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In this episode of Owl Have You Know, meet the winners of the 2025 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) who are revolutionizing how new drugs are tested and developed through the first stem cell-derived, lab-grown human intestine.
Charlie Childs and Madeline Eiken are the co-founders of Intero Biosystems, a startup that aims to reduce clinical trial costs and improve drug safety. As Ph.D. students at the University of Michigan, they made a groundbreaking discovery that propelled them to launch Intero and develop their mini-organs.
Host Maya Pomroy ’22 sits down with Charlie and Madeline to learn more about the accidental breakthrough in their lab that led to the mini-organs, the transformational potential of their technology in personalized medicine, their experience at RBPC and how winning the grand prize will take their startup to the next level.
Episode Guide:
00:59 Meet the Founders: Madeline and Charlie
01:49 Their Groundbreaking Innovation of a Lab-Grown Human Intestine
03:24 The Journey From Lab to Startup
07:06 The Accidental Discovery
11:49 Competing in the Rice Business Plan Competition
15:52 The Pitch and the Competition Experience
19:14 Support and Success at Rice
23:37 Future Plans and Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.
Episode Quotes:
Charlie on the lab-grown intestines breakthrough
04:43 [Charlie Childs]: I think, every day, like, as we develop this model, we are just more and more amazed how amazing, like, nature is and how smart science is. So, what we can do is we take these stem cells, which, like you said, can turn to anything in the body, and then we simulate human development. So, every day we give them… we literally call it Gatorade. Like, the cells live in this red liquid, and it truly is Gatorade. It has, like, glucose and proteins and other things that the cells need to live just like our bodies do. And each day, we give them different proteins that leads them down human developmental time until they turn into the miniature intestines. So, it's actually a lot more simple than you would think. And our breakthrough figured out that a single protein that we switched in this process caused this beautiful thing to form. So, the cells, we joke about this every day, like, the cells just know what to do and we just need to, like, push them in the right direction and they will figure out what to do.From lab partners to startup co-founders
04:06 [Madeline Eiken]: We just know that we work really well together. We know that we have really complementary skill sets. So my background is in engineering, and, while Charlie is a biologist, and so the way that we approach problems is quite different from each other, but we have this, like, really shared interest in commercializing that technology.How does the Rice Business Plan competition stand out in comparison to some others?
18:12 [Charlie Childs]: It was like a whole other beast, and people kept warning us, like, leading up to it. They were like, “This is fun, but wait till you get to Rice.” It was just like the breadth of not only the startups, but also the judges and all the people from Rice. It was the investors — like, we were just blown away at how much support and interest there was. And I mean, our first pitch was crazy. Like, people were audibly like gasping and cheering, and it was just such a fun group to pitch to. And we just made so many wonderful connections, and I truly, truly, like, this is like launching us into another realm that we didn’t even think we were gonna be able to be in. Both from, like, connections and investors, and just support — we're so thankful.What’s next for Intero Biosystems?
24:05 [Madeline Eiken]: We're really excited to be really laser-focused on de-risking the company and meeting our milestones with this fundraise. We were really lucky to basically double what we were hoping to raise. So that was really awesome and exciting for us. And because of that extra cushion that we have, we think we can push a lot faster on some of our milestones that we had been thinking about for seed rounds and even Series A. So, right now we're really focusing on onlining our manufacturing and figuring out how we're gonna make the organoids really reproducibly so we can get them into the hands of customers as quickly as we can. So, now the fun part of running the company is what we get to do.
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