We were lucky to catch up with Rene Anand recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rene, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I was a volunteer raising funds for Autism Speaks. I took a risk to make human brain models in a dish to find a rigorous scientific way to address autism etiology at a molecular level.
The full story can be found at this link from Autism Speaks.
https://www.autismspeaks.org/blog/breakthrough-science-walk-volunteer-turned-autism-researcher
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I have spent most of my professional life as a professor and a scientific investigator in a medical school setting. While the experience was exciting exploring basic science questions building on established science, it lacked opportunity to do high-risk research for worthy medical applications in the real world.
I founded Neurxstem Inc. precisely to engage in such interdisciplinary research in precision brain medicine after inventing stem cell derived human brain models that were highly advanced, replicable and also showed construct validity for human brain diseases. A US patent was obtained for this invention.
So far, my track record shows that Neurxstem has accomplished some major milestones towards such applied medicine already. The underlying philosophy of Neurxstem Inc. is to “make the impossible, plausible and then possible’ through innovation.
Innovativeness in my work can be seen by the fact I invented the most advanced human brain model derived from human skin cells that also received a US patent in 2022. This model is highly replicable and shows construct validity for several human brain diseases and especially Alzheimer’s disease.
These two public video recordings of my company’s current accomplishments provide a layperson’s overview of my expertise in precision brain medicine and leadership in the private sector to take innovation to the market.
Family Office Insight NASDAQ interview featuring Dr. Rene Anand, CEO & Founder of Neurxstem Inc
A private Family Office Insights Webinar featuring Rene Anand of Neurxstem Inc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhrWHKcpjc4
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
The human brain’s unique and remarkable higher order mental capabilities include abstract thought (conceptualization), imagination (plays; film), creativity (art; music, architecture), scripting (communication), deductive reasoning (mathematics; physics), technical (engineering), discovery (scientific exploration), innovation (tool making), introspection (philosophy; theology) and legal/moral reasoning (individual freedom).
The American historian, Daniel Boorstin extols about humans in his Trilogy including The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (1983); The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (1992); The Seekers: The Story of Man’s Continuing Quest to Understand His World (1998).
These mental capabilities have been recognized over the centuries when remarkable human achievements contributed to making human life on planet earth more secure, predictable, comfortable, leisurely, or contributed to esoteric pursuits on the origins and purpose of life, exploring space and our cosmos itself.
One wonders what extraordinary knowledge and accomplishments would emerge from generations of new discoverers, explorers and inventors building on conceptual advances and herald a new era of understanding of our cosmos, and our existence, adapting to the ever-changing demands on human life over geological and cosmological time horizons.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When we first made our work public and it was covered by many press agencies including CNN and BBC in 2015. Human ‘mini brains’ grown in labs may help solve cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/06/health/pioneers-brain-organoids/index.html
The man who says he’s made a replica brain
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0302wt6
However, some very well know scientists attacked our work out of envy and we had to carry on without much support from the National Institutes of Health, because of this. The scientists who reviewed our work believed those who slandered us instead because we were a small laboratory, and not one of the Aristocratic ones on Boston’s Broad Street, Seattle or in Palo Alto!
Scientists reject claims of lab-grown mini human brain
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28075-scientists-reject-claims-of-lab-grown-mini-human-brain/
Among them were Dr. Kristof Koch of the Allen Institute.
Since then, I used my own personal funds to advance the work and now our model system data from donors of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Progeria and so many other diseases and disorders including Opioid Use Disorder and autism are corroborated by both human genetics and postmortem data from patients.
Our motto is for a great cause or causes, we will take the necessary risk and have skin in the game with our personal funds too!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://neurxstem.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rene-anand-b13028227/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwZ7saUmbkw
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhrWHKcpjc4