On the MAP
It’s a common story: A recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh falls in love with the city of Pittsburgh and decides to stick around. But it’s not every day it happens to a biotech company.
New York–based Panther Life Sciences, after a 14-month partnership with Pitt BioForge, is establishing its manufacturing and materials section in Pittsburgh. The company is the first to both start and end a project with BioForge.
Their partnership demonstrated that Panther Life Sciences can meet its goals—in time, cost and volume—in manufacturing microneedle array patches (MAPs), drug delivery systems that offer a pain-free alternative to typical hypodermic needles.
BioForge identifies life sciences projects that have major potential to enhance and save lives but have run into hurdles in manufacturing. BioForge does not manufacture products itself; instead, its team collaborates with researchers and companies over the course of a time-limited period to devise solutions that allow eventual commercialization at scale.
“Each project has teams of biologists working side by side with engineers and physical scientists,” says BioForge CEO Ken Gabriel, “because it’s at that intersection where we’re going to have these opportunities for breakthrough innovations.” For the Panther Life Sciences project, the BioForge lead was Brennan Sellner, vice president of engineering.
Panther Life Sciences was born out of an ambition to commercialize research from Louis Falo, Pitt professor and chair of dermatology. At first, the company was focused on using MAPs to deliver skin cancer therapies. That’s still a goal, but CEO Carlos Bhola now expects that their first products will be for other skin therapeutics, possibly for lessening wrinkles or treating actinic keratosis, a precancerous condition. For now, they’re excited to know that manufacturing the MAPs themselves is economically feasible.
“By implementing robotics and custom equipment, we drastically reduced technician labor time, the primary driver of previous costs,” says Brian Rogers, chief technology officer. The solutions they found also improved repeatability and consistency. The ability to manufacture at scale is a “massive competitive advantage,” says Bhola, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. He expects their first product will be available in 2027.
By setting up shop in Pittsburgh, Panther Life Sciences hopes to continue working with the BioForge team for guidance and collaboration. BioForge’s new facility is under construction just down the road at Hazelwood Green and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2028.
“As Panther Life Sciences progresses, there will be a need for continued materials advances,” Gabriel says. “There’s always an opportunity to accelerate the impact of a therapy.”
Adds Bhola: “We aspire to do that in the proximity of BioForge and have them help us to do bigger and better things.”
