103: Alina Ruta (Cellvana Biotechnology)

Alina Ruta on Innovation City

“When we are empowered as human beings, we are conscious creators of our lives. That’s how we change the status quo.” — Alina Ruta

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s guest is Alina Ruta, Founder & CEO of Cellvana Biotechnology. Cellvana’s products empower researchers to develop faster, more cost effective, and more accurate rare cancer and stem cell therapies. Alina sits down with the team to discuss her passion and goal to help people live their best lives, the difference between healthy and unhealthy cells, the importance of developing partnerships to find solutions, the struggle of getting funding as a startup in the medical technology industry, the mind + body connection for healing, and much more!

They discuss:

• Cellvana stands for Cells and Nirvana (aka- happy cells)
• Her goal is to assist human beings to live the best life that they can
• Her passion comes from a personal loss of her mother to liver cancer
• She saw the value and market gap for a company like Cellvana early on
• No one in the world can recreate healthy cells for the human body without chemicals except for Cellvana, who has patented technology to do it
• Referring to her technology as the iPhone of cell culture
  • Elegant, simple, & meant to disrupt the status quo
• Looking to raise capital and take the product to market
• A brief history of how the industry recreates cells
• The harm of using chemicals and machines to collect cells
  • Killing off 75% cells during retrieval
  • Creating now-toxic cells that have a low chance of helping and higher chance of harming
• Creating a paradigm shift with a system that encourages cells to release naturally without force of chemicals
• Wanting to get the authentically grown cells to medical researchers as soon as possible
• The long term risks in stem cell therapy
• The public at large is generally uneducated when it comes to cells and medical technology
• Having the ability to heal yourself through your own extracted cells
• Consciousness at the cellular level
• The importance of developing partnerships to find solutions
• The struggle of getting funding as a startup in the medical technology industry
• Mind + Body connection for healing
• Alina believes that what Cellvana can do has a global benefit to humanity
• Cellvana has the ability to clear the consciousness of cells to keep them pure before being used
• Connect with Cellvana on their website
• Reach out to Alina via email at aruta@cellvana.com