Since 2016, the American Heart Association has awarded 62 grants totaling $10.3M to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. The AHA's mission has recently expanded beyond cardiovascular and stroke science to now include cerebrovascular and brain health research, with a focus on overall health and well-being across the lifespan. Glenn H. Dillon, Director of Research Operations from the American Heart Association, presented grant funding and other opportunities earlier this year. Check out this pre-recorded session from the Office of Economic Partnerships to see what you missed.
When we last checked in with Jason Rose, assistant professor of medicine and biomedical engineering (center) in the summer of 2018, he had just licensed a technology he had helped to develop in the lab of Mark Gladwin, Chair of the Department of Medicine, to form a startup called Globin Solutions. (Gladwin is pictured on the left, with Globin's chief scientific officer Jesus Tejero on the right.) Rose had taken advantage of updated university policy that allows faculty to take a role in startups created from their own research. Globin was one of a record 23 spinouts to emerge from Pitt in fiscal year 2018. The company had recently raised a $5 million financing, and Rose was looking forward to preparing for pharmacology studies on the compounds being developed to act as an antidote to carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning, which affects roughly 50,000 people a year in the U.S. and results in approximately 2,000 deaths. Let’s check in on the progress since then:
The Innovation Institute's Big Idea Center for student innovation and entrepreneurship recently concluded its annual Randall Family Big Idea Competition. This year's competition was interrupted by the pandemic in mid-stream, but the center's staff and the students forged ahead to complete it virtually and awarded the $100,000 in prize money on April 22. We caught up with Noah Pyles of the grand prize winning team, Polycarbin, to discuss how three medical school students became entrepreneurs and what their next steps are to bring to life their idea to reduce the amount of biomedical waste that ends up in landfills or incinerated.
The Pittsburgh region recently received a ray of sunshine amid the COVID-19 clouds when Innovation Works and partner Ernst & Young released their annual regional investment report and analysis. Innovation Works (IW) is part of the statewide network that provides seed investment and expert assistance. It also operates the AlphaLab and AlphaLab Gear startup accelerators. IW also interacts in numerous ways with the University of Pittsburgh as a mentor and partner for Pitt innovation projects as they mature and spin out of the University. The region set a new record for startup funding attracting nearly $3 billion in investment in 2019, a staggering 500 percent increase over the previous year. Although the number of startups funded dipped slightly to 139 from 147 in 2018, that only meant that the funding rounds on average were larger.
We are regularly checking in with Pitt spinout companies to get an update on their progress in developing their products, acquiring customers and adding employees. Today we catch up with John Cordier (pictured on right) co-founder of Epistemix Inc., whose technology could not be more relevant to the current global public health challenge.