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Author: Harold Brubaker

  • Eli Lilly plans a $3.5 billion Lehigh Valley pharma campus for new weight-loss drugs

    Eli Lilly plans a $3.5 billion Lehigh Valley pharma campus for new weight-loss drugs

    Eli Lilly & Co. plans to build a $3.5 billion pharmaceutical plant in the Lehigh Valley to expand manufacturing capacity for next-generation weight-loss medicines, the Indiana company announced Friday in Allentown.

    The decision by Lilly to build one of its four new U.S. factories in Lehigh County marks a significant win for Pennsylvania as states compete for the billions Big Pharma, under pressure from Washington, is spending to boost domestic manufacturing.

    “The Mid-Atlantic, Northeast in recent years hasn’t seen this type of mega-plant investment. Most of that has gone to the South and the Southwest,” Don Cunningham, CEO of Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp., said in an interview.

    The Lehigh Valley sits in the middle of a pharmaceutical manufacturing belt that stretches from Montgomery County into central New Jersey, but historically has been known for steel, cement, and Mack Trucks. The Lilly plant will put it on the map for life sciences, said Cunningham, whose agency helped recruit Lilly.

    Montgomery County, a major drug and vaccine manufacturing hub, secured another significant project during the ongoing pharmaceutical investment push. The British company GSK said in September that it will build a biologics factory in Upper Merion Township, but did not specify how much it would spend there.

    Merck, the New Jersey-based drug giant, announced plans for a $1 billion factory and lab near Wilmington, beyond its existing major operations in Montgomery County.

    Lilly Gateway Labs biotech incubator opening in Philly

    Until now, Lilly has been busy in the South. Last year, Lilly announced plans to spend a total of $17.5 billion on three factories in Alabama, Texas, and Virginia. The Lehigh Valley was in the competition for the Virginia project, which will be built west of Richmond, Cunningham said.

    The 150-acre Lehigh Valley site, in Upper Macungie Township, was selected from more than 300 applications for one of the four new Lilly plants. Ohio was among the other finalists, Cunningham said. The property Lilly is acquiring is adjacent to Interstate 78 on the north side just west of the Route 100 interchange.

    Pennsylvania boosted its chances of landing the Lilly project by offering up to $50 million in tax credits and $50 million in grants. An additional $5 million will go to a local community college for a job-training program.

    Gov. Josh Shapiro played an important part in securing the Lilly commitment, Cunningham said, with “his team bringing to bear every resource the state could.”

    When fully operational in 2031, the Lilly complex is expected to employ 850. The average annual pay in a Lilly facility is $100,000, Lilly’s chair and CEO David A. Ricks told a crowd gathered at the Da Vinci Science Center in downtown Allentown.

    “Those are high-value jobs that I can say with a lot of confidence change the trajectory of families,” Ricks said.

    Among the products Lilly anticipates manufacturing at the plant are Zepbound, which Ricks called the world’s best-selling medicine, and retatrutide, a type of weight-loss medication dubbed “triple G” that acts on three aspects of appetite regulation.

    Early results suggest such next-generation medications may lead to more weight loss than seen with the current drugs on the market, such as Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Lilly’s Mounjaro, which target one or two metabolic drivers.

  • CHOP launches Philly-area autism therapy network in partnership with Soar Autism Centers

    CHOP launches Philly-area autism therapy network in partnership with Soar Autism Centers

    The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Denver-based Soar Autism Centers have opened in Newtown the first of five planned early childhood autism centers in the Philadelphia region and expect the network could grow to more than 30 centers, officials said.

    The 50-50 joint venture is designed to reduce wait times for therapy and to make it easier for families to access multiple types of therapy at one location while remaining connected to CHOP specialists.

    “It can take a year to get into therapy on a regular basis,“ an extremely long time in a young child’s neurological development, Soar cofounder and CEO Ian Goldstein said.

    Such wait times continue to frustrate families despite dramatic growth in the autism-services sector over the last 15 years or so, as states mandated insurance coverage and diagnosis rates soared with more awareness and an expanded definition of autism.

