After Hans Keirstead won a Business Journal Innovator Award a year ago, he said he was in the process of selling Aivita Biomedical Inc., which is developing stem cell applications to develop personalized vaccines against cancer and COVID-19.
That sale hasn’t yet gone through as the private equity market nationwide dried up. Not to worry—Keirstead’s previously started and sold four high-tech health companies, each to larger pharmaceutical companies.
Keirstead is keeping busy with his latest company and exploring new fields.
He led a group of six other scientists last October to visit the Dalai Lama, who he had met three years ago, to continue a project to discover where consciousness lies in the brain and if it can reside outside the human body.
“Given recent technical advances, the time is right for a multidisciplinary scientific exploration of consciousness and its location,” Keirstead said. “The results of this project will have a profound effect on human behavior.”
Keirstead has a long history as an innovator and entrepreneur in regenerative medicine, including restoring function to people with quadriplegic spinal cord injuries.
Earlier this year, he linked Aivita with Irvine-based TAE Life Sciences, which is developing a new treatment for malignant cancers that affect the brain and spine.
His latest company, Immunis Inc., is developing a booster shot that could help people improve their immunity as they age. The Food and Drug Administration has approved Immunis for a Phase 1/2a trial, which assesses the safety and tolerability in patients with muscle atrophy related to knee osteoarthritis.
In the past year, he’s made 12 presentations at conferences on age-related diseases for Immunis and another 12 where he spoke about Aivita’s stem cell work. In July, he gave a presentation in Geneva to the U.N.’s agency on technology on how artificial intelligence will affect healthcare.
In September, Immunis’ executive advisory board attracted Peter Diamandis, a well-known entrepreneur who has created more than 25 companies in areas such as space, education and longevity.
Keirstead last December was appointed to the board of directors of the Human Immunome Project, a global initiative that combines biomedicine and artificial intelligence to get a more sophisticated understanding of human immunity and disease.
In May, he was named as CEO of the nonprofit.
“The complexity of the immune system puts the Human Immunome Project on par with the greatest scientific endeavors ever undertaken by the global scientific community,” he said.
“The implications and value to humanity cannot be overstated.”
