Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive
Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive
迈克尔·波兰斯基正在利用活体皮肤训练人工智能模型
Michael Polansky is remarkably unassuming for someone operating in a corner of the world known for outsize egos. Seated at a leafy patio outside a popular bakery in Mill Valley, an affluent town about 15 miles north of San Francisco, Polansky — bespectacled, his fresh face framed by dark hair shot through with gray — has the look and the friendly demeanor of a young professor. 迈克尔·波兰斯基（Michael Polansky）在这样一个以自负著称的圈子里工作，却显得格外谦逊。他坐在旧金山以北约15英里处的富裕小镇米尔谷（Mill Valley）一家热门面包店外的绿荫露台上。戴着眼镜的波兰斯基，那张年轻的脸上留着夹杂着灰发的深色头发，看起来就像一位年轻的教授，举止也同样亲切。
He is, in fact, both the co-founder of a buzzy AI and biology startup called Outer Biosciences and the creative, business, and romantic partner to Stefani Germanotta — better known as Lady Gaga. It’s an unlikely double life. On the one hand, the couple invariably moves in the world that comes with celebrity; on the other, he’s running an outfit that has spent years figuring out how to keep living human tissue alive outside the body — for over a month, so far — without anyone outside the company knowing. 事实上，他既是一家名为 Outer Biosciences 的热门人工智能与生物初创公司的联合创始人，也是斯蒂芬妮·杰尔马诺塔（Stefani Germanotta，即大众熟知的 Lady Gaga）在创意、商业和情感上的伴侣。这是一种不可思议的双重生活。一方面，这对情侣总是活跃在名流圈中；另一方面，他经营着一家公司，多年来一直在研究如何让离体人类活体组织存活——目前已超过一个月——且外界对此一无所知。
He didn’t see any of it coming. Polansky grew up in Minnesota and went on to Harvard, where he studied applied mathematics and computer science, graduating in 2006. Afterward, he logged three years at the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates — “a very unique place,” Polansky says over coffee, and one where he had “a really good experience,” even if it wasn’t a place he was going to “wake up and be excited about . . .every day.” 他从未预料到这一切。波兰斯基在明尼苏达州长大，后来进入哈佛大学学习应用数学和计算机科学，并于2006年毕业。此后，他在对冲基金桥水基金（Bridgewater Associates）工作了三年。波兰斯基在喝咖啡时说，那是一个“非常独特的地方”，他在那里有“非常好的经历”，尽管那并不是一个让他每天“醒来都会感到兴奋”的地方。
His pilgrimage from Bridgewater to Silicon Valley ran through Minnesota. By coincidence, Sean Parker’s assistant at the time had been Polansky’s neighbor growing up. At a 2009 wedding in their home state, she mentioned that Parker was looking for someone to work with him. Polansky already knew who Parker was and was looking to move west. The two had dinner in New York, “hit it off immediately,” and, as Polansky tells it, he quit Bridgewater the next day and moved to San Francisco. 他从桥水基金到硅谷的旅程经过了明尼苏达州。巧合的是，肖恩·帕克（Sean Parker）当时的助理曾是波兰斯基儿时的邻居。在2009年家乡的一场婚礼上，她提到帕克正在寻找合作伙伴。波兰斯基当时已经知道帕克是谁，也正打算搬到西部。两人在纽约共进晚餐，“一见如故”。据波兰斯基说，他第二天就辞去了桥水基金的工作，搬到了旧金山。
He first landed a role as a principal at Founders Fund when the firm was run by its four original partners — Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery – with Polansky and another young principal at the time, Brian Singerman, sharing an office. “It was a really, really great experience,” Polansky says. When Parker left Founders Fund after becoming liquid in his Facebook stock and wanted to build out his own family office, he brought Polansky with him. 他最初在 Founders Fund 担任负责人，当时该公司由四位创始合伙人——彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）、肖恩·帕克、卢克·诺塞克（Luke Nosek）和肯·豪里（Ken Howery）——管理，波兰斯基和当时另一位年轻负责人布莱恩·辛格曼（Brian Singerman）共用一间办公室。“那是一段非常、非常棒的经历，”波兰斯基说。当帕克在套现 Facebook 股票后离开 Founders Fund 并想要建立自己的家族办公室时，他带上了波兰斯基。
Polansky ran that office — handling Parker’s business, investment, and philanthropic interests, including helping stand up the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (where Polansky remains executive director) until COVID, when his life “moved in a different direction.” That change had a lot to do with Germanotta. Polansky met her in late 2019 at one of Parker’s birthday parties. Charmingly, the meeting came at the urging of her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, president of the Born This Way Foundation, whom Polansky had come to know through his philanthropic work. 波兰斯基负责管理该办公室，处理帕克的商业、投资和慈善事务，包括协助建立帕克癌症免疫疗法研究所（Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy，波兰斯基至今仍担任该所执行董事），直到新冠疫情爆发，他的生活“转向了另一个方向”。这种改变与杰尔马诺塔有很大关系。波兰斯基在2019年底帕克的一次生日派对上遇见了她。有趣的是，这次会面是在她母亲——“天生完美基金会”（Born This Way Foundation）主席辛西娅·杰尔马诺塔（Cynthia Germanotta）的极力促成下实现的，波兰斯基通过慈善工作认识了她。
