EDA director’s advice for Philly to land federal Tech Hubs funding: Make the pitch ‘crisper’ 

Philadelphia is known as a thriving life sciences hub, but industry leaders are working to push it to the next level. 

While the region has the resources and collaboration to be a successful precision medicine hub, now it has to focus on refining its vision, US Economic Development Administration (EDA) Tech Hubs program director Eric Smith, told Technical.ly. That’s possible by thinking about the details of how new technologies will get to market, considering demand and continuing to collaborate. 

Tech Hub leaders should get “crisper on how some of these interventions are actually going to result in new technologies making it to the market as products and services,” he said.

Leaders from the EDA toured the Philadelphia region’s life sciences ecosystem on Monday, making stops at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Iovance Biotherapeutics Cell Therapy Center and the Innovation Space in Wilmington, Delaware. 

Last fall, EDA designated the Philadelphia region as one of 31 Tech Hubs in the country, officially called PROPEL: The National Center for Precision Medicine. The consortium moved on to Phase 2, putting together a proposal for $80 million in implementation funds that included participation from groups in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Northern Delaware. 

Of the 12 designated hubs to receive implementation awards this summer, the EDA did not select Philadelphia.

“Not everybody can win, and we actually want to design it that way,” Smith said. “We actually want folks to strive really hard for that funding and bring people together.” 

More collaboration, specificity could land Philly future funds 

After selecting the implementation awardees, the EDA provided feedback to the Tech Hubs, describing what they could improve on. 

Before starting the site visit tours, the PROPEL consortium’s steering committee presented updates to its proposal. Continuing to build momentum and push forward with its proposal is exactly what the EDA is looking for, Smith said. 

One key to that is emphasizing collaboration, according to Smith. Philadelphia has a lot of resources and organizations dedicated to the research and development of precision medicine, and the EDA wants to see those groups come together and form a plan to bring more products and services to patients.

Plus, there are also Tech Hubs with similar focuses in the running. For example, the Wisconsin-based Biohealth Tech Hub, a similar field to Philadelphia’s efforts, won funding for its personalized medicine efforts over the summer, while Philly did not. 

The EDA wants to see a clearer, more specific plan for how elements of the PROPEL proposal will lead to new technologies that will become available products and services, Smith said. It also wants to see derisking big technology projects, specifically ones involving patient data. 

Based on the morning’s presentation, Smith said he’s already starting to see some of these adjustments being made. For example, the group included more details in the biomanufacturing innovation section of the proposal, explaining what equipment will be on mobile and modular manufacturing units, how it will lead to specific outcomes and why it fits in with the needs of industry partners. 

The consortium also needs to specify who the target customer is for these facilities and show there is demand for them. 

“That gives us confidence that there are companies that want to use those facilities,” Smith said. “If there are companies that want to use those facilities, that makes it much more likely that those companies will succeed and grow in actually getting to market.” 

Billions more could be coming for the Tech Hubs program in 2025 

Despite not being chosen for this initial round of funding, there will be more opportunities for Philly in the future, Smith said. 

The Tech Hubs program was appropriated $10 billion through the CHIPS and Science Act, but so far Congress has only greenlighted $541 million. 

The president’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025 asked for a little over $4 billion in funding for the Tech Hubs program, Smith said. He is hopeful that funding will allow for large-scale investments in all of the Tech Hubs. 

In the meantime, PROPEL received a $500,000 consortium accelerator award from the EDA to continue governance work. 

The EDA is also connecting the Tech Hubs with alternative sources of funding through “benefits of designation” and potential private or philanthropic funders, Smith said. That means the Tech Hubs have access to support resources and prioritization or preference for other federal funding opportunities, like the Good Jobs Challenge, which supports regional workforce training programs. 

A conference at the end of July, and a future one coming later this year, help further connect the hubs with funding opportunities outside of the awards cycle, according to Smith. 

PROPEL pushes forward, providing updates to its progress

The PROPEL consortium’s steering committee incorporated the EDA’s feedback and updates for each project into a presentation at the start of the site visit, leaders said. The proposal is split into five projects: governance, workforce, biomanufacturing, entrepreneurship and access. 

“The designation has actual meaning, and we take that very seriously, so we’re just not sitting waiting for something to happen,” Tony Green, chief scientific officer for Ben Franklin Technology Partners, said. 

The governance project encompasses the overall leadership for the consortium. In addition to the consortium accelerator award, the group is also submitting a Build to Scale proposal to the EDA at the end of the month. The program provides funds to support entrepreneur ecosystems. 

PROPEL would use the funds to support research institutions and startups, providing access to funding, resources and facilities for early-stage and underrepresented founders. 

The workforce arm of the proposal provided an update about the Keystone LifeSci Collaborative, a regional sector partnership that launched in March. Funding for the collaborative comes from the American Rescue Plan’s Good Jobs Challenge, which Philadelphia received a grant from in 2022. 

It is now thinking about how to sustain its work beyond the Good Jobs Challenge funding, which runs out in a year, Patricia Blumenauer from Tech Hubs partner org Philadelphia Works, said. 

Entrepreneurship describes pathways to creating a pipeline of opportunities to support company growth. The project’s team is focused on growth and bringing together stakeholders from across the region. 

The access project seeks to increase the accessibility of development testing and commercialization of precision medicines through data sharing, research and community networks. 

Greg Liptak from the nonprofit Healthshare Exchange (HSX) said stakeholders are working to launch a new platform called PA Navigate, which would work with community-based organizations to aggregate social determinants of health data. 

HSX established a Research Activity Advisory Committee and approved new research data use cases, contributing to the project’s goals. It is also working with CHOP and the Philadelphia Coalition for a Cure on a research data network funded through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health funding. 

“What we have the opportunity to do with the hub is to integrate these assets in a very different way that accelerates the process,” Green said. “To increase equitable access to healthcare, increases private sector, increase new companies and new jobs, increase global competitiveness and increase economic impact for the region.”