Sept. 28, 2025
Student-Led Startup Has Big Plans
A Pitt-centered collaboration has led to the development of a surgical device that could reduce procedure time and costs.
TOPICS: Education | Innovation & Commercialization | School of Medicine | Schools
Designs on Aging-Ready
By Strategic Communications
It isn’t just the University of Pittsburgh’s seasoned researchers who are spinning out startups. Case in point is Malleous, a collaboration among University faculty, med students and undergrads, which developed a surgical instrument combining suction and retraction tools into one device.
The device, which maintains malleable and bendable properties, has the potential to reduce the duration of procedures and patient risk and save hospitals money.
Benjamin Leslie, Malleous CEO and second-year Pitt medical student, began developing the device while a bioengineering major and hockey captain at Pitt. He says the University has supplied $100,000 of the funding it has raised to date through several awards, getting the device to this point in its development.
Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean, School of Medicine.
Malleous nabbed the top prize at the 2024 Big Idea Competition, sponsored by Pitt’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Big Idea Center, a hub for student innovation and entrepreneurship. The center runs the annual competition, which awards funding to projects with market potential. First place teams get $25,000.
Benjamin Leslie, Malleous CEO and second-year Pitt medical student, began developing the device while a bioengineering major and hockey captain at Pitt. He says the University has supplied $100,000 of the funding it has raised to date through several awards, getting the device to this point in its development.
“We’re looking to create a production equivalent prototype and have been working with a manufacturer,” he says. “It will be our first real look at what the device will look like in practice. As of right now what we have are some high-fidelity prototypes that we’ve done cadaver testing on.”
After the prototype is squared away, the team plans to get the device into clinical testing quickly.