Sept. 28, 2025
To the Greater Good
Pitt commercializes research primarily for patients, but the University and others also benefit.
TOPICS: Chronic Disease | HIV | Innovation & Commercialization | Research | School of Medicine
Designs on Aging-Ready
By Strategic Communications
Publishing research, getting grants—“we’re good there,” says Smita Iyer, associate professor of pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Where the trouble often comes in for scientists is getting innovations to market to benefit patients.
“You’re not really trained in generating pitch decks or business plans, so there’s certainly a real gap when you’re trying to move discoveries to the clinic,” Iyer says. “Even though you have a breakthrough in the lab, without guidance or resources, it can stall.”
She’s designing a drug to rewire a subset of brain cells to promote their regeneration for the benefit of HIV patients and is part of the first cohort to receive funding through Pitt Idea Navigation to Commercialization (Pitt.INC), a program that helps innovators in the health sciences take the crucial first steps in getting to market. It offers up to $50,000 in funding, as well as support through the University’s commercialization ecosystem.
Pitt.INC awarded funding to five other projects in the health sciences that range from treating chronic traumatic encephalopathy to Meniere’s, an inner ear disease, to chronic kidney disease.
Commercialization also generates revenue that perpetuates more research, so it’s not only crucial for patients, but, now more than ever, to Pitt as well—and you can extrapolate that out to Pittsburgh and the region.
Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, School of Medicine.
The University started to emphasize commercializing research about a decade ago. Its Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE), which runs Pitt.INC and several other technology transfer, education, mentorship and support programs for innovators, plays a key role.
“The mission, from a macro perspective, is providing societal benefit,” says Evan Facher, Pitt’s vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship, who leads OIE. His office carries out the section of the University’s mission statement that reads, “cooperate with industrial and governmental institutions to transfer knowledge in science, technology and health care.”
Commercialization also generates revenue that perpetuates more research, so it’s not only crucial for patients, but, now more than ever, to Pitt as well—and you can extrapolate that out to Pittsburgh and the region.
Pitt’s push to bring new solutions to patients goes beyond funding competitions and includes its Clinical Trials Office (CTO)—closely aligned with OIE—that’s focused on streamlining and accelerating the clinical research process. The office was established in January 2025. Patricia Corby, associate vice chancellor for clinical trials development and operations for Pitt Health Sciences, expects that CTO will shave time off the process of advancing clinical research and ensuring that it’s ethical and complies with regulatory standards, which right now takes about 7.5 years.
University leaders believe that Pitt is poised to lead revolutionary change in drug discovery and health care delivery.
“Over the next five years, we will transform the way medical research is done. We will transform the way drug discovery is done. And we definitely want to transform the way new products are done,” Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, School of Medicine, has said. “We have an environment ripe for innovation. We are building the infrastructure and ecosystem that can take our research to the next level of product development, commercialization and manufacturing.”