Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse

Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Helps to Identify Worthy Investment Opportunities

As western Pennsylvania's only investment organization with a pure life sciences focus, the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) combines a deep knowledge of global industry trends, national networks, and corporate collaborations to identify worthy investment opportunities within western Pennsylvania's life sciences industry. The PLSG serves as an investor relations conduit for life sciences companies.

The PLSG provides capital investments and customized company formation and business growth services to our region's life sciences enterprises. PLSG supports biosciences companies with promising innovations in the following concentrations: Biotechnology Tools, Diagnostics, Healthcare IT, Medical Devices and Therapeutics.

In 2001, then Pennsylvania Governor Ridge and the Pennsylvania legislature took the bold policy step of investing its entire share of the tobacco settlement into health-related programs. As part of this effort, the state took a hard look at where we excelled and where we were falling behind in the biosciences. Our strength in research wasn't translating into funding for start-up companies. Our patent creation was on par with or outpaced many of our competitor regions, yet our state's share of venture capital lagged behind dramatically. Pennsylvania responded by creating innovative programs to fuel growth in the life sciences industry. The Life Sciences Greenhouse Initiative (LSGI) was one of the programs created to successfully commercialize university technologies and was designed to be one of the very few state/university/industry funded programs focused exclusively on the life sciences.

A formidable and unprecedented alliance was formed between western Pennsylvania's leading foundations, research universities and the Commonwealth's LSGI. As a result of this alliance, the PLSG was initiated to drive life sciences commercialization originally in the 13 county region of southwestern Pennsylvania. In 2008 we added 7 counties just to our north, expanding our reach to the 20 county region of western Pennsylvania.

Since its launch in April 2002, the PLSG has brought the required energy, domain-specific expertise and efficiency to the task of establishing a critical mass of life sciences awareness, research, development and commercialization in the region. The task moving forward is to expand those efforts and increase the successful commercialization of viable life sciences ventures.

The life sciences industry creates the perfect opportunity to combine the region's strengths as a foundation for future economic growth. Western Pennsylvania has all of the elements required for strong and healthy industry growth: the continuum of the life sciences; world-class basic research; emerging biotechnology, medical device and diagnostic companies; mature industry; support organizations; a strong philanthropic community; a highly skilled workforce; ideal geographic location; high quality of life; and a competitive cost of doing business.

The PLSG is well positioned to be the catalyst that helps the region build a globally-dominant life sciences industry. We have built an infrastructure that provides a comprehensive menu of resources and services to ensure success, including capital, laboratory and office space, expertise and training through an SBIR training program that has become recognized as the standard of excellence and a source of best practices.