Christopher Gordon Thanos had relatively few interactions with Pierre Galletti, the most influential person in his career.

Yet those meetings with Galletti, who was the head of the Artificial Organs, Biomaterials & Cellular Technology department at Brown University when Thanos started his Ph.D. there, were “all motivating and extremely valuable.”

“Galletti demonstrated that it was not only possible to be proficient in multiple fields, but it was critical for scientific independence,” Thanos wrote in his 40 Under Forty application.

Today, Thanos juggles roles as the vice president of research and development of the startup he cofounded in 1997, CytoSolv Inc., and as a principal at the TSC Group, a biotechnology group that he began in 2004, with his role as an associate adjunct professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown.

Thanos, 36, has contributed to more than 13 patents and over 45 peer-reviewed, scientific articles on a range of topics, spanning the disciplines of biomaterials, nanotechnology, tissues engineering, xenotransplantation and diseases of the nervous system.

At CytoSolv, Thanos is leading the charge on developing a topical wound-healing product to treat diabetic ulcers and other wounds.

At Brown, Thanos is managing the daily operations of a study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, known as the P20 Xenotransplant Core.

At TSC Group, he maintains his academic and industrial consulting relationships in preclinical or clinical development, including as an adviser on cell therapy to the Bionic Ear Institute of Melbourne, Australia. •