Shaping the Future of Healthcare (Video)

“Today, we’ll be talking about our in vivo CAR T platform,” began Mia Yang, C’24, W’24, to a crowd in Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall this past April. She was referring to VivoForm, the name she and four classmates in the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management (LSM) had given their capstone project.

VivoForm—an advanced form of CAR T therapy initially aimed at cancer treatment, but with potential for autoimmune diseases in the future—was one of a quartet of presentations that day, the culmination of a year of work for these undergraduates, who were tasked with designing a scientifically rigorous business plan for a novel medical advance. This year’s other projects included Rumix Therapeutics, PRIMEGenix, and TollBio, which focused on rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, respectively.

The capstones are a landmark annual event for LSM and its students. At the presentation, students shared their business plans with representatives from companies like Johnson & Johnson and Bain Capital Life Sciences, their LSM student peers, and alums. This year, that included Krishna Patel, C’19, W’19, who spoke about Health and Education Alliance, his nonprofit that connects public schools with healthcare systems to provide improved services at a lower cost for students.

Graduates of the dual-degree LSM program, administered jointly by Penn’s College of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School, enter careers in medicine, bioscience, biotechnology, and other healthcare sectors. Steven Nichtberger, LSM senior fellow and an adjunct professor in Wharton’s Department of Health Care Management, leads the capstone course. “Over the past decade, our graduates have begun to shape the future of healthcare,” he says.

“If there’s one thing about the program that I find especially inspiring,” adds Philip A. Rea, Rebecka and Arie Belldegrun Distinguished Director of the LSM program and Professor of Biology, “it’s the insightful questions that the alums have for the current capstone presentations.”

To learn about the projects from the most recent LSM cohort, Omnia spoke with Nichtberger, Rea, and LSM faculty co-director Lawton R. Burns, James Joo-Jin Kim Professor of Health Care Management, as well as Patel, student presenters Yang and Shreya Mehta, C’24, W’24, and several people from the healthcare sector in the audience that spring day.