Pitt launching business accelerator

The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health is launching a startup business accelerator called LifeX, backing a push to combine Western Pennsylvania’s strengths in the life sciences with investment capital.

The new center will be located in the Strip District. Dietrich Stephan, a serial entrepreneur who also chairs Pitt’s Department of Human Genetics, will serve as CEO.

“This is an enormous opportunity we’re sitting on,” Pitt chancellor Patrick Gallagher said at a Monday morning conference in Oakland to discuss the initiative.

“We are sitting on a treasure trove of opportunities.”

The accelerator — a place for promising startup life science companies — will have an investment fund of $25 million for startups in the accelerator’s laboratory facilities and also a larger investment fund. The companies will include at least one that is developing new prescription drugs.

Details of how the funds will be raised were not disclosed and it was not certain when the accelerator will begin operations.

The 10-year goal of the project is to foster development of pharmaceutical products and medical devices that address such issues as cancer, Alzheimer’s and multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.