0234_TextC5 3/14/03 18:25 Page 12 12 0234_TextC5 3/14/03 18:25 Page 13 BioBelievers By Seth R. Beckerman and Douglas Root Photography by Karen Meyers and Chris Rolinson The stakes are high as four Pittsburgh foundations invest millions to turn the region into a national bioscience powerhouse. But they see it as one of the wisest bets in grantmaking. n an office cluttered with reference material for a book chapter on artificial lung technology, IDr. Brack Hattler pulls a slim device from a clear plastic tube. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center surgeon, a veteran of more than 1,000 organ transplants, doesn’t get excited easily, but his face, framed by a full head of wavy, white hair, lights up and he smiles proudly as he turns his strange creation delicately. He points to various parts, running through phrases like “pneumatic delivery shaft,” “pulsating balloon” and “hollow fiber membrane.” NICHOLAS KUHN AND BRACK HATTLER, M.D. Hattler, whose demeanor is more Norman When University of Pittsburgh Medical Center transplant surgeon Brack Rockwellesque country doctor than super-surgeon, Hattler founded ALung Technologies in 1997 in an effort to spur production has such passion for the tool’s life-saving potential of an artificial lung device, he was moving from familiar hospital-based that he keeps one in the trunk of his car for any research to the strange territory of bioscience business. He never imag- spur-of-the-moment lecture he might be asked ined running a company or playing the role of entrepreneur. This year, as to give. Hattler’s Intravenous Membrane Oxygenator heads toward regulatory approval, he has the business side covered after recruiting Nick Kuhn, a bioscience management veteran from San Diego. Kuhn helped develop an award-winning business plan and Seth Beckerman, a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer specializing in technical and economic issues, is preparing the company for higher- has written for the United Nations and the World Bank. level funding. Douglas Root is a member of h magazine’s editorial team. His last story about the Endowments’ efforts to develop effective grantees in its Education Program appeared in the fall issue. 0234_TextC5 3/14/03 18:25 Page 14 Kort Eckman, a research programmer at Carnegie Mellon University’s Medical Robotics Technology Center, uses a lab-developed imaging technique known as XAlign that provides two-dimensional and three-dimensional registration of pelvic X-rays after surgery. The tool helps surgeons make more precise measures of implants in hip replacement surgery, ensuring more effective results for patients. 14 or the uninitiated in the mysterious world of bioscience these entrepreneurial efforts stand as the Pittsburgh region’s research, the toyish-appearing artificial lung looks as if best hope for becoming a national power in the new economy. Fit couldn’t begin to meet the high expectations set out In a rare coalescing of financial support, a total of $120 million for it. But for experienced innovators like Hattler, the man-made is being pooled to establish the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Green- device is a triumph over a thousand laboratory obstacles. In house, which includes an unprecedented five-year investment little more than a year, he is sure it will prove its worth in human of as much as $73 million from the region’s four largest clinical trials, saving thousands of lives and helping build a foundations and nearly $34 million from the state’s share of star company in the region’s emerging life-sciences sector. national tobacco lawsuit settlement money. Hattler began work on the artificial lung in the early 1980s Managers of the Greenhouse effort hope to take that after two young men injured in a car accident died from lung relatively modest pot of seed money and leverage it through failure. The organs failed, not from any impact trauma, but the next decade to raise a total of $600 million in bioscience from an invasion of proteins produced by the crushing leg funding for the region, which would make it a contender for injuries. “If we’d been able to keep them alive for two weeks a spot among the national leaders. while their lungs healed, these boys would be alive today,” says Its chief partners come right off the Top-10 list of the Hattler. The experience moved him to start building a device region’s largest and most influential institutions: the in his own basement. Today, his home tinkering has evolved Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh, into one of the region’s most promising medical device start- Carnegie Mellon University, the UPMC Health System, The ups, ALung Technologies, a six-employee firm with prospects Heinz Endowments, and the Richard King Mellon, Hillman for dozens more by 2007 if regulatory approvals go smoothly. and McCune Foundations. The nonprofit Greenhouse, which Hattler is just one of dozens of bioscience entrepreneurs in has been operating for about a year, is supposed to serve as a Pittsburgh who hope to create products that save lives and, in clearinghouse and a provider of