21-year-old CEO seeks to revolutionize wound care industry
Posted by: Megan Roth on Monday, January 22, 2024
For Case Western Reserve University senior Franco Kraiselburd, this is just the beginning.
Entrepreneur-student Franco Kraiselburd is just 21 and spent most of his life in South America and Europe, but his connection to Cleveland is long. It goes back to when he was 13, in fact, and working on his very first scientific project.
While a primary school student in Brazil, Kraiselburd came across research conducted by Case Western Reserve University professor Dr. Arnold Caplan, an expert in Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs). Kraiselburd didn’t know that eight years later, he’d be working in the very lab where Dr. Caplan conducted his research.
Today, Kraiselburd is a senior at Case Western Reserve University and CEO of Asclepii, a U.S.- based medical device company that focuses on wound care. His mission: make wound care affordable and accessible for people across the world.
Interest from a young age
Kraiselburd’s interest in science began as soon as he could read, delving into books about space missions, the Apollo program and theories of how the universe started.
His parents frequently moved around for work and studies. They lived in the United States, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and Chile throughout his childhood.
In middle school, Kraiselburd was introduced to biology by learning about diabetes. Noticing his interest, his biology teacher connected him with a scientific pre-initiation program, where each student is paired with a mentor and challenged to apply the scientific method to a topic.
Kraiselburd was paired with Carolina Lavini, who had a master’s in MSCs, and whose research built upon that of Dr. Caplan, who passed away on January 17.
“I remember [Lavini] saying ‘You can’t talk about MSCs without talking about Dr. Arnold Caplan,’” Kraiselburd says.
Caplan’s research notes MSCs’ impressive self-replication abilities, being able to expand enough to form new tissue.
Kraiselburd and Lavini created a prototype that could heal wounds by stimulating one’s own MSCs, but the concept was too complex to be carried out in a middle or high school science lab. Lavini told Kraiselburd to apply to every lab within a five-mile radius, and after an extensive process, Kraiselburd finally found a lab at the University of São Paulo Medical School.
There, in addition to creating prototypes, Kraiselburd spent time with nurses and physicians to explore wound healing in a field setting, where he discovered the south of Brazil’s crisis with diabetic foot.
“The problem is that because [people with diabetes] have high blood sugar levels, their wounds don’t get everything they need and won’t heal,” he says. If wounds aren’t treated appropriately, they can lead to severe infections, which can quickly spread to other parts of the body. If an infection has spread, amputating the limb may be the only viable solution.
“There was a very pressing need, a very global, growing problem of diabetes,” he says. “There were a lot of companies in the space trying to fix it, a lot of R&D budgets associated it with, but the solutions being created were completely inaccessible.”
Kraiselburd says that although the U.S. market was pushing out solutions, he didn’t see any of them in Latin America, which fueled his focus on accessibility.
Asclepii: A Network of Small Healers
The name ‘Asclepii’ comes from the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius.
“Asclepius is known as the healer of all wounds,” Kraiselburd says, “and so Asclepii is a plural of that, which means we’re making a bunch of little healers.”
Pivotal to his success as a 21-year-old CEO is Kraiselburd’s ability to recognize how much he doesn’t know.
“All I know is that I know nothing,” he says. “And I’m totally fine with it. [Experts in the field] are totally fine with it, and they sit with me for hours. I’m talking to them for hours, writing notes and coming up with ideas.”
He describes Asclepii as more than a wound care or MedTech company.
“It’s a global consortium of seven countries of people who believe in more than just the technology, but what we can do with what the team, the partnerships and the vision we have,” he says.
Asclepii uses its technology, which they call Artemis, as a “platform technology” – something that can build upon preexisting technology to expand its applications. Kraiselburd says Artemis has potential to be used for lab-grown meat, cosmetics and organ creation.
The four founders of the company are Kraiselburd; his father, Santiago Kraiselburd; his mentor at Case, Miguel Fuentes Chandia; and uncle, Daniel Katzman, who is a serial biotech entrepreneur.
(From left) Kraiselburd, Dr. Arnold Caplan and co-founder and chairman Daniel Katzman.
Kraiselburd says these four make up the perfect team because his father and uncle were the businesspeople who knew how to run the company, and he and Miguel Fuentes Chandia were able to focus on the science. Today, Kraiselburd serves as the CEO, his father: president, uncle: chairman and, as of December 15th, Miguel Fuentes Chandia: Chief Scientific Officer.
The membership spans across the world from South America to Europe.
As far as funding, Asclepii receives entrepreneurship microgrants from the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship at Case, as well as help with customer discovery. Kraiselburd says Case has helped him get into the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, which gives money to businesses to figure out the most pressing needs in the science space. Through the I-Corps program, Asclepii has hosted a collaborative meeting of high-level research institutions to source for customer discovery at the University of Akron Research Foundation and University of Michigan.
Kraiselburd says he’s also constantly applying for small business grants.
Most notably, the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey has funded a pre-seed exploratory grant. The Institute also has internal grants, and has, in total, provided Asclepii nearly $500,000.
Today, the company is raising private and public funds.
Franco Kraiselburd (right) with father and co-founder Santiago Kraiselburd and Alejandro Fabiani (left), an advisor for Asclepii.
Cleveland’s Influence
Both Case and the city of Cleveland have been catalysts in Asclepii’s growth and success.
“Case is extremely well structured when it comes to helping students get research experience and mentorship,” Kraiselburd says.
Kraiselburd credits Case’s Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship and LaunchNET with allowing him to believe that he could found his own company. He was a 2022-23 Veale Snyder Fellow, where he traveled to Barcelona, Las Vegas and San Francisco to learn about entrepreneurship.
“If you have that [entrepreneurial] itch, [the fellowship] ignites it,” he says.
As Asclepii grows, Kraiselburd continues to leverage the business resources Cleveland has to offer, most recently joining the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). Only a month into his membership, Kraiselburd says the MBDA has already allowed him to hire students – specifically minorities and international students – to work for Asclepii. He’s also been able to connect with people he anticipated waiting years to meet, which he attributes to the MBDA’s vast business ecosystem.
"We are glad to see young entrepreneurs choosing to build their business in Cleveland, and choosing to work with MBDA,” says Marco Grgurevic, Director of the Ohio MBDA. “By helping them connect with diverse talent, they are able to focus on innovation and growth – while benefiting the community.”
There is no end in sight for Kraiselburd. He says the most revolutionary thing about Asclepii is that he can spend his entire life using its technology to create products, and still not reach its full potential.
“When one product can be the base for literally anything you can imagine,” he says, “the possibilities are endless.”
Top: Kraiselburd holds Artemis, Asclepii’s platform technology.
Read More: https://greatercle.com/blog/gcp-news/21-year-old-ceo-seeks-to-revolutionize-wound-care-industry/
