Chapters of Change: Thirty years of life sciences transformation at Penn

Thirty years ago, biology was in the midst of a monumental shift. Previously centered on whole organisms, the field was pivoting toward understanding life at the molecular level—redefining the direction of life sciences research.

Now, in another transformational moment, Penn Forward is helping to shape the next 10 years at Penn and beyond.

“We are entering a time of great change across many scientific frontiers,” says David Meaney, vice provost for research. “Penn Forward asks us to be honest about where we have genuine depth, where societal need is urgent, and where investment can be truly catalytic—not just additive.”

In this fourth and final installment of “Chapters of Change,” a limited series examining key moments in Penn’s history, Penn Today looks back at how the University has spent the past 30 years building a sustained effort to become a global leader in the life sciences.

1990s: Responding to a changing environment, laying the foundation for ‘bench to bedside’ medicine

The 1990s marked a shift in the life sciences. Advances such as DNA sequencing technologies, alongside large-scale initiatives like the Human Genome Project, helped push biology toward large-scale, data-intensive research that increasingly encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration at universities. Importantly, this work also resulted in greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying diseases, laying the foundation for a switch toward translational, or “bench to bedside,” medicine.

Penn began a series of initiatives to reorganize and expand its life sciences efforts, including reimagining research space in buildings such as Stellar-Chance Laboratories (1994) and the Biomedical Research Building II/III (1999), which incorporated core facilities with specialized equipment and open laboratories for large, collaborative research groups.

Additionally, in 1993, Penn integrated its medical school, hospitals, and research operations into what became Penn Medicine, aligning patient care, research, and education within one system.

“A few key decisions in the 1990s set us on the trajectory to where we are today,” says Jonathan Epstein, executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and dean of the Perelman School of Medicine. “One was recruiting people who would make the major biomedical breakthroughs of the 21st century. And another was connecting our missions by integrating our health care system with our medical school in a way few other institutions had envisioned before.”

Across the University, other schools also began to orient their research with emerging biomedical approaches.

2000s: Scaling up the life sciences enterprise

In the 2000s, genomic and computational methods became standard tools in biological research, reinforcing the shift toward more data-intensive approaches.

The Penn Compact, a strategic vision for the University initiated by former President Amy Gutmann, sought to create the infrastructure and environment to conduct this work. First outlined in 2004 at her inauguration, it emphasized “integrated knowledge” alongside global engagement and increased access; it was later renewed in 2020 and reaffirmed in 2022.

“Penn’s strength isn’t concentrated in one school or one discovery. It runs from basic science and engineering all the way through to clinical care, all on a compact urban campus with one of the world’s great children’s hospitals as a neighbor and active partner,” says Meaney. “That density is rare, and it creates conditions for translation that most institutions have a hard time creating.”

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Within this framework, in 2005, Penn launched the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, the world’s first institute of translational medicine, which aimed to expand, streamline, and democratize the path from scientific discovery to clinical implementation.

It also continued to develop the medical campus, opening the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine (PCAM) at the former site of the Civic Center in 2008. This state-of-the-art outpatient facility became the anchor of a complex of buildings that followed, including the Roberts Proton Therapy Center (2010) and the Smilow Center for Translational Research (2011), bringing research and clinical care together in one place.

This focus on expanding life sciences infrastructure was not limited to medicine. In 2006, Penn opened the Vernon and Shirley Hill Pavilion (School of Veterinary Medicine), a state-of-the-art facility for veterinary medicine; Skirkanich Hall (School of Engineering and Applied Science), supporting the expansion of bioengineering research and education at Penn Engineering; and the Carolyn Lynch Laboratory (School of Arts & Sciences), which provides research space for faculty in the Department of Biology and served as the central hub for the Penn Genome Frontiers Institute.

Alongside this wave of capital expansion, Penn strengthened the organizational infrastructure of research across its schools, including the establishment of the Office of Nursing Research at Penn Nursing—the first dedicated nursing research support office of its kind at a school of nursing—which formalized support for faculty scholarship and grant development and further integrated nursing science into the University’s broader biomedical research enterprise.

But another major shift was underway in the 2000s: the growing presence of biotechnology companies and the increasing commercialization of academic research.

2010s: Transitioning from patenting to innovation partnering

Recognizing that universities needed to do more than simply file patents and issue licenses, Penn formally launched the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) in 2014 as the University’s hub for technology transfer and commercialization. A signature initiative embodying key elements of the Penn Compact, PCI marked a shift away from a primarily transactional model toward a partnership-based approach in which commercialization is more flexibly integrated with the faculty’s translational research objectives and the needs of Penn’s many different external business partners.

This approach also included the development of the Pennovation Center, another Penn Compact initiative, which extended Penn’s innovation strategy into a dedicated physical campus designed to accelerate prototyping, startup incubation, and industry collaboration.

“I think what really sets PCI apart is its emphasis on building long-term, transformative partnerships with the private sector,” says John Swartley, formerly PCI’s founding managing director and now Penn’s inaugural chief innovation officer, pointing to examples like an alliance with Novartis to turn Penn’s discoveries in CAR T therapy into the first FDA-approved personalized cell therapy, and ongoing collaborations with BioNTech to advance new therapies based on mRNA technologies. 

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“Traditional technology transfer offices focus mostly on licensing patented inventions to existing companies, but PCI instead prioritizes building the right structures with Penn’s commercial partners for the specific translational needs of every project, regardless of whether the right partner is an established company or a brand-new Penn spinout,” notes Swartley.

Beyond commercialization, Penn’s expansion of its innovation ecosystem reinforced its broader, long-standing commitment to interdisciplinary research infrastructure across its campus, as seen, for example, in the Neural and Behavioral Sciences Building, which brought biology and psychology under one roof in 2016, and the Singh Center for Nanotechnology, which, in 2013, brought “engineers, scientists, and clinicians into genuine proximity,” says Meaney.

2020s: Scaling integrated, data-driven life sciences research

Now entering its second decade, PCI’s impact is still growing. The center has catapulted Penn to the top of national rankings in annual licensing income, supported the formation of more than 330 startups, facilitated over 8,000 commercialization agreements, and secured more than $1.2 billion in commercially sponsored research funding, which, in turn, has translated into economic investment in Philadelphia and beyond.

And Penn continues to expand its interdisciplinary research infrastructure, opening facilities like Amy Gutmann Hall in 2024 as a hub for cross-disciplinary collaboration that harnesses research and data from across the University; establishing centers such as the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry in 2021, which unites the School of Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering to accelerate the development of new devices that address unmet needs in oral health; and advancing cross-disciplinary programs like Penn Vet’s Comparative Immunotherapy Program, which facilitates translational research in comparative immunology to accelerate the development and use of cutting-edge immunotherapies in humans and other animals.

With Penn Partners for Impact, an initiative through Penn Forward, Penn foresees the next iteration of partnerships and innovation with government, private industry, and nonprofits, representing a “maturation,” according to Meaney, in how research universities think about their role.

“For a long time, the model was primarily about creating knowledge and, where possible, moving these ideas into practice. That model is too slow and too passive for the problems we’re facing,” says Meaney. “What Partners for Impact recognizes is that government sets the architecture, industry brings scale, nonprofits hold community trust, and universities can be the connective tissue among all three—not just as knowledge generators, but as honest brokers who can hold the long view when other sectors can’t. Penn is well-positioned to play that role precisely because of the breadth and depth we’ve built since the 1990s.”