resources and services to help the process, build money-making companies that contribute support the emergence of life-sciences start-ups, help recruit to economic growth. Key regional leaders have long believed star researchers along with seasoned life-sciences business “NOTHING IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IS A SURE BET, BUT THERE ARE ASSETS WE HAVE HERE THAT OTHERS MUST ENVY. CLEARLY, THE LIFE-SCIENCES SECTOR WILL BE A SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC DRIVER IN THE COUNTRY DURING THE NEXT SEVERAL DECADES SO, WHY NOT IN PITTSBURGH?” Maxwell King President, The Heinz Endowments 0234_TextC5 3/14/03 18:25 Page 15 executives and speed up the routing of products from “I suppose there is an element out there that says we’re university laboratory to public marketplace. gambling with funds that could go to some worthy community Foundation leaders see a carefully crafted and exciting service program,” says Heinz Endowments President Maxwell plan backed by influential leadership and supported by a King. “The foundation community is still investing in a wide workable level of private and government funding. But there range of community-service programs, as it has for decades, are critics on the periphery who see the Greenhouse as, at but everyone knows that’s not enough to create significant best, a dicey proposition. They question whether so many economic development in the region.” After extensive resources—especially of the philanthropic variety—should research by way of the Battelle study and analysis from key be expended on a risk-laden economic-development project. regional investors, the foundations have decided to invest in a Even with leadership, money and products in hand, specific area—“the potential synergy of the research institutions Pittsburgh, they argue, is only now getting to the point of here: Carnegie Mellon, Pitt and UPMC,” says King, who has keeping pace in a pack of similarly sized regions across the a seat on the Greenhouse 10-member board. “Can we develop country, each vying to launch the next bioscience boom. a life-sciences industry based on our medical research and Foundation executives and their board members have signed information technology strengths that will generate significant on for the challenge of life-sciences economic development long-term employment in the region? Nothing in economic because they’re impressed with Pittsburgh’s standing—and development is a sure bet,” says King, “but there are assets its potential to create a significant bioscience industry. we have here that others must envy. Clearly, the life-sciences Based on a detailed study of the region’s strengths and sector will be a significant economic driver in the country weaknesses by the Battelle Institute, the Greenhouse plan will during the next several decades so, why not in Pittsburgh?” focus on four market segments for which it believes Pittsburgh Richard King Mellon Foundation Trustee and Vice has a strong chance to be nationally and internationally com- President Mike Watson says he and his colleagues recognize petitive: drug discovery, medical devices, neurological disorders that they are making a call on the region’s future direction. and tissue engineering. Each of these markets is a research “We have studied this very carefully and it’s clear we have area in which Pittsburgh is currently strong, and in which the many of the required ingredients. If we get them coordinated connections between the region’s life-sciences and information- and give adequate funds to expand, we think Pittsburgh can technology resources are seen as key—but largely untapped— be a major player in the bioscience field.” regional resources. 0234_TextC5 3/14/03 18:25 Page 16 16 But outside critics throw in their own study to contend that, entrepreneurial scientists, there have been some bumps right in the bioscience game, the foundations, governments, univer- out of the gate. With only six months on the job as head of sities and private investors may be offering too little, too late. the Life Sciences Greenhouse, Dennis Yablonsky, a seasoned “Biotechnology may be the latest gleam in the eyes of software company and public sector executive, has been Pittsburgh’s economic development officials, but it’s a long way tapped by Pennsylvania’s new Democratic governor, from being an industry the region can count on for growth,” Ed Rendell, to become secretary of community and economic business reporter Pamela Gaynor wrote just last summer in development. Though Yablonski will retain a seat on the the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the area’s largest circulation daily Greenhouse board, that still leaves a management vacuum. newspaper. That was the lead-in to a story reporting the results Also, the sour economy is making it more difficult to secure of a Brookings Institution study that charted 50 major metro private investor funding to qualify for a $60 million venture areas’ strengths and weaknesses in the race to become the next capital fund set aside from the state’s share in the national Silicon Valley of bioscience.