A biotech startup co-founded by Lady Gaga's fiancé Michael Polansky is keeping full-thickness human skin alive outside the body for up to 30 days, using leftover tissue from surgeries to train an artificial intelligence system that hunts for new cosmetic ingredients. The company, Outer Biosciences, emerged from four years of stealth operation this month with a workforce of 19 employees and a proprietary tissue-support platform it calls Yuna.
Polansky, a 42-year-old entrepreneur and Harvard graduate, co-founded Outer Biosciences in 2022 alongside Kyung-Jin Jang, Stanley King, and Chris Hinojosa, according to the New York Post. The startup has raised $23 million and researches how mechanisms and molecules affect skin health, harvesting human skin left over from plastic surgery to study effects that cannot ordinarily be examined through standard human or animal research, the outlet reports. The Yuna platform continuously supplies nutrients and clears metabolic byproducts, which is what allows the tissue to survive so much longer than typical lab samples, according to Inc. Magazine. Standard tissue cultures otherwise degrade within days without that kind of specialized fluidic nutrient and waste management.
Where the Skin Actually Comes From
The company sources its de-identified tissue through federal nonprofit tissue networks, including the National Disease Research Interchange and the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, paying cost-recovery fees under Institutional Review Board oversight rather than buying tissue outright, per a report from TNW. Both networks receive funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, the outlet notes, a detail that speaks to the kind of federal compliance framework governing how donated human tissue moves from operating rooms into corporate labs.
Keeping that tissue alive for a full month, rather than the standard two days used in acute toxicity screens, lets researchers watch reactions that take weeks to unfold — collagen remodeling, pigmentation shifts, skin barrier repair, and recovery from artificial UVB exposure, according to UA.NEWS. Complex cellular repair and stress responses simply do not show up on a compressed timeline, the outlet's reporting explains.
An AI Pipeline Built for Speed
Outer Biosciences' machine-learning system predicts how candidate chemicals will affect living skin, generating roughly one new cosmetic lead every six weeks and currently juggling six active leads, four of which internal assessments consider close to commercial licensing, TNW reports. That pace is a dramatic shift from earlier compound discovery methods based strictly on published literature, which could take up to 18 months per lead, according to the same outlet's reporting.
The company's strategy hinges on a regulatory distinction: because it develops raw cosmetic ingredients rather than therapeutic drugs, Outer Biosciences avoids the multi-year FDA clinical trial process altogether, per TNW's reporting. Instead, it needs only standardized industry naming and safety testing under OECD guidelines before licensing ingredients to beauty partners — guidelines mutually accepted across international member states, the outlet notes. Pharmaceutical and beauty brands then use that research to identify key active ingredients for their own products, per the New York Post.
A Market Reshaped by Europe's Animal Testing Ban
Commercial demand for this kind of ex vivo human skin modeling has surged globally since the European Union's 2013 ban on animal testing and marketing for cosmetic products and ingredients, according to TNW. That ban effectively forced multinational cosmetics brands to adopt human-relevant alternatives to animal testing, reshaping the market Outer Biosciences now competes in.
The company is headquartered at 200 Exchange Street in downtown Malden, Massachusetts, part of a broader trend of life-science startups relocating outside pricier hubs in Cambridge and Boston, according to Patch. Malden's municipal developers have worked to attract biotech tenants to absorb spillover demand from Greater Boston, the outlet's reporting notes.
The Lady Gaga Connection
Lady Gaga — born Stefani Germanotta — sits on Outer Biosciences' board, while Polansky serves on the advisory board of her cosmetics brand, Haus Labs, which she launched in 2019 and which is reportedly thriving, per the New York Post. Outer Biosciences' chief scientist, Kyung-Jin Jang, also serves on Haus Labs' scientific advisory board, creating a direct line of scientific cross-pollination between the two ventures, according to a Medium report.
Polansky and Lady Gaga got engaged during a hiking trip in April 2024, and the singer has said publicly that Polansky asked her father's permission before proposing, a story she told Jimmy Kimmel that October. The couple, who are believed to share a home in Marin County outside San Francisco, have said they plan to marry soon, according to comments made on an iHeartRadio livestream earlier this year. Polansky also helped run Lady Gaga's worldwide tour, which began in July 2025 and which he has likened to a 200-person startup that travels around the world every day — a comparison Hoodline previously touched on in its coverage of Gaga's Mayhem Ball tour and its D.C. stop at Capital One Arena. Polansky has praised Lady Gaga's business acumen, according to the New York Post's reporting.
A Résumé Built on Biotech
Before Outer Biosciences, Polansky co-founded ArsenalBio in 2019, a San Francisco programmable cell therapy company targeting solid tumors that has since raised more than $630 million, according to Wikipedia. He also spent over a decade as Executive Director of the Parker Foundation, which he co-founded alongside tech billionaire Sean Parker in 2015, per StarsUnfolded's reporting. Open questions remain around whether major beauty conglomerates will formally license Outer's AI-discovered ingredients and how closely Haus Labs will ultimately incorporate the startup's research into its own product formulations.
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