Pitt teams up with group on medical devices for children
The University of Pittsburgh has joined a Philadelphia-based group with the aim of expanding resources needed to develop medical devices for kids, a market often overlooked by big companies.
The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and sciVelo have partnered with the Pennsylvania Pediatric Medical Device Consortium to tap federal funding for the development of devices tailored to children and adolescents. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently renewed a five-year, $6 million grant to the consortium.
“It provides a funding mechanism for projects that address unmet pediatric technology needs,” said William Wagner, director of the McGowan Institute. “It lowers the barrier to people with ideas for pediatric needs.”
McGowan is a scientific research and commercialization outfit that was created by Pitt’s School of Medicine and UPMC. Pitt sciVelo, part of the university’s Innovation Institute, helps physician scientists commercialize medical devices with technical and legal support.
Partnering with them, the consortium is based at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and its mission is to help develop promising medical devices tailored to children and adolescents. In the past five years, the consortium competitively awarded 16 seed grants ranging up to $50,000 to small companies.
Its next round of seed grants will be announced early this year.
Pitt’s affiliation with the Philadelphia group will tap a new source of funding but also expand resources for intellectual property issues, product prototyping and clinical design, said sciVelo founder and executive director Don Taylor.
“The physiology of children is very different from adults,” said Mr. Taylor, who is also assistant vice chancellor for health sciences translation at Pitt.”Their organs are not fully developed, they metabolize drugs differently.”
The comparatively small market size for medical devices for children also discourages big companies from making investments, experts say.
“We have a big vision here,” Mr. Taylor said. “Now is the time to put Pittsburgh on the map as a hub to be leaders in pediatric translation. Pittsburgh really has all the pieces to make this happen.’’