2020 Innovation Institute Impact Report

Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fiscal Year 2020 in Review

POWERING INVENTION

IGNITING PROGRESS

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” So goes a quote that John Lennon put into song, and this was certainly true for the second half of fiscal year 2020.

The University of Pittsburgh was winding down the final months of the five-year Plan for Pitt when the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world, reshaping daily life. This was followed by the nationwide social justice protests highlighting the significant progress that remains to be made for the nation to live up to its founding principles.

While recent events have challenged us all and will strongly influence the University’s next strategic plan, from an innovation and entrepreneurship perspective, the progress made under the Plan for Pitt has positioned the University to not only endure the pandemic but to help conquer it and to continue developing solutions to the world’s greatest challenges while building vibrant, healthy and equitable communities.

The following are some examples of that progress, aligned to the Plan for Pitt’s six pillars.

Advance Educational Excellence The creation of the Big Idea Center for student innovation and entrepreneurship in 2018 brought under one roof an array of resources, programs and competitions that give all Pitt students the opportunity to get hands-on experience in taking an idea from a concept all the way to the launch of a company, if they so choose. Each year, the center has more than 2,000 student engagements. The Pitt Ventures First Gear program leverages support from the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps program to provide Pitt academic entrepreneurship teams with the support they need to uncover the commercial potential of their research. Since its launch five years ago, more than 500 faculty members, staff members and students have gone through the program, resulting in the launch of more than 30 startup companies that have raised nearly $30 million in investment.

Research of Impact Pitt researchers are taking on the world’s biggest challenges in human health and performance, sustainability, social justice, climate change and more. As part of the Plan for Pitt, University leaders undertook a thorough review of policies related to faculty, student and staff participation in start-up companies and updated those policies to give them more flexibility in taking the last step to see their years of work in the lab make an impact on the world. The result has been nothing short of revolutionary, with startups from Pitt-developed innovation increasing 124% over the past five years compared to the previous five-year period.

Build Foundational Strength The past five years have seen significant progress in building out the University’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. Partnerships with UPMC and Carnegie Mellon University have created the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance, strengthened the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and launched the Immune Transplant and Therapy Center. With the assistance of the regional foundation community, the University launched the LifeX Labs, a regional life sciences accelerator and incubator on the South Side. At the end of the fiscal year, LifeX opened wet lab space in Lawrenceville, the first of its kind in the region for life sciences-focused startups.

Strengthen Communities When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Innovation Institute’s affiliated Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence (IEE) sprang into action via its regional Small Business Development Center to provide small businesses throughout Western Pennsylvania with the most up-to-date information about government assistance programs. It also hosted a free surplus office printer event, which supported 160 small business owners.

Diversity and Inclusion IEE also is an important part of the University’s efforts around diversity and inclusion. In addition to providing business consulting services through Pitt’s Community Engagement Centers in Homewood and the Hill District, IEE’s Urban & Community Entrepreneurship Program offers a six-month certificate program that provides business education modules to underserved communities. There were 30 companies in the most recent cohort.

Embrace the World Pitt innovators come from all over the world and therefore are comfortable working with colleagues from around the world to solve global problems. Paul Duprex, director of Pitt’s Center for Vaccine Research, is collaborating with the international intergovernmental organization Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which committed nearly $5 million to a consortium led by Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, in collaboration with Themis Bioscience in Vienna, Austria, to develop a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and take it through Phase I clinical trials in humans. This is one of three vaccine candidates being pursued at Pitt. The Innovation Institute encourages this kind of global collaboration and works behind the scenes to enable the commercialization of the discoveries that emerge.

Evan Facher

Director, Innovation Institute Vice Chancellor for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Photos in this publication were taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and do not necessarily reflect current health and safety guidelines.

2020 Highlights

COVID-19 Response When the COVID-19 crisis hit, Pitt innovators responded in a big way beyond the vaccine efforts. What began as a small request for proposals for COVID-19-related research projects from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute quickly ballooned into $900,000 awarded to 17 projects as researchers shifted gears to rise to the challenge of confronting the pandemic. The increase in COVID-19-related activity is partially responsible for the record number of invention disclosures received in fiscal year 2020. Several Pitt spin-off companies also rose to the challenge, including ALung Technologies, Inc., whose artificial lung device is currently in clinical trials. ALung was granted emergency use status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat COVID-19 patients to help them avoid having to be put on ventilators.

