Dan Cohen ’05, MS ’07, Ph.D. ’10 is leading a team making next-gen respirators for health care workers
Dan Cohen ’05, MS ’07, Ph.D. ’10 is CEO & co-founder of 3DBio Therapeutics, a Cornell spinout company that creates living tissue implants for therapeutic applications. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 3DBio was focused on developing reconstructive tissue for children with microtia, a rare pediatric disease that affects the formation of the outer ear, and for which its implant has received two important FDA designations.
As the virus escalated in the United States, Cohen and his staff were troubled to see that many health care workers fighting COVID-19 lacked the equipment necessary to protect them from a highly infectious airborne disease. 3DBio reconfigured a portion of its engineering operations to design and manufacture powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs), top-of-the-line protective devices for workers in the most infectious environments.
I think we will see many new devices and services emerging as a result of COVID-19. As a society, we’ll never think about personal protection or epidemiology the same way again.
Within two months, their product was approved by the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), receiving the institute’s first PAPR100-N classification for PAPRs designed specifically for health care workers. Produced in the United States, the respirators are now available for purchase online. The company donates a portion of all units produced to a medical professional in need, and has already donated PAPRs to major hospitals in New York City.