    Nationally, applied behavioral analysis, commonly known as ABA therapy, has become popular for autism treatment, increasing nationally by 270% between 2019 and 2024, according to Trilliant Health, a Nashville data analysis firm. The volume of services provided locally — where companies including ABA Centers, Helping Hands Family, and NeurAbilities Healthcare have expanded — was not available.

    Philadelphia Eagles owner established the Lurie Autism Institute at Penn and CHOP

    The increase in diagnoses has outpaced the growth in available services, said Matthew Lerner, an autism expert at Drexel University, who is not involved with the newly launched CHOP-Soar Autism Centers.

    When Lerner moved to the Philadelphia region from Long Island in 2023 and started getting plugged into the autism network, a few clinicians here would ask if he could connect patients with services in New York.

    “I was coming from eastern Long Island, two hours east of New York City, and people were like, do you know anyone closer to you?” he recalled.

    CHOP’s road to a joint venture with Soar

    The freestanding, 10,000 square-foot clinic that opened on Jan. 5 in suburban Bucks County near CHOP Pediatric Primary Care Newtown has 35 to 40 rooms and an indoor playground for therapeutic uses.

    CHOP, among the largest children’s health systems in the country, has long been concerned about limited access to autism care in the region, said Steve Docimo, CHOP’s executive vice president for business development and strategy.

    The nonprofit has provided diagnostic services, but not the forms of therapy that the CHOP-Soar centers will offer. “The threshold to doing this on our own has always been high enough that it hasn’t been a pool that we’ve jumped in,” he said.

    CHOP was in talks with Soar for three years before agreeing to the 50-50 joint venture with the for-profit company. CHOP’s investment will be its share of the startup costs for CHOP-Soar locations.

    The partnership plan calls for five locations in the first two years. The partners did not say where the next four centers will be.

    Soar has 15 locations in the Denver area, which has about half the population of the Philadelphia region, Goldstein said.

    That comparison implies that the CHOP-Soar partnership could grow to 30 centers, Goldstein added. He thinks the region’s needs could support additional expansion, saying the total could reach “into the dozens.”

    The first CHOP-Soar Autism Center opened this month in Newtown. Shown here is the reception area.

    That’s assuming CHOP-Soar provides high quality care for kids, an appealing family experience, and a system of coordinated care: “There will be a need to do more than five, and I think we’re jointly motivated to do so,” Goldstein said.

    The CHOP-Soar approach

    Families seeking care for an autistic child typically have to go to different places to get all the types of therapy they need.

    Families “get behavioral analytics in one place, occupational therapy somewhere else, and speech language pathology in another place,” Docimo said.

    Soar brings all of that together in one center. “If it can be scaled, this will fill a gap in our region in a way that I think will work very well for these families,” he said.

    CHOP-Soar centers will emphasize early intervention and treat children through age six. “The brain has its greatest neuroplasticity” up to age 3, “so waiting a year is a really big deal,” Goldstein said. “You’re missing out on that opportunity to really influence the child’s developmental trajectory at a young age.”

    Some autism services providers focus on ABA therapy, which breaks social and self-care skills, for example, down into components and then works discretely on each.

    But Soar offers what Goldstein described as “integrated, coordinated care for the child.” That includes speech, occupational, and behavioral therapies.

    With CHOP, medical specialties, such as genetics, neurology, and gastrointestinal care, can be tied in as well, Goldstein said.

    It’s rare for autism providers to offer a wide variety of commonly needed services under one roof, said Lerner, who leads the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute’s Life Course Outcomes Research Program.

    He said Soar’s evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach has a lot to offer the region.

    “A person diagnosed with autism will have complex care needs throughout their life, and a one-size-fits-all, one-intervention approach will not work,” he said.

  • The new owner of Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services

    The new owner of Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services

    The new owner of the defunct Crozer-Chester Medical Center wants to restore hospital and emergency services to the 64-acre campus that straddles Chester and Upland Township in Delaware County.

    Newly formed Chariot Equities completed the $10 million purchase Wednesday. The for-profit entity said it expected within six months to have an agreement with a health system that would operate a “right-sized” hospital and emergency department at the facility that had been the county’s largest provider of those services before closing last year.

