Bristol-Myers Squibb and LabCentral, a Cambridge, Mass.-based shared laboratory space, announced the two winners of the Bristol-Myers Squibb’s 2018 Golden Tickets for LabCentral. Due to being a platinum sponsor, Bristol-Myers Squibb could choose up to two innovative life science companies per year for Golden Tickets. This covers the cost of one lab bench for one year at LabCentral’s facility at Kendall Square in Cambridge.
Bristol-Myers Squibb and LabCentral, a Cambridge, Mass.-based shared laboratory space, announced the two winners of the Bristol-Myers Squibb’s 2018 Golden Tickets for LabCentral. Due to being a platinum sponsor, Bristol-Myers Squibb could choose up to two innovative life science companies per year for Golden Tickets. This covers the cost of one lab bench for one year at LabCentral’s facility at Kendall Square in Cambridge.
The two companies receiving the sponsorship were ReviveMed Technologies and Strand Therapeutics. ReviveMed is using a network-based machine learning algorithm to analyze untargeted metabolomic data with the goal of determining if already known therapies can be used to treat other illnesses. The company came out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and earlier this year raised $1.5 million in seed funding.
Strand Therapeutics describes itself as at the intersection of synthetic biology and RNA therapeutics. It has built a genetic programming language of RNA to precisely control gene expression that it hopes will revolutionize immunotherapies. It believes its technology can program the location, timing, and intensity of the therapeutic protein expression. It also came out of MIT.
“ReviveMed and Strand Therapeutics are working to deliver innovative technologies that have the potential to impact patients with serious diseases, and we’re pleased that Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Golden Tickets will enable them to advance their research,” stated Percy Carter, head of Discovery Chemistry and Molecular Technologies at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Carter added, “Our sponsorship of LabCentral underscores our commitment to life-science innovation within the vibrant Cambridge ecosystem. As we prepare for our own research site opening in Cambridge, we are excited by the opportunity for further interactions between LabCentral resident companies and Bristol-Myers Squibb researchers.”
LabCentral has 70,000 square feet of shared laboratory space and is designed to be a launchpad for high-potential life science and biotech startup companies. The facilities include fully functional lab space, permits, waste handling, and reasonably common laboratory equipment. There is also access to conference rooms, event space, and a kitchen.
LabCentral also hosts programming related to life-science startups. It can accommodate about 200 scientists and has 54 individual lab bays and eleven 3-4 scientists “pods” in a shared lab. There are 15 private lab suites of 450 to 1,050 square feet for companies of up to 18 employees, and communal space.
In April 2018, Amgen, which sponsored the 2017 Amgen-LabCentral Golden Ticket, announced that its 2017 winner, QurAlis, officially launched with financial support from Amgen Ventures. QurAlis focuses on developing treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It was started by Kevin Eggan and Clifford Woolf, two Harvard University professors. In November 2018, QurAlis indicated it had won a Pfizer-sponsored Golden Ticket and was a resident company of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS.
Alumni companies from LabCentral include NanKwest, Rubius Therapeutics, Torque, Unum Therapeutics and many others. Rubius had one of the most successful, if not the most successful, initial public offering for a biotech startup in July of this year. It began trading under the ticker symbol “RUBY” at $23 per share. It raked in $241 million, a record for the Massachusetts biotech sector.
In the fall of 2018, LabCentral expanded its original site to double the original size. With support from Pfizer, it opened LabCentral 610, giving it the capacity for about 450 scientists and entrepreneurs across its two-building campus. It also added the LabCentral Learning Lab for STEM programming to inspire the next generation of science entrepreneurs.
