As 2021 draws to a close, we are nearing the end of the first year of our new brand: Pittsburgh Region. Next is Now. As the inflection point for a future that is globally impactful, Pittsburgh is bubbling with stories of growth, milestones and investment, and we’re so glad you joined us here in 2021 to read – and share – many of them.
We’ve followed the journey of thought leaders shaping a more equitable future – the movers and shakers who embody Pittsburgh ingenuity and raise the bar for what other regions can accomplish. We’ve celebrated significant milestones and are excited for what 2022 will bring. No celebration of a new year would be complete without also toasting the highlights of the year that’s about to close.
From significant growth in the tech sector to the groundbreaking on our region’s “airport of the future,” a wave of IPOs and the much-anticipated opening of the Southern Beltway, 2021 was full of growth across the region’s 10 counties.
This week, we look back on our greatest hits of 2021 — a “top dozen.”
The building that once housed Suburban General Hospital in Bellevue is once again home to the healthcare sector, but with a new twist. As the home of AlphaLab Health, the partnership between Allegheny Health Network and Innovation Works is a comprehensive life sciences accelerator.
AlphaLab Health welcomed its first cohort of seven startups last January. The former hospital’s lab space now serves as biotech research labs, patient rooms are offices for the startups’ employees, and former waiting rooms are now conference space.
The partnership gives entrepreneurs access to working clinicians and healthcare administrators, who inform startups with real-world advice as the ideas take shape. Fledgling companies also can confer with experts in manufacturing and product development as well as on-site peer groups.
Each startup in the original cohort is now poised for expansion and new rounds of funding. Companies included Gus Gear, which creates vests that protect patients’ permanent central lines; Emergence Dental, which developed a new bone-graft method for dental implants; and CytoAgents, which is creating a new therapeutic to calm an overreactive immune system. In the meantime, AlphaLab is preparing to launch another cohort.
“Pittsburgh has reinvigorated its economy again and again with a unique brand of grit and innovation.”
Simin Yazdgerdi Curtis, Founder and CEO, American Middle East Institute (AMEI), on the announcement that Pittsburgh will host the 2022 Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit
