Dr. Manny (Manu) Tamargo
I’m Manny Tamargo, a tissue engineer, consultant, and startup operator. I earned a PhD in cardiac tissue engineering at Columbia University and co-founded a biotech startup that raised $580K. Along the way I guided strategic pivots and supported investor diligence with tech memos that fed into more than $50M in funding and acquisition decisions. Since 2025 I have been immersing myself in the agricultural sector. I currently work as the Director of Program Development at the Urban Oasis Project, and the Development Coordinator at The Commons Network in Miami, Florida.
As founder and CTO of Edge Bio (formerly Edge Foods), I led the technical and business development work behind biology-based alternatives to animal-derived products, which meant running market validation, fundraising, and financial modeling. At Helikon Consulting I worked as a life sciences technology analyst, supporting clients with market landscaping, technical diligence, and strategic evaluations across biotech.
My long-term plan is an agricultural operation that feeds people, grows materials and bio-fuels, and runs its own biotech research in bio-manufacturing and agriculture. Until then I provide technical assistance to the small farms, food businesses, and nonprofits around me.
On weekends you will find me in the garden with my bees, hustling at the Vizcaya and Legion Farmers Market, or building something from scratch.
Publications
- Millipillar: A Platform for the Generation and Real-time Assessment of Human Engineered Cardiac Tissues for Patient-specific Disease Modeling*. ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, 2021.
- Pathological remodeling of distal lung matrix in end-stage cystic fibrosis patients*. Journal of Cystic Fibrosis, 2022.
- Endomyocardial biopsies in the diagnosis of myocardial involvement in systemic lupus erythematosus*. Lupus, 2020.
- The influence of hypoxia and IFN-gamma on the proteome and metabolome of therapeutic mesenchymal stem cells. Biomaterials, 2018.
- Pparg promotes differentiation and regulates mitochondrial gene expression in bladder epithelial cells. Nature Communications, 2019.
- A framework for developing sex-specific engineered heart models. Nature Reviews Materials, 2022.
- STK25 inhibits PKA signaling by phosphorylating PRKAR1A. Cell Reports, 2022.
- A multi-organ chip with matured tissue niches linked by vascular flow. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2022.
- Engineered cardiac tissue model of restrictive cardiomyopathy for drug discovery. Cell Reports Medicine, 2023.
- An engineered human cardiac tissue model reveals contributions of systemic lupus erythematosus autoantibodies to myocardial injury. Nature Cardiovascular Research, 2024.
- Modeling and countering the effects of cosmic radiation using bioengineered human tissues. Biomaterials, 2023.
*First or co-first author
Patents
- Human engineered cardiac tissue platform
- Pathological remodeling of distal lung matrix in end-stage cystic fibrosis patients
- Processes and systems using for culturing cells using feeder cells in a hollow fiber cartridge
- Systems and processes for culturing cells using microcarriers