Gabriel Liguori, MD

I am a physician, scientist, and entrepreneur working toward one of regenerative medicine’s most ambitious goals: creating functional human tissues and, ultimately, transplantable bioartificial organs in the lab.

My path began in medicine. I graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of São Paulo Medical School in 2014, receiving the Prof. Dr. Edmundo Vasconcelos Award. But rather than following a conventional clinical career, I became increasingly interested in a more fundamental question: what if, instead of treating failing organs, we could learn how to build new ones?

That question took me to the Netherlands, where I pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Groningen in cardiovascular regenerative medicine and thoracic and cardiovascular surgery. My research focused on tissue-engineered blood vessels and the challenge of creating living cardiovascular replacements. In 2019, I defended my thesis, “Development and Evaluation of Tissue-Engineered Blood Vessels: A Regenerative Medicine Approach for Vascular Replacement,” work that was later recognized with the Prêmio CAPES de Tese for the best medical Ph.D. thesis in Brazil.

That same year, I founded TissueLabs.

The company grew out of a realization I had encountered repeatedly as a scientist: before we can engineer complex tissues and organs, we need better tools to build them. TissueLabs was created to develop those tools, combining biofabrication technologies, biomaterials, software, and scientific know-how to make human tissue engineering more accessible and reproducible.

Throughout my career, I have worked and collaborated with institutions including Harvard Medical School, Imperial College London, Maastricht University, the University of Groningen, and the University of São Paulo. My scientific work has resulted in dozens of peer-reviewed publications, books, patents, and presentations worldwide, and has earned me more than ten research awards. I have secured millions in research funding and private investments.

My work has also been recognized beyond academia. I was named Forbes Under 30 in 2018 and an MIT Innovator Under 35 in 2020, and I am a fellow of Fundação Estudar, a network of leading Brazilian entrepreneurs, scientists, and business leaders.

Today, my focus is on helping turn tissue engineering from a highly specialized research discipline into a scalable technological platform. At TissueLabs, we are enabling scientists to recreate increasingly sophisticated human tissues for research, drug development, and disease modeling, while progressively solving the engineering challenges required to move from laboratory models to therapeutic tissues.

My long-term objective is deliberately audacious: to help build a future in which organs can be engineered rather than donated.

And for me, the ultimate milestone is clear:

a transplantable bioartificial human heart.