    The idea is then to open the first phase within two years, Chariot said in a statement.

    Chariot did not say how much it would spend on refurbishing Crozer-Chester, which had suffered from years of neglect under its two previous owners.

    Chariot’s partner at Crozer-Chester is Allaire Health Services, a Jackson, N.J.-based for-profit operator of nursing homes.

    The partners said they are in talks with regional and national nonprofit health systems regarding an operating partnership, but provided no details. The amount of money needed for the project would likely depend on what prospective tenants would want to do at the property.

    “Our belief in Delaware County’s future, and the community’s need for sustainable healthcare access, made this an effort worth committing to well before the finish line,” said Yoel Polack, Chariot’s founder and principal.

    Little is known about the new owners. Polack worked in healthcare real estate in the New York City area before setting his sights on redeveloping Crozer-Chester.

    Federal records list Allaire’s CEO Benjamin Kurland as an owner of 20 nursing homes, including three in the Philadelphia area. Chariot’s statement said Allaire owns a total of 29 facilities in five states.

    Philadelphia-area facilities associated with Kurland are the Center For Rehab & Nursing Washington Township, which was acquired from Jefferson Health; Riverview Estates Rehab & Senior Living Center in Riverton; and West Park Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in West Philadelphia.

    Local interest?

    Main Line Health has been involved in discussions about reopening emergency services at three former Crozer hospitals — Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Springfield Hospital, and Taylor Hospital — at the request of state lawmakers and the property owners, Ed Jimenez, CEO of Main Line Health, said Wednesday at a Riddle Hospital event.

    Jimenez said he would “entertain the concept” of restoring emergency services at one of the hospitals as part of a partnership with other health systems, but only if it can be done on a break-even basis.

    All three of the former hospital buildings visited by Main Line officials are in poor condition and were stripped of medical equipment after the closures. Main Line’s experts estimated it would cost between $15 million and $20 million just to make the emergency department at Taylor functional, Jimenez said.

    Riddle Hospital celebrates $4M in state funding to expand healthcare access in Delaware County

    ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, considered acquiring Crozer in 2022. Instead, it took a different path to expansion in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It is planning to open two micro-hospitals in Delaware County. The nonprofit system also took over five former Crozer outpatient locations. Its credit rating was recently downgraded by one notch because of lower profitability.

    The importance of Crozer-Chester

    Crozer-Chester closed in early May during the bankruptcy of owner Prospect Medical Holdings Inc., a for-profit company based in California, and after the failure of government-supported efforts to form a new nonprofit owner for Crozer-Chester and other Crozer Health facilities.

    Crozer-Chester was particularly important as a safety-net provider for a low-income area of Delaware County that has few other nearby options. The Crozer system, which had four hospitals, was the county’s largest health system and largest employer for many years.

    Two local Democratic officials, State Rep. Leanne Krueger and Delaware County Council member Monica Taylor, said they were encouraged by the approach being taken by Chariot and Allaire.

    At Taylor Hospital, the other Crozer hospital that closed last year, new owners are also looking for healthcare tenants. Local investors bought the Ridley Park facility for $1 million. It is less than four miles from Crozer-Chester.

    The same group agreed last week to pay $1 million for Springfield Hospital, another facility that had previously shut down under Prospect ownership.

  • Lehigh Valley Health Network will go out of network for UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage plans Monday

    Jefferson Health’s Lehigh Valley Health Network will go out of network Monday for members of UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage plans.

    That means about more than 20,000 people who get care at LVHN facilities could experience disruptions in their care. Two years of negotiations failed to result in a new contract, Jefferson said in a statement Wednesday.

    Jefferson also said that United reduced payments to LVHN by nearly 40% since 2021, reducing the nonprofit health system’s revenue by more than $100 million over four years.

    “When an insurer stops paying agreed‑upon rates and refuses to negotiate, patient access is put at risk. Jefferson and LVHN will not stand by while an insurer prioritizes its own margins over fair contracts and sustainable care,” said Jeffrey Price, a Jefferson senior vice president involved in managed care and payer relations.

