Technology that transforms your cells | Stephen Henry | TEDxChristchurch
What if you could make your cells behave however you wanted them to? What if you could help your immune system easily identify and target hard-to-detect cancers, or make molecules interact that previously shunned each other? Stephen Henry shares the story of the revolutionary Kode Technology, a system that allows scientists to paint shapes onto cells, creating any cellular ‘key’ to fit any cellular ‘lock’.
Professor Steve Henry is an academic with a difference. Like other professors, research is his professional life, but unlike many he believes commercialisation is an integral partner to successful research. Having trained as a laboratory scientist specialising in transfusion medicine, Steve completed a PhD at the University of Auckland and completed another PhD in the 1990s. In 1996 he started the biotechnology company Kode Biotech to commercialise his biosurface engineering technology – Kode technology. As the CEO of Kode Biotech and Professor in the AUT Centre for Kode Technology Innovation he is fully immersed in the true commercial environment, taking research to product and developing it for the market. In 2015 Kode Biotech won the Supreme NZ Innovator Award for their contribution to the Agalimmune anti-cancer therapy innovation.