Pitt names Ken Gabriel as BioForge CEO

The University of Pittsburgh‘s expansive BioForge initiative has hired its inaugural chief executive officer.

Kaigham (Ken) J. Gabriel was appointed to the job, Anantha Shekhar, Pitt senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and medical school dean, announced Monday. Gabriel who already has begun his duties also will serve as director of the Advanced Biomanufacturing Institute at the university.

He will be tasked with developing and operating BioForge, a biomanufacturing venture that is planned at Hazelwood Green, the former site of Pittsburgh’s last operating steel mill, officials said.

Pitt intends to build and transition cell and gene therapies that can treat conditions from blindness to cancer, the university said in a news release announcing the hiring.

His salary was not disclosed. Pitt spokesman Jared Stonesifer said the university expects to break ground in late winter, most likely in March.

“Ken’s depth of experience as an innovator across government, academic and commercial sectors makes him a perfect fit for leveraging Pitt’s world-class research in medicine and the health sciences at BioForge,” Shekhar said. “His leadership will facilitate breakthroughs and accelerate commercial development that will benefit countless patients while also partnering with the Hazelwood community to introduce new opportunities for growth in an inclusive and sustainable way.”

In June, university trustees approved the $120 million construction of the core and shell of a planned cell and gene therapy manufacturing facility.

The trustees’ Property and Facilities Committee also authorized leasing space within the facility. At the time, officials said it will advance life-science research and grow the commercial gene and cell therapy biomanufacturing industry in Pittsburgh

Pitt earlier announced a 30-year partnership to bring Massachusetts-based ElevateBio to Pitt’s BioForge Biomanufacturing Center. In December, trustees approved spending up to $10 million to buy land for the project.

Plans call for completing the project by 2027. Pitt has said BioForge will create more than 170 permanent, full-time jobs, plus 900 construction jobs and 360 off-site support jobs.

“The best treatment for you is you. That’s the power and promise of biologic precision medicines — they are medicines designed to recruit your own body’s capabilities to heal,” Gabriel said. “BioForge’s mission is to accelerate breakthroughs in both the development and manufacturing of precision medicines to speed their delivery, use and impact.”

Gabriel was most recently the founding chief operating officer of Wellcome Leap, an international innovation organization.

Before that, he was the president and CEO of Draper, an MIT spin-off engineering company known for developing the Apollo guidance computer in the 1960s. His tenure saw expansion the firm’s offerings to include include biomedical innovations in end-to-end cell therapy, engineered human organ-on-a-chip platforms for drug discovery and the world’s first adaptive pediatric heart valve , according to Pitt officials.

He is a former tenured professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.