    LVHN patients who have UnitedHealthcare plans through their employers will remain in-network at the nonprofit system through most of April 25, Jefferson said.

    United said that negotiations continue on those contracts, but noted that LVHN wanted a 20% price increase in the first year.

    The dispute does not affect Philadelphia-area Jefferson patients with insurance from UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurer.

    Jefferson first warned in October that its LVHN facilities would start going out of network this month.

    At the time, United suggested that Jefferson’s announcement during the Medicare Advantage annual enrollment period was a negotiating tactic designed to put pressure on United.

    United said Wednesday that its “top priority is providing people continued access to the care they need through our broad network of providers who collaborate with us to provide quality, affordable care.”

    The company noted that it recently signed a multiyear contract with LVHN’s biggest competitor, St. Luke’s University Health Network. That contract covers employer-sponsored plans as well as Medicare and Medicaid plans.

    By going out of network with United Medicare Advantage plans, LVHN joins other well-known systems to have done so in the last year. They include Johns Hopkins Medicine and Mayo Clinic.

    Last March, Jefferson went out of network with Cigna Health for a few weeks during a similar impasse in negotiations. Jefferson and Cigna quickly reached a deal after the termination.

  • How Penn helped to rescue RHD’s Family Practice health clinics after a nonprofit ownership change

    How Penn helped to rescue RHD’s Family Practice health clinics after a nonprofit ownership change

    A year ago, leaders of Family Practice & Counseling Network feared their health clinic, which has served low-income Philadelphians for more than 30 years, wouldn’t survive past June.

    The clinic was part of Resources for Human Development, a Philadelphia human services agency that a fast-growing Reading nonprofit called Inperium Inc. had acquired in late 2024.

    As a federally qualified health clinic since 1992, the clinic had received an annual federal grant, higher Medicaid rates, and other benefits.

    But federal rules prohibited the clinic from continuing to retain that status and those benefits under a parent company. That meant Family Practice & Counseling Network had two options: close or spin out into a new entity that would reapply to be a federally qualified clinic.

    “We had to figure it out,” the organization’s CEO Emily Nichols said in a recent interview.

    At the time, the organization’s three main locations had 15,000 patients. They are “very underserved, low-income people that deserve good healthcare,” she said.

    Thanks to $9.5 million in financial and operational support from the University of Pennsylvania Health System, a new legal entity took over the clinics in July. They now operate under the tweaked name, Family Practice & Counseling Services Network, and without the federal status.

    “Penn allowed us to survive,” Nichols said.

    Still in a precarious position

    The nonprofit, with its name now abbreviated as FPCSN, remains in a precarious position.

    Because of the corporate change, the $4.2 million annual grant that Family Practice had been receiving through RHD had to be opened up for other applicants under federal law. FPCSN applied but won’t find out until March the result of the competition.

    Natalie Levkovich, CEO of the Health Federation of Philadelphia, a nonprofit that supports community health centers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, expressed confidence that the clinic will regain the funding, which helps cover the cost of caring for people who don’t have insurance.

    “FPCSN is a well-run, well-regarded, well-supported health center that has an established, high-functioning practice in multiple locations,” Levkovich said. The clinic received letters of support from all the other federal clinics in the area, she said.

    In addition to the grant, other key benefits of being a federally qualified health center — the status the clinic had for 33 years — are receiving medical malpractice insurance through the federal government and enhanced Medicare and Medicaid rates.

    A mural in a conference room at Family Practice & Counseling Services Network’s headquarters in Nicetown shows a timeline of the agency’s history since its founding in 1992.

    In return, federally qualified clinics have to accept all patients, including people without insurance. The insurance mix of FPCSN’s patient population is about 60% Medicaid, 20% uninsured, 10% Medicare, and 10% commercial, Nichols said.

    Also, half of a federal clinic’s board members have to be patients at the clinic. FPCSN has three main locations, in Southwest Philadelphia, on the western edge of North Philadelphia, and in the West Poplar neighborhood. Its revenue in fiscal 2025 was $31 million.

    During the past year, 55 FPCSN staff members have left, leaving 140 employees still at the organization, including 16 nurse practitioners who provide the primary care. The departures may have contributed to a decline in the number of patients seen to 13,500 last year, compared to 15,000 the year before, Nichols said.

