Since spinning out of the University of Pittsburgh in 1997, when Bill Clinton was just starting his second term and Steve Jobs made his triumphant return to Apple, ALung Technologies has been working towards commercializing the research of William Federspiel, the John A. Swanson Professor in the Department of Bioengineering.
Treatments for pain that do not involve the prescription of addictive opioids are greatly needed. Nerve stimulation devices have proven to be effective at treating pain, but they are expensive, require surgeries to implant and remove and have a high failure rate.
A new method to detect brain aneurysms, a first-of-its-kind probiotic that consumes fat molecules, a novel treatment for lung fibrosis and new platforms for delivering bereavement counseling and parenting support to under-served communities are among the ideas and discoveries Pitt innovators spent the past few months exploring how to bring to market.
Eunice Yang was teaching mechanical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Johnstown campus when a colleague from the nursing department approached her with a problem that immediately captivated her: how to help prevent older people from falling. Eunice Yang discusses her entrepreneurial journey with Rich Lunak, president and CEO of Innovation Works, at the 2019 Wells Lecture at the University of Pittsburgh. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that elderly falling accidents have a direct economic cost of $50 billion per year, and result in nearly 36,000 deaths. Yang joined Pitt in 2009 after working for many years as an aerospace engineer. The opportunity to apply her skills and ingenuity to a problem that could benefit people like her own parents quickly became an obsession.
Following a strategic restructuring, the building of a new leadership team and the addition of wet laboratory facilities over the past 18 months, the LifeX life sciences accelerator and capital growth company is now adding a pre-seed fund to invest in promising early-stage life science startups in the Pittsburgh region.