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Nov. 2, 2026
By Jeff Kelley<\/p>\n
A routine tissue biopsy can help diagnose disease. But hidden within that same sample may be clues about which cells are driving disease, how they are organized and which treatments researchers should investigate. Khoa Huynh, Ph.D. student
Four Virginia Commonwealth University researchers are developing technology to uncover those clues, combining laboratory science and artificial intelligence to examine human tissue at the level of individual cells.
For their work, Kevin Matthew Byrd, D.D.S., Ph.D.; Jinze Liu, Ph.D.; Katarzyna Tyc, Ph.D.; and Khoa Huynh, Ph.D., were recognized as VCU’s 2026 Innovators of the Year during an Oct. 29 reception in Richmond.
Their innovations grew from a collaboration bringing together expertise in biological discovery, computational science and statistics. The researchers developed technologies that helped launch Stratica Biosciences, a VCU startup co-founded by Byrd and Liu.
“The strength of this partnership is that we develop the biological questions and computational approaches together,” said Byrd, Stratica’s chief executive officer. “I’d like to see more collaborations at VCU grow from a shared scientific problem into tools that others can use.”
“These four researchers come from dentistry, medicine, and public health with support from VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. Together they turned complex tissue data into tools that academic and industry researchers now use,” he said. “That is the path we want more VCU discoveries to follow: from a shared question in the lab to a new startup or existing company helping move new treatments forward.”
The team’s research centers on spatial biology, a field that allows scientists to examine the molecular features of individual cells while preserving information about where they are located and which other cells surround them within human tissue.
That level of detail produces enormous amounts of data, creating a challenge for researchers trying to identify meaningful biological patterns.
Kevin Matthew Byrd, D.D.S., Ph.D.
<\/strong>Assistant professor, VCU School of Dentistry
Member, Cancer Biology research program, VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center
Jinze Liu, Ph.D.
<\/strong>Professor, VCU School of Medicine
Director of the Bioinformatics Shared Resource Core, VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center
Member, Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Science
Katarzyna Tyc, Ph.D.
<\/strong>Assistant professor of biostatistics, VCU School of Public Health
Member, Cancer Prevention and Control research program, VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center<\/p>\n
<\/strong>Senior research scientist, VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center
The VCU team developed TACIT, a computational method that classifies individual cells using molecular measurements, including RNA and protein signals. For some datasets, this cell-classification step can be completed in minutes, reducing work that previously required weeks of manual analysis.
The invention reflects the researchers’ complementary expertise.
Byrd, an assistant professor in the School of Dentistry and member of the Cancer Biology research program at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, guides biological research through his expertise in human disease and spatial biology. Liu, a professor in the School of Medicine and director of the Bioinformatics Shared Resource Core at Massey and member of the Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Science, directs the computational research, bringing her expertise in computational biology, machine learning and algorithm design.
Working closely with Liu, Huynh, a Ph.D. candidate and now a senior research scientist at Massey, led TACIT’s implementation and benchmarking, translating its design into a working tool and testing its performance. Tyc, an assistant professor of biostatistics in the School of Public Health and member of the Cancer Prevention and Control research program at Massey, co-designed TACIT’s algorithm and contributed to the analyses supporting its development.
Byrd and Liu are also developing RosenBridge, an AI-powered tool that helps researchers use StraticaOS, the company’s platform for analyzing tissue data. The platform incorporates TACIT and other tools to study how cells interact, identify patterns in disease and explore potential treatments.
“Continuous innovation in AI and computational methodology was the engine behind this entire development process,” Liu said. Without AI and the math behind it, translating such massive biological complexity into insights simply wouldn’t be possible, she said.
“What makes this technology particularly exciting is its ability to turn incredibly complex biological data into information researchers can actually use,” said Brent Fagg, assistant director for innovation at VCU TechTransfer and Ventures, which helped protect the team’s intellectual property and support its commercialization.
Stratica has grown from a research collaboration into a company serving academic and industry customers. The company is developing laboratory capabilities in Richmond, expanding beyond data analysis to support research using human tissue samples. It is also building a Disease Intelligence Network of hospitals, academic medical centers and other partners to help assemble research cohorts that connect tissue samples with information about disease, treatment history and outcomes.
Byrd explained how these combined capabilities could help pharmaceutical companies understand why promising drugs sometimes fail in clinical testing.
“A treatment might work for certain patients, but not others. By examining tissue samples, we could help researchers identify biological differences associated with those outcomes and develop hypotheses about which patients might benefit,” he said.
Those hypotheses can then be tested in independent studies.
Stratica has supported exploratory research using tissue from patients enrolled in a clinical trial, identifying cellular patterns associated with treatment outcomes for further investigation as potential biomarkers. Its initial focus is immunology, inflammation and fibrosis, with additional applications in cancer research.
Ivelina Metcheva, Ph.D., assistant vice president for innovation who leads VCU TechTransfer and Ventures, said Stratica illustrates how university research can lead to commercial opportunities.
“What began as innovative research at VCU has evolved into a commercial platform serving customers, expanding its capabilities and creating new opportunities to advance drug development,” she said.
For Byrd, the recognition also celebrates a research partnership that has endured for about four years, an achievement he considers significant in a field where collaborations often dissolve after a year or two.
“It really shows ways that this can work, and I’d like to see more of this on campus if we can,” he said.
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