    Why Penn helped FPCSN

    Federally qualified health centers form the core safety net in Philadelphia and across the nation, said Richard Wender, who chairs Family Medicine and Community Health at Penn, which had a longstanding relationship with RHD’s clinics.

    Under contract, Penn family practice physicians were providing prenatal care to 400 pregnant patients at the clinics that would have closed abruptly at the end of June if Penn hadn’t provided support. “We wanted them to be able to continue to take care of the patients that they were taking care of,” Wender said.

    The money from Penn helped pay startup costs for the new entity and bridged the period until FPCSN was able to secure new contracts with insurance companies.

    Penn also didn’t want the clinic’s patients showing up in its already busy emergency departments for basic care. “That adversely affects their health because it’s not a good place to get preventive care,” he said.

    But it was important to Penn that there was a pathway back to federal clinic status. “We feel as optimistic as we can,” Wender said.

    Wender and Nichols credited Kevin Mahoney, CEO of Penn’s health system, with the preservation of FPCSN’s services for low-income Philadelphians by throwing his full support behind the effort.

    “You have to have a CEO, a leader in your health system, who understands that this is the responsibility of large academic health centers,” Wender said.

  • Springfield Hospital has a new buyer, for $1 million, after an auction winner didn’t close a deal

    Springfield Hospital has a new buyer, for $1 million, after an auction winner didn’t close a deal

    Springfield Hospital has a new buyer, with the same local investor group that bought Taylor Hospital in September agreeing to purchase it for $1 million.

    Bankrupt owner Prospect Medical Holdings said in a court filing Friday that it now plans to sell Springfield Hospital and an associated parking garage to KQT Aikens Partners 2. The group paid $1 million for Taylor.

    Todd Strine, one of the investors involved in KQT Aikens, declined to comment Saturday on the Springfield development. The company has been trying to find healthcare tenants for Taylor, which is in Ridley Park. Among the goals is reestablishing emergency services there, according to local officials.

    At Springfield, KQT Aikens is replacing a partnership of Restorative Health Foundation and Syan Investments LLC, which won an October auction for the hospital property with a $3 million bid but was not making progress toward closing the deal, Prospect’s filing said.

    Prospect sent a letter on Dec. 11 giving the partners a Dec. 15 deadline to complete the purchase. When that did not happen, Prospect terminated the agreement, the filing said. Restorative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    A challenge for any buyer of Springfield Hospital is a deed restriction that requires 24-7 emergency services at the site. The KQT Aikens deal is contingent on township officials removing that restriction. The KQT Aikens agreement also calls for local taxing authorities to set the assessment of the Springfield Township property at the sale price, as happened at Taylor.

    Jeff Rudolph, president of the Springfield Township Board of Commissioners, said in an email that local officials look forward to restoring the property to a productive use.

    “Prospect will determine the ultimate buyer of the property and, while the township plays no role in that process, we look forward to discussions with the new owner about any proposed future use of the site,” he said.

    Taylor and Springfield Hospitals were part of Crozer Health, which was Delaware County’s largest healthcare provider. That was before Prospect’s bankruptcy a year ago led to the closures last spring of Taylor and Crozer-Chester Medical Center, which was an important safety-net provider for low-income Chester residents.

    Prospect had closed Springfield in early 2022, and Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill in the fall of 2022. In both cases, Prospect blamed the closures on staffing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Fewer Pennsylvania nursing homes closed last year than in 2024

    Six Pennsylvania nursing homes closed last year, down from 10 in 2024, according to data provided to The Inquirer by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

    None of last year’s closures were in the Philadelphia area. The most recent closure in Southeastern Pennsylvania was at Main Line Health’s Riddle Hospital, which shuttered its very small, 23-bed facility in early 2023. That year, five nursing homes closed statewide.

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    But this year is starting with the loss of a Philadelphia facility. Monumental Post-Acute Care at Woodside, formerly called Bala Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, notified state official last month that the 180-bed facility will close next month.

