Penn and Greater Philadelphia’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem & Resources

Penn Health-Tech

Penn Health-Tech unites Penn’s interdisciplinary strengths in Medicine, Engineering, and beyond to create transformative technologies that address the world’s pressing health care needs. They have an annual call for medical device and health technology development projects.

Center for Healthcare Innovation

The Center for Health Care Innovation (CHCI) facilitates the rapid, disciplined development, testing, and implementation of new strategies to reimagine health care delivery for dramatically better patient outcomes, value, and experience.

Center for Innovation and Precision Dentistry

The Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) is a vibrant community of experts in Penn Dental Medicine and Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences who leverage cutting-edge yet affordable approaches to:

• Accelerate discovery and translation of new therapies, diagnostics and devices to address unmet needs in oral health
• Train the next generation of leaders in dental, oral and craniofacial research and oral healthcare innovation

Along with Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering & Applied Sciences, the CiPD core partners include Center for Clinical & Translational Research, Penn Health Tech, Institute for Biomedical Informatics, and the Penn Center for Innovation.

Penn Wharton Startup Challenge

The Startup Challenge is a competition for Penn student-founded new ventures, culminating in the Startup Showcase, Venture Lab’s flagship event, where the very best Penn student entrepreneurs pitch to a live audience and alumni judges to show their startups are ready to become the next big thing!

Y-Prize Competition

The Y-Prize Competition challenges student teams to propose innovative applications for new technologies invented by University of Pennsylvania researchers. The winning team receives $10,000, which they may use towards commercializing the Penn-owned technology on which their proposal is based. 

Penn Nursing Innovation Accelerator

The Innovation Accelerator provides funding to assist Penn Nursing students and faculty with the creation and testing of early stage solutions to improve health and health care outcomes with a priority on populations of greatest need.

Penn Medicine Co-Investment Program

The Penn Medicine Co-Investment Program invests capital alongside institutional investors to fund faculty-driven cell therapy, gene therapy, mRNA, and connected health companies based here in Philadelphia.

The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

Penn and the Milken Family Foundation have come together to be a joint catalyst for innovation in education, to help “create a space” for education entrepreneurs.  This is the first business plan competition to focus exclusively on educational ventures.  Business plans are awarded in a wide variety of categories, including Innovation in

• Online Education;
• Open Educational Resources;
• Borderless (International) Education; and
• Special Education and At-Risk Students.

 Penn Medicine Clinical Research Website

The Office of Clinical Research has launched a new website designed to provide easy to access information about our clinical research enterprise to patients & families, investigators, clinical research professionals, and our community. Please visit the site and learn how we are driving collaborative and innovative research.

• The FDA approval of 4 drug indications
• The Emergency Use Authorization of two mRNA based vaccines
• The launch of 15 major Industry Alliances in the cell and gene therapy space  that have generated over $750 million in sponsored research dollar support back to Penn.
• More than 25 cell and gene therapy startups initiated out of Penn, with 15 occurring in the past two years (see chart below);
• These companies have collectively raised nearly $1 billion in invested capital over the last two years;
• Two of these companies have gone public (Cabaletta Bio and Passage Bio) and two have been acquired (Dimension Therapeutics and Spark Therapeutics)
• Cell therapy, gene therapy, and gene editing companies now employ about 4,900 workers across the region. The sector can add as many as 11,274 jobs over the next decade. This is in addition to jobs existing or growing at academic and medical centers funded via government research grants or industry partnerships.  The city and region’s business and civic leadership have created several initiatives that include a focus on both business attraction and workforce training to support sector growth (see this article and this article)