Yale University has been awarded an additional $2.63M for the PITCH program, following an original $10M investment from the State’s Connecticut Bioscience Innovation Fund. This funding will run through the 2019 calendar year, helping Yale founders continue their important work for bringing Yale concepts for new medicines closer to patients. “With this new funding, we can focus on advanced PITCH projects, and get them across the finish line,” states Janie Merkel, PITCH’s Director.
From the first phase of PITCH, funding from institutional, federal and state sources have awarded founder teams $1.7M based on results of PITCH efforts. Four patents have been filed with additional applications in the pipeline. Articles in scientific journals have been published resulting from PITCH work. Obtaining follow-on support, discovering intellectual property and contributing scientific knowledge, PITCH is broadly contributing to academic innovation in Connecticut.
PITCH successes have already borne fruit. From the first three-year cycle of PITCH, two projects have successfully graduated from the program, securing follow-on funding and industry know-how through in-licensing to pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, other teams in the pipeline are aggressively generating data needed to secure additional funding beyond PITCH, as they navigate entrepreneurial waters in seeking funding and board advisors. Several founders, including John Deacon of Cytosolix and Choukri Ben Mamoun of EliV5 Therapeutics, have benefitted from resources of the Accelerator for Biosciences in Connecticut program including access to experienced advisors, mentors and coaches as they refine their business strategy and roadmap.
We look forward to many more successes in the coming months!