WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Prostate cancer. Malaria. Influenza. All diseases one step closer to eradication thanks to the tireless, lifelong efforts of professor Philip Low. Now he’s planning to usher his world-changing innovations into a new era.
The creation of the Low Institute for Therapeutics (LIFT) was announced Tuesday (April 29) at an event on campus. The institute will work toward accelerating lifesaving therapeutics from the lab and into the world by funding necessary early-stage trials in partnership with Purdue University and Purdue Research Foundation.
Low is Purdue’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery, the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the College of Science, and a faculty member in the Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery and the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research. Low holds 101 U.S.-issued patents through the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). He has also founded seven companies based on Purdue-developed intellectual property, with one exit, Endocyte, which sold in a $2.1 billion deal with Novartis and led to the development of the cancer therapy Pluvicto.
With the institute, he seeks to replicate the success he’s had moving from research to commercialization in multiple startups — Endocyte, but also On Target Laboratories, Eradivir, Umoja and others. The institute will share Low’s research-to-commercialization expertise with the broader Purdue ecosystem.
