hat can be the end of the venture, even if the technology holds great promise in other markets. The point of the I-Corps program, including R2M, is to build product鈥搈arket fit right from the start.鈥�
As they pursued customer discovery, Vitro3D joined the Rockies Venture Club Hyper Accelerator. 鈥淭he RVC Hyper Accelerator completely changed our perspective,鈥� said Uzcategui. 鈥淭hey taught us that a venture-based company is very different from other companies. They聽helped us understand what is required to raise venture capital.鈥�
By the summer of 2021, Uzcategui and Hergert knew they had found the right market and had mapped out a path to take their technology there.聽
Hyper acceleration: 2021鈥�2022
Image: Brad Bernthal helps Vitro3D CEO and co-founder Camila Uzcategui hit a tennis ball into the crowd at the New Venture Challenge Finals in 2022. Photo by Glenn Asakawa / 精品SM在线影片.
Once the company identified the denal market as its initial focus, progress accelerated quickly.聽
Vitro3D gained visibility and accolades聽in the campuswide Lab Venture Challenge (LVC) in the fall of 2021, drew notice from investors聽at the 精品SM在线影片-hosted Destination Startup庐 showcase in early 2022, and finished as runners up in the New Venture Challenge competition in the spring of 2022. Along the way, the company secured nearly $450,000 in 鈥渘on-dilutive鈥� grants鈥攇rants that don鈥檛 require the company to give up equity or ownership in return鈥攊ncluding $53,000 from NVC, $175,000 from LVC and $250,000 from Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT).
The grants allowed the team and technology to transition from the lab into a startup by providing funding for Uzcategui and Hergert to continue advancing the technology in McLeod鈥檚 lab as postdocs, then helping them officially transition off campus by the summer of 2022.聽
What鈥檚 next for Vitro3D?
Vitro3D is currently part of Innosphere Ventures鈥� Colorado Life Sciences Incubator cohort, where they continue to soak in all they can from the renowned Front Range entrepreneurial ecosystem. 鈥淭he work Innosphere does with early-stage startups is amazing,鈥� said Uzcategui. 鈥淭his聽program gives us聽the opportunity to hone additional entrepreneurial skills as well as access to a vast support network."聽聽
With an eye on three distinct markets鈥攆irst the dental market, then 3D cell culture for drug development,聽and聽scaffolds for human organ and聽tissue regeneration鈥擵itro3D is now equipped to meet the technical goals needed聽to achieve real impact for patients.聽
The company has already produced the fastest, largest part ever printed using the volumetric 3D method, but they are just getting started. The funding they鈥檝e secured has allowed them to hire a senior engineer who is working to advance the printer鈥檚 hardware, algorithms and materials to continuously improve size, speed and quality of the printed parts. The team has also hired David Raymes, a client director聽at Innosphere Ventures, founder of four startups, tech startup advisor and investor, to serve as chief business officer.聽
With backing to support rapid progress in the dental聽market and growing technical and business infrastructure to develop future markets, Vitro3D is poised to make the kind of difference Uzcategui always envisioned.聽