Research roadmap
Every Stage Earns the Next
The roadmap advances only when a stage's requirements are met and reviewed. Select any stage to see its purpose, expected output, advancement requirement, principal risks and current status.
Roadmap stages
Stage 1: Scientific Foundation
Purpose
Establish a rigorous, honest understanding of the field: what is established evidence, what remains experimental, and where the meaningful open questions are.
Expected output
A documented evidence base, a defined set of scientific questions and a public research overview suitable for institutional discussion.
Advancement requirement
Evidence review completed and validated by qualified external scientific readers.
Principal risks
Misreading early evidence, overpromising, or anchoring the program to questions that are not yet answerable responsibly.
Current status
In progress — this is the current position of Project Neorhiza.
Stage 2: Institutional Affiliation
Purpose
Place future laboratory work under qualified institutional supervision, with ethics oversight and appropriate agreements in place.
Expected output
One or more formal affiliations with universities, research hospitals or accredited research institutions.
Advancement requirement
An executed institutional agreement with scientific and ethical governance structures.
Principal risks
Proceeding without supervision, or affiliations that do not provide genuine scientific scrutiny.
Current status
Not started — depends on Stage 1 outcomes.
Stage 3: Training and Process Development
Purpose
Develop the supervised skills, documentation habits and quality mindset required before any research activity, under institutional training programs.
Expected output
Trained personnel records, standard documentation practices and approved process frameworks.
Advancement requirement
Institution-supervised training completed and signed off by responsible investigators.
Principal risks
Skill gaps leading to unreliable work, or undocumented processes that cannot be reviewed or reproduced.
Current status
Not started.
Stage 4: Small Tissue Demonstrator
Purpose
Conduct a small, supervised tissue-engineering demonstrator with a limited, clearly defined set of measurements.
Expected output
A feasibility report describing what was measured, what worked, what did not, and why.
Advancement requirement
Demonstrator reviewed by the supervising institution against pre-defined measurement criteria.
Principal risks
Technical failure, ambiguous measurements, or pressure to interpret weak signals as success.
Current status
Not started.
Stage 5: Reproducibility and Quality Studies
Purpose
Establish that observed results can be repeated consistently and documented to a reviewable quality standard.
Expected output
Reproducibility records, quality documentation and an honest account of variability and limitations.
Advancement requirement
Independent replication or institutional confirmation of reproducibility.
Principal risks
Irreproducible results, silent negative findings, or quality systems that exist only on paper.
Current status
Not started.
Stage 6: Scale and Integration Research
Purpose
Study how multicellular organization and transport support behave as constructs become larger and more integrated — strictly as research, not manufacturing.
Expected output
Comparative research data on organization, transport behavior and consistency across study scales.
Advancement requirement
Peer-reviewed or institutionally reviewed evidence that scaling questions are being answered reliably.
Principal risks
Assuming small-scale observations translate to larger systems without evidence.
Current status
Not started.
Stage 7: Preclinical Product Development
Purpose
Assemble product-specific safety, manufacturing-consistency and performance evidence under recognized quality frameworks, where justified by earlier stages.
Expected output
A preclinical evidence dossier suitable for regulatory dialogue by qualified institutions.
Advancement requirement
Institutional and regulatory readiness assessments completed successfully.
Principal risks
Safety findings, inconsistent manufacture, or attempting this stage without the prerequisites it requires.
Current status
Not started.
Stage 8: Authorized Clinical Research
Purpose
Enable carefully designed clinical studies — only through authorized institutions, ethics bodies and regulators, and only if all prior stages justify it.
Expected output
Ethics-approved, regulator-authorized clinical study protocols conducted by qualified clinical teams.
Advancement requirement
Formal approvals from ethics committees and competent regulatory authorities.
Principal risks
Any attempt to bypass oversight; participant risk; premature translation of immature science.
Current status
Not started — requires Stages 1–7 to be complete and approved.
Stage 9: Long-Term Patient Monitoring
Purpose
If authorized clinical research ever takes place, support long-term, transparent monitoring of outcomes and honest reporting of both benefits and harms.
Expected output
Long-term follow-up records and public reporting of outcomes at a level of detail appropriate to the study.
Advancement requirement
Sustained institutional follow-up capacity and transparent reporting commitments.
Principal risks
Loss to follow-up, selective reporting, or abandoning accountability after early success.
Current status
Not started.