    Officials there could not be reached for comment about why nursing home is closing after 37 years. More than 90% of the facility’s patients had Medicaid insurance for low-income people.

    Monumental is among the larger nursing homes to close recently. About half of the nursing homes that closed during the last three years had 50 or fewer beds. The statewide average is 127 beds.

    Smaller facilities have a harder time covering their costs.

    The county hardest hit by nursing home closures was Allegheny, which is home to Pittsburgh. Four nursing homes closed there. The counties that are home to Scranton and Wilkes-Barre each lost two facilities.

  • St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children announced its third leadership change in less than two years

    St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children announced its third leadership change in less than two years

    St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, a key safety-net provider in North Philadelphia, on Wednesday announced its third leadership change in less than two years.

    Claire Alminde, the hospital’s chief nursing officer and a 37-year veteran of the institution, is St. Chris’ new acting president.

    She is the third interim or acting executive appointed to the top management position at the nonprofit hospital since February 2024 and its fourth leader since 2020. Drexel University and Tower Health have owned St. Chris in a 50-50 joint venture since 2019.

    “Claire is firmly committed to St. Christopher’s mission and exemplifies the compassion, expertise and steadfast commitment that define this hospital and the care we provide to children and families across our region,” St. Chris said in an e-mailed statement.

    St. Chris’ chief nursing officer Claire Alminde has been named acting president of the North Philadelphia safety-net provider.

    There are no immediate plans for a national CEO search. “Right now, Tower’s focus is on helping Claire onboard successfully and lead the organization forward. We are grateful that Claire has committed to serving in this position as long as necessary,” Tower said.

    Alminde is replacing Jodi Coombs, who was appointed interim president and CEO last April. Coombs’ previous position was executive vice president at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, in Missouri. Before that, she worked in Massachusetts.

    Coombs replaced Robert Brooks, who was named president and interim CEO in February 2024 following the announcement that the institution’s last permanent CEO, Don Mueller, was departing for a job in Chattanooga, Tenn., closer to his family.

    Mueller took the job at St. Christopher’s in the summer of 2020, about seven months after Tower and Drexel University bought the facility, but did not permanently move to Philadelphia.

    State health officials in 2023 blamed safety lapses at the hospital on Mueller’s absence and ordered him to be in Philadelphia five days a week.

    Tower oversees day-to-day management of the facility, where about 85% of patients have Medicaid insurance for low-income people. That’s an extremely high rate.

    St. Chris, which has received significant financial support from other local healthcare institutions in recent years, has not published its financial results for the year that ended June 30, 2025. In fiscal 2024, St. Chris had a $31.6 million operating loss.

  • A new $50 million investment fund will back Penn life sciences startups

    The University of Pennsylvania, German biotech firm BioNTech, and Osage University Partners, a Bala Cynwyd venture capital firm, have formed a $50 million fund to back early-stage life sciences startups at Penn, the partners announced Friday.

    The announcement came on the eve of the much-hyped annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, which starts Monday. The conference has become a way to measure the mood of the biotech sector, which has slumped after investment peaked in 2021. It’s been particularly difficult for early-stage biotech companies to raise money in recent years, according to a recent J.P. Morgan report.

    For Penn scientists and company founders, the so-called Penn-BioNTech Innovative Therapeutics Seed Fund, or PxB Fund for short, will step into that gap. It is designed to invest in companies that are developing new therapeutics, diagnostics, and research tools.

    The announcement did not include a breakdown of how much money each of the three backers provided. Osage University Partners, which has $800 million under management and had previously invested in at least 10 Penn spinouts, will run the fund.

    “Penn has a remarkable track record of creating cutting-edge startups,” Marc Singer, an Osage managing partner, said in a statement.

    He cited two deals for Penn spinouts last year: AbbVie acquired San-Diego-based Capstan Therapeutics for up to $2.1 billion, and Kite paid $350 million for Interius BioTherapeutics, which was based at Pennovation Works in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia.

    Penn was among the first six universities Osage partnered with 15 years ago when it started investing in spinouts from research universities, while allowing the institutions to share in some of the profits. This was at a time when few universities were investing in their own startups.

