ReproCode · Cody Kime, PhD
I understand living systems, then capture and improve them beyond convention.
I advise teams whose regenerative, stem-cell, or reproductive work has to hold up outside the slide deck.
Yamanaka lab Gladstone · CIRM Scholar
Takahashi lab Kyoto University · RIKEN BDR · Reprogramming Team Lead
Director of R&D Trans Ova Genetics
Journal cover Stem Cell Reports, 2019
Patents Totipotency, naive PSC, RPE
What I do
Biology is coded. We have not decoded it well enough to control it, but I can capture a new way.
I work in the gap between observation and control: what the cells are doing and what we must change to get results.
That is not a catalog of protocols. It is the capacity to read a cellular program and alter its output.
Reliable progress is unusual in this field. That is the hire.
- Regenerative medicine
- Stem-cell biology
- Embryogenesis
- Reproductive technology
- Reprogramming
Approach
Four steps. Repeated until it ships.
Diagnose
What the culture, the production line, or the animal is doing in fact, including what it will not do.
Isolate
Stalled work usually has one real bottleneck. Control. I find it and cut the path forward.
Invent
New reprogramming routes, embryo models, retinal programs, livestock breeding architecture. Built from first principles, then made operable.
Deliver
Advisory, program design, or embedded. I can work with the scientists at the bench and with the people who own the results.
The cellular program
A strand, not a list. Each pair is a layer of my work.
From the genome in the nucleus out to the organism. Find my life events. The camera flies in, the helix unzips, and that layer of the record is expressed.
MAG 1.0×
bp —
This is the code of success. Consistent progress across domain and time. Choose a locus to see how ReproCode became real.
Nucleus · the sequence
Genome engineering in pluripotent cells
The DNA itself: edits and support lines inside human pluripotent cells, written so another lab can run them.
Whole program · totipotency
Induced totipotent-like stem cells
A claim on the full early program: cells that can, in principle, make every lineage.
Reset · naive pluripotency
Making pluripotent cells, then returning them to naive
Integration-free iPSC methods, the transcription-factor program that keeps cells naive, and a patented reversion from primed back to naive.
- Practical integration-free episomal methods for generating human induced pluripotent stem cells
- Autotaxin-mediated lipid signaling intersects with LIF and BMP signaling to promote the naive pluripotency transcription factor program
- Reversion of primed pluripotent stem cells to naive pluripotent stem cells
Self-assembly · early embryo
Blastocyst-like cysts from one starting cell type
Primed cells sent through a 2C-like state until they form implantation-competent structures. The 2019 journal cover was this morphology, drawn.
- Implantation-competent blastocyst-like structures from mouse pluripotent stem cells
- Induced 2C expression and implantation-competent blastocyst-like cysts from primed pluripotent stem cells
- Reprogramming epiblast stem cells into pre-implantation blastocyst cell-like cells
- Synthetic embryology: early mammalian embryo modeling systems from cell cultures
Lineage · retinal pigment epithelium
RPE-like cells without the iPSC detour
Somatic tissue induced toward human RPE-like cells that integrate in-vivo.
- Inducing human retinal pigment epithelium-like cells from somatic tissue
- Production method of retinal pigment epithelial cell
Organism · reproduction
Breeding architecture, then sperm selection
Company work, not a paper: embryo production at Trans Ova Genetics, then genetic sperm selection at Vertility Health. The record here is what shipped, not what was published.
A longer citation list is on Google Scholar.
Selected work
From culture dish to company, the biology had to hold.
Synthetic embryology · 2018–2021
A blastocyst from one starting cell type
Implantation-competent blastocyst-like structures from primed pluripotent cells, through a 2C-like state, in defined conditions. Posted April 2018, among the first such embryo models.
The route remains underused: it induces a complete early-life program rather than assembling one from mixed stem-cell stocks.
Stem Cell Reports, 2019
Livestock reproduction · 2021–present
Reproduction as an operating system
As Director of R&D at Trans Ova Genetics I analyzed embryo production and breeding architecture to intersect the life cycle in new ways and amplify unique offspring per mating.
At Vertility Health, with Bonnie Maven, I advise on genetic sperm selection for livestock and human use, from the science through the company-building stage.
Retina regeneration · 2015–present
The retina as a regenerative system
Human retinal pigment epithelium-like cells induced from somatic tissue, skipping the long iPSC detour that usually sits in the way.
Developing new in-vivo retinal regeneration with Vision Care and Genentech.
Stem Cell Reports, 2022
Stem Cell Reports · Volume 13, Number 3 · 10 September 2019
The experiment, made visible.
A scientist holds the event in his palm: stem cells reprogramming at the wrist, then self-assembling outward as floating blastocyst-like cysts. He looks surprised, as if the spell is working and he is still watching it happen.
The image is a cartoon of the morphological events in Kime et al.: primed pluripotent cells induced into early embryonic-like states under defined conditions.
Artwork courtesy of Mike Kime.
Past, as proof
Trained where the field was made. Hired where it had to ship.
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Gladstone Institutes · Yamanaka lab
CIRM Scholar and research associate with partial independence. Human iPSC methods, genome engineering in pluripotent cells, and naive pluripotency. Trained where induced pluripotency was still being made practical while developing novel induced totipotent-like systems.
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Kyoto University School of Medicine · RIKEN · Takahashi lab
Doctor of Medical Science, 2018. Then Special Postdoctoral Researcher, reprogramming team lead, and Organoid young investigator at RIKEN BDR. Built embryo and retina systems from first principles, and ran the team that executed them. The first evidence that the synthetic embryos could implant and grow remains the life-changing moment of that period.
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Trans Ova Genetics · Director of R&D
Livestock reproduction at the executive table, not only at the bench: production, donor programs, and breeding architecture taken into operations.
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Vision Care / Genentech · consultant
Continuing advisor on in vivo retina regeneration, from the Japan origin through later animal studies.
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Vertility Health · consultant
Advisor to Vertility Health on genetic sperm selection for livestock and human use.
Who it is for
Hire me when the science has to match the plan.
Startups and established companies
Advisory, program design, or embedded on a plan already in motion. Protocols, datasets, and methods stay inside the engagement.
Livestock and reproductive technology
I can sit with the scientific team and with the people who own production, cost, and the next product. That includes ongoing work in this industry at the executive layer.
Compute pressed against biology
Tools and hardware are now up against living programs. Those efforts need someone who can invent the method, not decorate a slide. That is a seat I take.