FARGO — For Andrzej Noyszewski, the most mundane drive to work often elicits a deep sense of gratitude.
“It’s my dream come true,” he says of his job at Agathos Biologics , where he’s working with a team of 12 scientists to produce a moral cell line to improve lives. “Things like this don’t happen by accident. I definitely believe God willed this.”
He couldn’t have fathomed such a career in his early childhood in Poland, where Communism had a tight grip on religious and other freedoms.
“I grew up hearing stories of Dr. (Joseph) Mengele,” known as the Angel of Death, “who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz for the sake of science,” he says. Without ethical principles to guide science, “We’ll end up being a Dr. Mengele, and I choose not to.”
Noyszewski’s convictions require him to respect “every human being as a child of God.”
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His colleague, Grace Loegering, who studied microbiology and chemistry at North Dakota State University, shares those views. She discovered early on the many ethical concerns in her field and pursued plant biology to avoid compromising her values.
But toward the end of her sophomore year of college, her campus pastor, the Rev. James Cheney, mentioned an up-and-coming company called Agathos Biologics that would align with her morals.
“I emailed them to see if they were looking for summer internships,” she says. They weren’t, so she tried again the following year and was hired part time, transitioning to full time after graduating in 2023.
Though not all in the company must share the same beliefs, Loegering says, “We are unified in our goals.”
Agathos CEO James Brown, an Indiana native, helped launch several other gene-therapy companies before teaming up with Michael Chambers and John Ballantyne, co-founders, with whom he’d worked at the Fargo-based Aldevron from 2015 to 2021. The three launched Agathos in early 2021, just months before Aldevron was sold for $9 billion.
The Greek word “agathos” means “desirable” or “good;” thus their motto, “The Good Science Company.” “It’s a play on words,” Brown says, indicating that they aim to do good work and produce morally good products. “It’s an aspirational name for us.”
For Noyszewski, the “good” demands work measured by accuracy and efficiency. “The moral principles can be applied in many ways.”
Brown describes the work as “genetic medicine,” or gene or cell therapy. “You try to manipulate genetic information and gene sequences to treat disease.” Specifically, they’re seeking to develop a cell line that can be used in genetic medicine research and biomanufacturing without any history of abortion, including vaccines.
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According to Brown and Noyszewski, Agathos appears to be the first company to provide a cell line, which they’ve named AE1-BHK, to potentially replace the currently proliferated but morally questionable HEK293 line originating from an aborted fetus.
For years, Noyszewski, a Catholic, had been concerned about being complicit in something against his beliefs and says Agathos’ work matched “something that was on my heart for a long time.”
He’d been in touch with the National Catholic Bioethics Center , which educates, guides and offers resources to “the Church and society to uphold the dignity of the human person in healthcare and biomedical research.”
Noyszewski even walked away from a possible job opportunity after learning he would have been working with the HEK293 cell line. “So when Agathos came along, I realized I could literally contribute to developing those (ethically good) cell lines, alleviating the moral issue.”
In 2019, the Vatican released a document, “Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses,” which allows Catholics to use currently perpetuated vaccines but also implores doctors and fathers of families to “take recourse to alternative vaccines (if they exist),” and exhorts political authorities and health systems to seek vaccines without moral concerns.
Agathos’ work is in accord with this, Noyszewski says. “As a Catholic and Christian, I can now truly contribute to one of the fundamental aspects of what we’re called upon to do, from one of our spiritual fathers and leaders,” which provides the same to other scientists who take their morality seriously.
Loegering says some are reluctant to buy in because the product isn’t yet at the level as others on the market. “But we are actually producing material…and working to make it better,” she says. “Science is a process; we’ll get there eventually.”
Besides, rushing science generally isn’t a good idea. “In the medical field, when we do make these fast decisions, if we were wrong or there’s an undesired side effect we didn’t know about, we can lose trust fast, and it’s hard to gain that back.”
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Brown, who acknowledges their approach as “the path less traveled,” says some have directly questioned why they wouldn’t “take their resources and brain power and just work on making HEK293 cheaper and better.” That would make sense if scientific concerns were the only consideration, he says, “but that’s not all that we’re doing.”
He likens it to companies seeking alternatives to beef. “They are, typically, vegans who know they’re not going to turn the world into vegans,” he says, but if everyone likes the product, vegan or not, then everyone wins.
He’s also heard from company leaders who don’t feel strongly about the moral aspect of their products but who’ve identified that a percentage of their customers do. Additionally, some states are considering laws requiring labeling on drugs or foods using aborted cell lines. “If you can avoid the labeling issue with something just as good, why wouldn’t you?”
Recently, Agathos began offering their AE1-BHK product to the wider scientific community. “We’ve got some promising proof-of-concept results and we’re trying to see how far we can push this cell line,” Brown says, noting that AE1-BHK has produced viral vectors. “We’re trying to improve its yield and production, and we also continue to look at other cell lines to see if there’s something even better.”
To help maintain their moral goals, Agathos’ leadership includes a senior ethical advisor, the Rev. Doug VanderMeulen of Fargo’s Community Baptist Church.
Given what he witnessed in childhood, Noyszewski knows well the importance of moral guidance. “Communism affects many different aspects of life. Moral values were trumped basically, and people were not able to freely express their beliefs,” he says, noting that many couldn’t even get jobs without signing up for the Communist Party.
His parents’ commitment to grounding their family in Christianity, he says, instilled in him a deep belief in life’s value from conception to natural death.
“Those values to respect other humans are embedded in me, and I believe that they are good for us as a whole society,” Noyszewski says. “I can attest, throughout my life, that these principles bring a visible, tangible good,” and can address many current problems.
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Noting his gratitude for how he and co-founders Ballantyne and Chambers are aligned on the mission of the company, and that “not everyone would put resources into this type of thing,” Brown says he is grateful to be able to honor his faith at work.
When people ask what she does, Loegering says she researches ethical alternatives to unethically sourced cell lines, which often leads to more questions. “I’ve found that most people are on the same page about fetal cells not being the best option.”
It’s freeing, she says, to work for a company like Agathos. “I’ve truly enjoyed working here, and I honestly can’t wait to see where we go as a company, because I see it growing, and (I see) very good things in the future,” she remarks, adding, “It is the good science company after all!”
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