What I do for Work...

I’ve been performing technical product marketing and sales duties for several companies over the last 25 years. Right now, and for the last 5 years, I'm the Sales & Marketing Manager for MatTek Corporation.

MatTek is a small bioengineering company located in the greater Boston, Massachusetts (USA) area. Their major product line consists of a number of “human cell-derived, 3-D, organotypic in vitro tissue models”. What the heck are those, you (and many others) might well ask! They’re just one of the most innovative research tools for toxicology and pharmacology that’s come along in the last 10 years, that’s all!

Click on the link below to for an overview of how these human tissue models are produced, and a typical test in which they are used:

In Vitro Tissue Model Basics

MatTek currently produces 9 different types of in vitro tissue models that range from several human skin models to models of the human airway lining (nasal passages, trachea and bronchial tubes) to models of the human inner cheek.

The market segments for these in vitro tissue models are divided into 2 broad categories – cosmetics, personal care and household products manufacturers, and pharmaceutical/ biotech companies.

The major applications in the cosmetics, personal care and household products market segments center on the measurement of the potential toxicity of these products and their ingredients to humans. Toxicity testing for these products has historically involved the use of live animals. Through the efforts of companies like MatTek, the use of animals in these painful, sometimes lethal toxicity tests is gradually being replaced by MatTek’s in vitro tissue models.

A typical application for MatTek products in this market segment is the use of our EpiDerm in vitro human skin equivalent to measure the skin irritation potential of a new cosmetics or cleaning product and/or of that new product's ingredients.

In the pharmaceutical/biotech market segments, MatTek’s tissue models are used to not only measure the potential toxicity of a new drug, but they are also used to measure a new drug’s ability to penetrate or permeate through a particular type of human tissue. For example, if a drug manufacturer wanted to deliver a new drug into the human body using a transdermal (skin) "patch", that company’s researchers could use MatTek’s EpiDerm in vitro human skin tissue model to measure the ability of that drug to permeate through the skin prior to the drug being tested on either animals or humans.

In this market segment, the use of MatTek’s in vitro tissue models provides scientists with a true model of a specific human tissue that is both more cost effective and typically more human-like than traditional small animal testing.

Another really interesting product offering is MatTek’s Human Dendritic Cells. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that dendritic cells play a very important role in the human body’s ability to recognize and defeat foreign invaders. Because of this ability, dendritic cells have become the center of intense interest in high profile research areas such as “cancer vaccines”.

Needless to say, the marketing and sales of MatTek’s in vitro products keeps me quite busy!

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