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Get the most interesting and important stories from the University of Pittsburgh.University of Pittsburgh leaders, community members and representatives from foundations and industry gathered on Hazelwood Green Sept. 6 to note a major milestone: a topping-off ceremony for BioForge, a facility that promises to transform how precision biological medicines are made and drive life sciences innovation in the region.
“The fact that we’re gathered here in this neighborhood, which was the epicenter of the American century, and now is the center of the next American century — the life sciences century — it’s an incredibly exciting time,” said Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel. “It’s what’s possible at Pitt. It’s a moonshot, and it’s part of who we are.”
Located on Hazelwood Green, the longtime site of a former steel mill, BioForge is intended to drive breakthroughs in the way targeted cell and gene therapies are produced, making them more affordable and accessible. The facility has the potential to make it easier to deliver cutting-edge treatments for conditions like cancer and blindness by producing proof-of-concept evidence to launch companies that will go on to create these therapies at scale and deliver them to patients desperate for relief, restored quality of life and hope.
Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine, said BioForge is poised to change the field of biological therapeutics in a way that could have global ripple effects.
“All of this means that we will now be manufacturing RNA, DNA, cells, gene-edited products — this is an emerging hundreds of billions of dollars of business in biomedical research going forward that Pitt will be leading in its innovations,” Shekhar said.
Also reflected in the event were Pitt’s partners in creating BioForge. The project is supported by a $100 million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and, when complete, two-thirds of the facility will be occupied by anchor tenant ElevateBio, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based cell and gene therapy company.
The Richard King Mellon Foundation chose to give Pitt the largest single gift in the foundation’s history to make BioForge possible for several reasons, said Director Sam Reiman. There’s the potential impact on personalized gene and cell therapies that will save and improve lives. And then there was the vision Pitt leaders laid out about BioForge’s impact on the region.
“The University of Pittsburgh rightly saw that it was uniquely positioned to make Pittsburgh a national and even international biomanufacturing leader, just as we were the national and international leader in steel manufacturing at this very site in the prior century,” Reiman said.
[Read more: A Brookings Institution event highlighted Pittsburgh’s growth as a life sciences leader]
ElevateBio CFO Vikas Sinha, Pitt Board of Trustees Chair John Verbanac and BioForge CEO Ken Gabriel were among the event’s other speakers. And shortly before the beam was lifted into place and secured by members of Ironworkers Local 3, a member of the Hazelwood community also addressed the crowd. The Rev. Michael Murray Sr. expressed his hope that collaborations between residents and the University will continue to drive workforce development and community engagement — in the same way the site provided opportunities for his father, who worked for the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation for 38 years.
“Together we are unlocking doors to future opportunities, emphasizing the vital role that innovation, education and partnership play in our collective success,” Murray said.
The topping-off ceremony was paired with an event the prior evening for the Greater Hazelwood community in which participants were led on a half-mile walk that emphasized the site’s industrial history and ties to the surrounding neighborhood. That day’s proceedings were led by Heidi Ward, director of the Greater Hazelwood Neighborhood Commitment for Pitt’s Office of Engagement and Community Affairs, herself a Greater Hazelwood resident.
Ward took participants on a tour through the site’s history, from the expansion through the contraction of the local steel industry, and participants signed the beam that would the next day be lifted to complete BioForge’s frame. They also heard from Gabriel, who spoke about the site’s future by introducing the facility’s goal to transform precision medicine.
“What BioForge is going to do is close that gap between where these technologies get to in a laboratory and where they need to be in terms of manufacturing and repeatability, so that we can get them out to everyone equitably and as fast as possible,” Gabriel said to the crowd.
And though the site is set apart from Pitt’s campus in Oakland, the ties to the University — both as an institution and a biomedical leader — are built into the very structure of BioForge. The connecting thread lies in a part of the building called the Chimera, which evokes a process key to gene therapy, Shekhar explained at the Sept. 6 event.
“The front is actually the gene vector that is going into a cell, and it has an RNA structure in it,” he said. “But most importantly, if you stand at the top of that and look straight, you can see the Cathedral. So this is the ultimate visual expression of everything we’re trying to do here.”
Lead image by Tom Altany