Licensing Genprex licensed a gene therapy that has the potential to treat type 1 and type 2 diabetes from the lab of George Gittes, Pitt professor of pediatrics and surgery and Benjamin R. Fisher Chair in Pediatric Surgery at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. In animal studies, Gittes has used a virus vector to deliver genes to the pancreas, transforming alpha cells into functional beta-like cells that can produce insulin while avoiding the immune system. Gittes recently received a National Institutes of Health grant for nearly $2.6 million to conduct further preclinical studies of the therapy. Genprex is hopeful that the preclinical results will facilitate the approval of a clinical trial in humans within the next few years.

Industry Partnerships Pitt has embraced collaborations with industry as a key tenant of fulfilling our mission of “Research of Impact.” In FY20, our collective efforts resulted in more than 150 new collaborative research agreements, with annual industry-sponsored research expenditures of nearly $30 million, an increase of 20% from last year.

Realizing even more opportunities for impact exist, we expanded our ability to support the external innovation initiatives of corporate partners with the integration of Pitt’s Office of Economic Partnerships (OEP) into the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Under this new structure, Pitt’s corporate partners will realize a more seamless approach to partnering around research and innovation. OEP is also working with local economic development partners to support regional growth opportunities.

Startups AxoMax Technologies, Inc. Kacey Marra, Pitt professor of plastic surgery and bioengineering, licensed the patents she has acquired over nearly two decades of research into nerve repair. Marra has developed a biodegradable nerve guide that contains a human growth factor protein designed to repair large nerve gaps, such as those resulting from injuries suffered by members of the military or incurred in car or machinery accidents. Marra is currently raising a seed investment round while seeking to hire a CEO for the company.

Vivasc Therapeutics Inc. Maliha Zahid, assistant professor of developmental biology and a practicing cardiologist, identified a peptide that precisely targets heart tissue. Now a new company has been formed around her work, Vivasc Therapeutics, which has been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to further develop the peptide as a drug delivery agent, initially focused on therapies for heart arrhythmias.

Student Entrepreneurship

James O’brien

Pitt students demonstrated their resilience this year when in the middle of the annual Randall Family Big Idea Competition, they had to quickly transition the competition to a virtual format because of the COVID-19 outbreak. They didn’t miss a beat. The winner of the $25,000 grand prize was a group of three School of Medicine students who observed the large amount of biomedical waste plastics generated in hospitals, clinics and university laboratories.

They decided to do something about it, and formed Polycarbin, a company that manages the biomedical waste stream to optimize recycling. After winning the Bid Idea Competition they entered The Forge, the accelerator operated by the Innovation Institute’s Big Idea Center for student innovation and entrepreneurship.

Noah Pyle

Building Strong, Diverse Communities Tina Daniels had a side business of small construction projects while working full time as a nurse. In order to take her company, Concrete Rose Construction, to the next level, she enrolled in the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence’s BizFIT Community Power to Prosper program, which serves racial minorities throughout Pittsburgh. She completed the program in June 2020 and obtained financing from Bridgeway Capital’s COVID-19 Response Fund to help cover fixed expenses during the pandemic. She is now hoping to ramp up her business as construction begins to pick up.

Fiscal year 2020 by the numbers

Innovation Institute

Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence

394 invention disclosures

1,900+ businesses received one-on-one consulting

88 patents

$25.6 million+ in capital formation

132 transactions

8,500+ hours of consulting

16 UPMC agreements

10,000+ jobs supported or created

15 startups

52 startups launched

$12,375,660 in revenue

Five-year comparison Invention disclosures 1767 1402

658

723

+26%

2011-15

2016-20

83

+66% 2016-20

2011-15

2016-20

Startups

459

277

+10% 2011-15

Patents

2011-15

Transactions

2011-15

2016-20

+124%

37

2016-20

Innovation Institute Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship First Floor, Gardner Steel Conference Center 130 Thackeray Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15260 412-383-7670 innovation.pitt.edu @PittInnovates

Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Innovation Institute Intellectual property management; commercialization education, mentoring and funding; technology licensing and startup formation Office of Economic Partnerships Industry engagement and economic development Big Idea Center Student innovation and entrepreneurship Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence Regional small business education, consulting and networking

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