Welcome To Cellicon Valley
Welcome To Cellicon Valley
A week at Penn Medicine offers a glimpse into an innovation revolution that may not just alter Philadelphia, but the world
Aug. 24, 2018
Earlier this yr, I worried in these pages that Philadelphia, like Cuba with its legendary cigars, was exporting our most valuable resource —brainpower—while leaving the intractable problems of poverty, political sclerosis and an uninviting investment landscape unsolved. I argued and then that the possibility of winning Amazon's HQ2 sweepstakes presented Philadelphia with a unique and long overdue hazard to accept stock of what, really, nosotros had to offer the western hemisphere'south unrivaled commerce juggernaut. We were a city mired in the bygone phases of our history, with a bad habit of letting even our homegrown visionaries and big thinkers leave boondocks for more verdant pastures.
But so I recently found myself at Penn Medicine, where a stable of neat minds from across a range of disciplines are obliterating that stereotype. I was in that location to kick off the 2022 Germination Project Summer Kicking Camp. The Formation Project is a catalytic leadership incubator that employs a rigorous application and interview process to grant a lifetime fellowship to an elite grouping of rising loftier school juniors from across Philadelphia and its suburbs to get educatee Fellows. In what I've characterized as a 50-twelvemonth bet on the region, Formation Project Fellows are charged with cultivating a sustainable ecosystem of leadership to serve our metropolis and the world beyond. That accuse begins with an intensive week-long boot camp that embeds the Fellows in a civic or scientific institution at the vanguard of societal transformation. This year, we were hosted by Penn Medicine, where I encountered an institution that was not only ii decades into that bet, but upping the dues each and every solar day.
Dr. Katherine Choi, Roy Rosin, Megan Mariotti, and Kevin Mahoney are designing and implementing revolutionary health care delivery services and infrastructure to maximize bear upon and optimize patient outcomes. Dr. Eve Higginbotham and Dr. Horace DeLisser are pushing the frontiers of inclusion and diversity in 21 st century medical education. Dr. Robert Vonderheide, Dr. Carl June and Dr. Bruce Levine are breaking new ground in their cancer immunotherapy research, exploring new horizons for lifesaving interventions. And of class, Dr. Scott Levin, who led the squad that performed the world's first bilateral paw transplant at CHOP in 2015, is pushing the boundaries of the possible in the field of orthoplastic surgery.
These are simply a handful of the boldface names who generously shared their insights with the Germination Project Fellows, enthralling not only the teenagers in attendance, but at least i of the grown-ups too. It would have been enough remarkable if these individuals were only toiling abroad in an underground lair, but it soon became clear that the apace expanding Penn Medicine neighborhood is poised to become a new global center of gravity in innovation and its awarding.
Penn Medicine has emerged as something of an overnight awareness 20 years in the making. Its buildings are no longer but housing country of the art labs, but what may prove to be the country'due south next billion dollar blockbuster companies.
Dr. Levine confirmed that impression, referring to Philadelphia's medical research community every bit a burgeoning "Cellicon Valley," as pithy and apt a pun every bit I've ever heard. The phrase evoked the origin story of America'due south original technology Eden, where 50 years ago a physicist named Robert Noyce leveled the peach orchards of the southern San Francisco Bay surface area to brand mode for a little microprocessor get-go-up called intel. From that perspective, it's like shooting fish in a barrel to surmise that Penn Medicine may be cultivating the next Steve Jobs, or the next dozen Steve Jobses, for that affair.
After a couple of decades of olfactory organ to the grindstone research, trials and more research, Penn Medicine has emerged every bit something of an overnight awareness 20 years in the making. Its buildings are no longer just housing state of the art labs, just what may prove to be the country's next billion dollar blockbuster companies. If biotherapeutics firms like Tmunity , founded by Drs. June, Levine and Vonderheide, or Spark Therapeutics , a public clinical-phase gene therapy visitor commercializing hemophilia treatments developed by Dr. Katherine High at CHOP, accomplish critical momentum, they'll become magnets for acolytes, new sources of financing, and a revitalized identity for Philadelphia—an identity of relevance, power and leadership.
In the coming years, cities will supplant nation-states as the dominant drivers of international policy. A handful will generate the majority of global wealth, and notwithstanding a smaller handful will dictate how the globe deals with the most pressing issues of our time. The terminal time Philadelphia played a role of that magnitude was 240 years ago.
In the two and a half centuries since we last hosted a revolution, our municipal history has been one of missed opportunities and self-defeating fatalism. We missed the internet revolution that took root in Silicon Valley; we missed the advanced manufacturing revolution that found a habitation in Austin, Texas; nosotros missed the fintech and trading revolution that launched Singapore to offset world status in a single generation. The list goes on, but it'southward too maddening to recite.
In the coming years, cities will supercede nation-states as the dominant drivers of international policy. The final time Philadelphia played a function of that magnitude was 240 years ago. The amazing projects underway at Penn Medicine may change that.
What's virtually infuriating about Philadelphia's chronic tendency to miss the boat is that information technology didn't need to be so. Ours wasn't the just city to lose a step during the deindustrialization wave of the past 40 years; what'south baffling is that we've been so wearisome to gain our footing. With our abundance of universities, proximity to nerve centers of finance and politics to our north and south, equally well as our relatively low price of living, there'south no good reason that we should exist driving talent abroad rather than drawing information technology in.
Merely the astonishing projects underway at Penn Medicine may show to be the switch that finally reverses that polarity. If enterprises like Tmunity and Sparks Therapeutics succeed in a big mode, and if radical treatments and procedures like Dr. June's proceed to make headlines, in that location'south no reason to doubt that a groundswell of interest, talent, development and investment will make its way into that orbit.
I've been subjecting Germination Projection Fellows to the old "50-twelvemonth bet" saw for 
years at present, merely never fully appreciated that young minds may not respond to abstractions that deal in time spans that exceed their own lives by a factor of three. But at Penn Medicine, the Fellows saw revolution in action; they saw what information technology takes to commit to an enterprise with a delayed payoff, and they saw the beginnings of that payoff in a very real way.
Virtually encouraging most the week I spent at Penn Medicine was sensing the impression made by the visionary leaders of today on the visionary leaders of tomorrow. In Penn Medicine's ambitious work, the Fellows saw the path to re-establishing Philadelphia'south place in an elite cohort of global cities, and recognized that forging that path is just a matter of immigration the peach trees.
Ajay Raju, an chaser and philanthropist, is chairman of DilworthPaxson and a founder/board fellow member of The Denizen.
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/welcome-to-cellicon-valley/
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