    Penn’s evolution as an investor in its own startups

    For Penn, that began changing about a decade ago. The university’s first investment in one of its own faculty-member spinouts came in 2016, when it invested $5 million in Carl June’s Tmunity Therapeutics. In 2018, Penn Medicine agreed to invest an additional $45 million in Penn biotech companies over three years in conjunction with outside funds.

    In December, Penn announced a $10 million fund that will make seed investments of up to $250,000 in companies that have at least one founder affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. That fund is for the entire university, not just life sciences.

    PxB is another part of what John Swartley, Penn’s chief innovation officer, called in an interview Friday a “constellation of different support structures and funding sources that our companies can draw upon in order to advance their opportunities and agenda.”

    Anna Turetsky, a biotech investor in New York who received her undergraduate degree at Penn and has a doctorate in biophysics from Harvard University, has joined Osage and will serve as PxB’s general partner. She said PxB is a 10-year fund and is expected to build a portfolio of around 15 companies in the early years.

    “Part of why this is a fantastic time to start this fund is that there has been a gap in venture funding for early stage startups over the last few years. Everyone wants to see clinical data these days,“ Turetsky said. If that continues, ”then in a few years, there will be no early-stage clinical companies,” she said.

    Germany’s BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer on one of the COVID-19 vaccines that used mRNA technology developed at Penn, will use the fund to deepen its longstanding ties to Penn researchers.

    Philadelphia’s place in biotech

    Some observers of Philadelphia’s biotech sector have lamented the relative lack of local investors, which are abundant in places like Boston and San Francisco and have helped turn those metro areas into leading innovation centers.

    Quaker BioVentures was a local investment fund that raised $700 million in the early 2000s to buy into biotech firms in Philadelphia and elsewhere, but was not successful for its investors, which included Pennsylvania state pension funds.

    Others, when asked why the Philadelphia region trails Boston, San Francisco, and San Diego, as a biotech hub, point to the need for a deeper pool of management talent.

    Why Philadelphia loses promising biotech firms to Boston, San Francisco, and San Diego

    PxB could help change that, Singer said.

    “Part of our hope with the fund is to create some companies, start from scratch, take technology, find management teams, start them in Philadelphia. Hopefully, that will create a new crop of managers,” he said.

  • Alveus Therapeutics, a Philadelphia start-up treating obesity, debuted with $160M in funding

    Alveus Therapeutics, a Philadelphia start-up treating obesity, debuted with $160M in funding

    Alveus Therapeutics, a Philadelphia start-up specializing in obesity therapies with top staff from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, made its public debut Thursday with $159.8 million in venture capital funding.

    The announcement comes on the heels of a banner year for investment and acquisition activity in the weight loss arena, as venture capitalists and big pharmaceutical firms try to catch up to the enormous successes Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have had in recent years with their GLP-1 treatments.

    New Rhein Healthcare Investors, based in Philadelphia and Belgium, founded Alveus in early 2024 to develop obesity treatments that are more tolerable and have greater durability. Andera Partners, based in Paris, and Omega Funds in Boston joined New Rhein in leading the Series A investment round.

    “Obesity is one of the fastest-growing global healthcare challenges, and today’s therapies leave patients struggling to maintain weight loss over time,” Raj Kannan, CEO of Alveus, said. Kannan is based in Boston, according to LinkedIn.

    Where Philadelphia ranks as a biotech hub.

    Alveus is headquartered in Philadelphia, the company said. Most research and development is in Copenhagen, Denmark. The company has fewer than 50 employee, split about evenly between Philadelphia and Copenhagen.

    The company’s chief scientific officer and head of R&D, Jacob Jeppesen, is a former vice president at Novo Nordisk in the areas of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

    Brian Bloomquist, a former Eli Lilly vice president with responsibility in the diabetes and obesity treatment area, is Alveus’ chief business and strategy officer. The company’s chief technical officer is Xiao-Ping Dai, who spent some time working at the former WuXi Advanced Therapies in Philadelphia.

    Alveus’ lead drug candidate was licensed from a Chinese company called Gmax Pharma, an Alveus spokesperson said. Alveus also has treatments in development that it developed internally.