Nicholas Pashos
Founder and CEO, BioAesthetics
Nicholas Pashos is not quite finished with school yet — he will be defending his Ph.D. thesis at Tulane University this summer — but he has already formed a company around a biomedical innovation he created to revolutionize reconstructive options after mastectomies.
Pashos’ product is a tissue-engineered nipple-areolar complex (NAC), put plainly, he has created a way to generate nipple and areola grafts that can be attached via reconstructive surgery. The grafts then serve as a building frame for the patient to regenerate their own nipple and areola.
In April, Pashos’ company, BioAesthetics, was selected by San Francisco-based seed biotech accelerator IndieBio to receive a $250,000 investment and participate in an intensive four-month accelerator program at IndieBio’s lab facility. The program is the world’s largest seed biotech accelerator and funding.
Pashos is currently taking part in the program in San Francisco.
“We’re taking the graft through safety and efficiency trials and on to FDA regulations.” Pashos says the expectation is to be using his innovation on people in 12 to 18 months.
A native of New Hampshire, Pashos came to New Orleans to attend Tulane’s bioinnovation Ph.D. program in 2012. After working with Dr. Bruce Bunnell, Ph.D., professor and director of the Tulane Center for Gene Therapy, for a year and a half to regrow a lung outside the human body, Pashos said he watched a documentary about mastectomies and ended up staying up all night learning everything he could.
“I came in the next day and told Bruce I had this idea,” he said. “He told me it sounded good and that I should talk to a plastic surgeon to make sure there was a need for my idea. I did, and it all went from there.”