“She had said, you know, for months and months, ‘I want to set you up with my daughter,’” Polansky recalls. “I was like, I think you’re making fun of me.” She wasn’t. When their own mothers later met, he says, laughing, “it all made perfect sense.” (His mother and Germanotta’s mother are now close friends.) Their relationship is a full partnership, professionally and personally. “她好几个月以来一直说，‘我想把你介绍给我女儿，’”波兰斯基回忆道。“我当时想，我觉得你在拿我开玩笑。”但她并没有。他说，后来当他们的母亲见面时，他笑着说，“一切都顺理成章了。”（他的母亲和杰尔马诺塔的母亲现在是好朋友。）他们的关系在职业和个人层面上都是完全的伙伴关系。
Notably, for Gaga’s most recent world tour, which began in July of last year and ended in April, the couple managed a massive operation across three 747s, something Polansky compares to running “a 200-person startup that travels around the world every day.” It also includes Haus Labs, the cosmetics brand Germanotta initially built “on her kitchen floor,” Polansky says, instead of simply licensing her name to an existing company. That business, based in El Segundo, California, an operation with roughly 70 employees, is reportedly thriving. 值得注意的是，在 Gaga 去年7月开始并于4月结束的最近一次世界巡演中，这对情侣管理着横跨三架波音747飞机的庞大运营项目，波兰斯基将其比作“经营一家每天环游世界的200人初创公司”。这还包括 Haus Labs，波兰斯基说，这是杰尔马诺塔最初“在厨房地板上”建立的化妆品品牌，而不是简单地将她的名字授权给现有公司。这家位于加利福尼亚州埃尔塞贡多（El Segundo）的企业拥有约70名员工，据报道发展势头良好。
Germanotta also sits on the board of Outer Biosciences, and the two companies collaborate at the margins. For example, Outer Biosciences’ chief scientist, Kyung-Jin Jang, sits on Haus Labs’ scientific advisory board, and the companies have run some joint projects. Says Polansky, beaming as he talks about her from our sun-dappled table: “People really haven’t gotten to know a certain side of her publicly … She’s such a brilliant businessperson.” 杰尔马诺塔也是 Outer Biosciences 的董事会成员，两家公司在边缘业务上有所合作。例如，Outer Biosciences 的首席科学家张京进（Kyung-Jin Jang，音译）在 Haus Labs 的科学顾问委员会任职，两家公司也开展了一些联合项目。波兰斯基在阳光斑驳的桌旁谈起她时，满脸笑容地说：“公众真的还没有了解她那一面……她是一位非常出色的商人。”
From cancer to tissue in a dish
从癌症到培养皿中的组织
While Polansky is also a businessperson, he’s not a scientist. He got into life sciences “accidentally,” he says, through more than a decade spent alongside Parker in cancer免疫疗法, a field that was “very fringe” when they entered it. Outer Biosciences, co-founded in 2022 by Polansky (CEO), Jang, Chris Hinojosa (CTO), and Stanley King (chief business officer), grew out of frustration that the pace of innovation in biology and chemistry has never matched software, in large part because there’s no ethical way to run experiments directly on people. 虽然波兰斯基也是一名商人，但他不是科学家。他说，他“偶然”进入了生命科学领域，这是因为他与帕克在癌症免疫疗法领域共同度过了十多年，而当他们进入该领域时，这还是一个“非常边缘”的领域。Outer Biosciences 由波兰斯基（首席执行官）、张京进、克里斯·伊诺霍萨（Chris Hinojosa，首席技术官）和斯坦利·金（Stanley King，首席商务官）于2022年共同创立，其初衷源于一种挫败感：生物学和化学领域的创新步伐从未赶上软件领域，很大程度上是因为没有合乎道德的方式直接在人体上进行实验。
Meanwhile, the proxies scientists rely on instead — animal models, simplified cell cultures, lab-grown organoids — are poor stand-ins for how a real human organ behaves. So Outer Biosciences took a different approach. Instead of engineering a synthetic organ, the company sources human skin that would otherwise be discarded after surgery – mostly plastic surgery – through what it describes as vetted non-profit and commercial biobanks and brokers operating under “institutional review board oversight and documented donor consent,” principally the National Disease Research Interchange and the Cooperative Human Tissue Network. 与此同时，科学家们所依赖的替代品——动物模型、简化的细胞培养物、实验室培育的类器官——在模拟真实人体器官的行为方面表现不佳。因此，Outer Biosciences 采取了不同的方法。该公司没有设计合成器官，而是通过其描述的、在“机构审查委员会监督和记录在案的捐赠者同意”下运营的经过审核的非营利性和商业性生物样本库及经纪人（主要是国家疾病研究交流中心和合作人类组织网络），获取手术后（主要是整形手术）本会被丢弃的人类皮肤。
(Both outfits receive federal funding from the NIH and the National Cancer Institute without being federally operated.) Polansky is careful to note that there is no single government tissue network that qualifies buyers. He says Outer Biosciences pays fees to these suppliers on a cost-recovery basis rather than purchasing tissue outright. He also says the company spent roughly two years on building that pipeline and handling the protocols required to receive that tissue “within hours” of surgery, while it’s still living. Asked about the donors’ privacy, he s （这两个机构都接受美国国立卫生研究院和国家癌症研究所的联邦资助，但并非由联邦政府运营。）波兰斯基谨慎地指出，目前没有单一的政府组织网络来对买家进行资格认证。他说，Outer Biosciences 是以成本回收为基础向这些供应商支付费用，而不是直接购买组织。他还表示，公司花了大约两年时间建立该渠道，并处理在手术后“数小时内”接收组织所需的协议，以确保组织仍处于存活状态。当被问及捐赠者的隐私时，他……