Photo by Bridget Bennett

When Sebastian Giwa (MBA 2009) joined Singularity University's Global Solutions Program in the summer of 2012, he was accepted based on his ideas of how distance learning and remote work—both rarities at that point—could reshape opportunities for youth in developing countries. But the almost three-month program, held at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, was designed to move entrepreneurs out of their silos and encourage them to work together to identify a worldwide problem and a high-impact solution.

Through research and discussion, Giwa and his teammates came to understand the challenges of organ transplantation: "There's a massive gap between how many people get to benefit from a lifesaving organ transplant and how many truly need one," explains Giwa, who was a Baker Scholar at HBS. He's spent the decade since trying to change that.

The need was obvious, Giwa says. In the United States alone, scientists estimate between 700,000 and 1 million people die each year because they lack access to an organ transplant. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates only 10 percent of the need for organ transplantation is being met. And the gap between the demand and supply is even greater in some regions: The continent of Africa, for instance, is home to 16 percent of the world's population but only 0.5% of transplants are performed there.

Giwa and his colleagues at the Global Solutions Program investigated ideas for creating more organs: Could technology be developed to 3D-print organs? Could pig organs be genetically modified to be compatible with the human body? It turned out that there was another solution. They didn't need to manufacture new organs for transplant; instead, they needed to make better use of existing ones. "We could literally multiply organ transplantation on Earth 15 or 20 times if we just were able to solve the logistics," he says.

That image you have from television, of a lifesaving organ packed in a cooler—just like the one you would use to carry beer—is pretty accurate, says Giwa. People running frantically through airports with coolers to catch last-minute flights? Those things happen too, he acknowledges. The useful lifespan of an organ after it is removed from the body is measured in hours, which means that transplants are more available in densely populated areas within easy reach of medical care. But what if the viability of an organ destined for transplant could be extended through cryopreservation?

That question led to the creation of the Organ Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit established to advocate for additional funding for research into cryopreservation and connect scientists in the field. Giwa served as founding CEO of what he calls a "mini American Cancer Society," and the Alliance set the stage for establishing an Apollo program for organ banking with the launch of the Biostasis Research Institute. "I really knew at that point that my mission is to help solve the organ transplantation crisis," he says.

Giwa left the Alliance to found two venture capital–backed, public benefit corporations: Ossium Health, the world's first bone marrow bank from deceased organ donors with the goal of providing better transplant options to patients with diseases such as sickle cell, leukemia, and lymphoma; and Sylvatica Biotech, which develops preservation technology that could extend the useful life of transplant organs from a few hours to a few days or possibly longer. "Eventually, we want to stop biological time," says Giwa, who is CEO of Sylvatica. (He left Ossium in 2018 but also is the cofounder and chairman of Elevian, a biotech firm that develops medicines to treat and prevent many aging-associated diseases, which grew out of Harvard University.)

Sylvatica is named for the wood frog—scientific name Rana sylvatica—which can freeze each winter and emerge alive and active with the thaw, up to 212 days later. "Nature has already solved this problem," Giwa says. In Sylvatica and Harvard/Mass General Hospital partners' laboratories, they've demonstrated success with human livers, frozen, thawed and, when hooked up to a simulated transplant model, fully functioning. "This could become the new way of doing transplantation," he says.

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