Tempo Therapeutics Builds MAP Scaffolds for Tissue Repair

Tempo Therapeutics is building synthetic tissue scaffolds designed to help the body rebuild damaged tissue instead of settling for the usual bargain: close the wound, form a scar, and call the job finished.

The San Diego clinical-stage company develops Microporous Annealed Particle, or MAP, technology. MAP turns engineered hydrogel particles into a porous, flowable scaffold that can fill an irregular wound and create space for new tissue to grow. Tempo's lead product, TT101, contains no cells or biological factors. That matters because the company is trying to make regenerative medicine work through material design, not through a biologic cocktail that adds manufacturing and delivery complexity.

Tempo is led by interim CEO Eric I. Richman alongside co-founder and CTO Westbrook Weaver, co-founder and CSO Donald Griffin, and VP of R&D Stephanie Deshayes. Founder and scientific advisor Dino Di Carlo is also a co-inventor of MAP. The company now has early human data, a follow-on clinical study, fresh financing, and federal support behind the same question: can a scaffold actively organize better healing?

About Tempo Therapeutics

Tempo Therapeutics was founded in 2014 and operates at the intersection of tissue engineering, biomaterials, immunology, and surgical reconstruction. The company's MAP platform begins with microscopic hydrogel building blocks. Clinicians can place the particles into a complex wound, where they anneal into a connected scaffold with pores large enough for cells to enter.

That architecture is the point. Conventional implants can trigger a foreign-body response that walls off material with inflammation and scar tissue. Tempo is engineering the scaffold's physical environment to encourage a type 2, pro-regenerative immune response. In plain English, the material is designed to give the body a better construction site.

Tempo's MAP technology is also a platform rather than a single fixed product. The company says the scaffold can work with different material chemistries and can be combined with controlled-release systems for small molecules or stem cells. TT101 is the simpler starting case: a stand-alone synthetic material for difficult surgical wounds. TT108 extends the platform toward reinforcement of fascial incision sites.

Early Clinical Evidence for TT101

Tempo's first-in-human randomized study enrolled 40 adults with wounds created during skin-cancer surgery. Twenty-six received MAP Wound Matrix and 14 received control treatment. The study met its primary safety endpoint. The published results also reported an earlier improvement in Wound Bed Score for the MAP group, by roughly 14 days, and better scar scores at follow-up. Time to wound closure was similar between groups.

Those results are encouraging without being permission to sprint past the evidence. A 40-person study can establish an early signal and reveal safety problems. It cannot settle how well a product will perform across surgeons, wound types, and larger patient populations.

The next test is MOSAIC II. The planned study will randomize 20 adults with head-and-neck surgical wounds and exposed bone after nonmelanoma skin-cancer resection. The primary endpoint is time to a graft-ready wound bed with more than 75% granulation, judged through blinded photography. The program also includes current-good-manufacturing-practice production work and chemistry testing under ISO 10993 standards.

Capital Is Following the Clinical Plan

Tempo has assembled several kinds of validation rather than relying on one splashy financing headline. In March 2024, the company announced a $12M Series A led by Galaxy-Sirius Partners and Johnson & Johnson Innovation, with participation from YK Bioventures and AJAX Capital Partners. Tempo entered the MedTech Innovator Accelerator in 2025.

In September 2026, Tempo announced an oversubscribed $14.5M private debt financing to advance the MAP program. Days later, the company announced an NCI Direct-to-Phase II Small Business Innovation Research award worth up to approximately $2.25M over two years, subject to progress and available funds. The current NIH award record shows $1,423,186 for fiscal 2026.

That distinction matters. "Up to $2.25M" describes the potential program, not cash already received. Good biotech reporting keeps the runway and the promise in separate columns.

Leadership Built Around Translation

Tempo's leadership reflects the handoff required to move a university-born material into clinical development. Westbrook Weaver helped invent MAP and leads technology strategy as CTO. Donald Griffin, a hydrogel and regenerative-medicine researcher, serves as CSO. Dino Di Carlo, a UCLA bioengineering professor and serial entrepreneur, remains a scientific advisor.

Eric I. Richman adds operating and financing experience from biotechnology leadership and investment roles. Stephanie Deshayes leads R&D and serves as principal investigator for the NIH-backed program. That mix is useful because a clever biomaterial does not become a surgical product through cleverness alone. It has to survive manufacturing controls, toxicology, clinical protocol design, regulatory scrutiny, and the ordinary chaos of use in an operating room.

Why Tempo Therapeutics Matters Now

The regenerative-medicine market has spent years chasing therapies that are biologically powerful and operationally difficult. Cells can be fragile. Growth factors can complicate dosing. Complex products can turn manufacturing into a second scientific problem.

Tempo's thesis is more architectural. Give cells an engineered physical environment, influence the immune response locally, and let the patient's own tissue do more of the work. TT101's cell-free, biologic-free design could matter if it produces repeatable clinical results while remaining practical to manufacture and deploy.

The opportunity is larger than wound care, but the discipline should stay narrow for now. Complex wounds with exposed bone give Tempo a demanding setting in which to test whether MAP can create tissue that is ready for grafting. Success there would strengthen the case for other reconstructive and regenerative applications. Failure would still teach the field where material architecture stops carrying the load.

Tempo's current careers page lists an onsite Process Development Associate role, although the same page also says there are no current openings. Candidates should verify availability directly. The role itself is a useful signal: the hard work now sits in process development, manufacturing, and clinical execution, not just invention.

Tempo Therapeutics has moved beyond the elegant lab story. It has human data, defined endpoints, manufacturing obligations, and investors who expect the science to become a product. MAP still has to prove that better architecture creates better healing at scale. That is a much tougher question than whether the technology looks good in a diagram, and exactly the question worth watching.