Innovation, cont.
The new UPMC/Pitt research center is a big step
Pittsburgh’s tradition of innovation will be honored and extended in a big way with the development of the UPMC Immune Transplant and Therapy Center in an old Ford garage in Bloomfield. A partnership of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh, the center will research, produce and speed to market drugs that manipulate the immune system to treat disease. The potential — social and economic — is significant.
UPMC will invest $200 million to develop the center at 5000 Baum Blvd. The center will take an unusually broad role in drug development — funding early clinical trials often covered by third parties — with the aim of getting treatments to patients more quickly. Right now, the gap between researching a drug and getting it to patients is so wide that it’s called the “valley of death.”
Bridging the valley would give the center a unique niche in the health care industry and give it the opportunity to commercialize breakthroughs through UPMC and partnerships with other entities. But that lab-to-bedside approach is just one of the ways in which the UPMC/Pittproject stands out.
Immunotherapy is a cutting-edge field in which some of the nation’s leading health providers — including Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Cleveland Clinic — are blazing trails. Much of that work is in cancer research. The center here also will focus on organ transplants and chronic diseases, especially those related to aging — a boon for the region’s graying population. The center could make Pittsburgh a destination for immunotherapy, something now claimed largely by medical complexes on the coasts, while giving homegrown ideas a better-than-average shot of success.
Besides enhancing their profiles and altering the dynamics of health care, UPMC and Pitt have the opportunity to influence the next wave of innovation in a region long known for breaking ground in health care and otherfields. The center envisions sharing its building with other forwardlooking research ventures and helping to anchor an innovation district for high-tech fields, including the life sciences. Its work will attract other firms andventure capital to support them.
A study last year by the Brookings Institution suggested that Pittsburgh in some ways remains a sleeping giant. It cited a pressing need for the city to better connect research and industry, particularly in the life sciences; to create a better environment for entrepreneurs; and to grow the university- and hospital-centered innovation culture. InnovatePGH, a public-private partnership, was establishedto pursue those goals.
UPMC announced plans in November to spend $2 billion building three new specialty hospitals — to be attached to existing facilities — to expand its capacity for cancer, vision, heart and transplant care. The Immune Transplant and Therapy Center is a different kind of animal, one with the potential to transform both health care and the health care industry. It will be a fitting addition to the city and, as Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher said, offer insight into some of medicine’s most challenging mysteries.