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Massachusetts Life Sciences Center
When I last spoke with Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, President and CEO, Susan Windham-Bannister, the Center was in the midst of celebrating their one year anniversary of the $1 billion, ten year initiative. In 2008 The Center invested $46 million and leveraged an additional $350 million in public and private funds. Since June, the Center has been fairly busy. They have:
• Continued funding for the International Stem Cell Registry.
• Announced the awarding of New Investigator Matching Grants to 10 young scientists.
• Matched 104 interns with 59 life sciences companies within the Commonwealth with The Center’s Internship Challenge.
Just the other day I spoke with Angus McQuilken, Vice President for Communications at Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. We talked about the Center, and the recent initiatives that they have been pursuing. He said that additional investment of $695,000 in the International Stem Cell Registry is a supplement to last year’s investment of $570,000. Since the Obama administration has lifted restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and Congress has appropriated $8 billion in NIH research grants; when you combine this recent investment with the $7.7 million investment in the Massachusetts Stem Cell Bank, Massachusetts is very well positioned to compete for federal funds.
Massachusetts Life Sciences Center has also completed the second round of the New Investigator Matching Grants that seeks to support young scientists as they set up their labs and get their research underway. They have provided an additional 10 researchers with grants of up to $100,000 for the next two years that are matched dollar for dollar by the researcher's institution. Angus said that the Center is doing this to attract top scientists to Massachusetts and to keep good young scientists in the field, this second round is in addition to the grants from last year to 11 new investigators, so far assisting a total 21 researchers with $12 million coming from The Center and a total of $24 million when you include the matching funds.
In addition to those initiatives the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center has also started the Internship Challenge program matching college students in The Commonwealth with local life sciences companies and providing a stipend for the summer to those interns. 104 interns have been placed with 59 companies, Angus said, that the program has been more successful than anybody could have imagined. Many of these young companies don’t have the infrastructure to recruit interns for the summer, and the Center has created a user-friendly system where these companies can go out and find talent much more easily. The hope is that funding for the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center will increase by next year so that they will be able to continue and build upon their many initiatives, including the Internship Challenge, which is essential to ensuring a large, qualified workforce for The Commonwealth.
Angus said that the programs that they provide are really targeted at providing the supports that are needed for the Massachusetts life sciences industry. The Center is funding innovative young researchers, they are building new infrastructure to keep resources within The Commonwealth ahead of the game and they are making sure the supply of qualified workers remains overabundant. “The research has to take place so that research can be translated into commercialized products and therapies, so that those products and therapies can be brought to the marketplace,” Angus said. “Each step of the process creates an opportunity to create jobs and leverage private and federal investment in our state.” Angus continued, “Really our goal is to identify gaps where they exist and to help play a role in filling them, whether that be working capital for young companies, providing support for scientists, or helping companies and institutions find a way to collaborate so that translational research can go forward.”
We also talked about the Center providing support for the establishment of a Professional Science Masters Degree, University of Massachusetts has just received funding from The Sloan Foundation to expand on their operations in that area. This would provide a hybrid degree to increase the pool of people who have the expertise to address both scientific and business opportunities. In addition to the support of workforce development and support for the basic sciences, Massachusetts Life Sciences Center is currently reviewing the 84 applications to the tax incentive program. The Center is going to provide $25 million in tax incentives for life sciences companies; over the ten years of the initiative, that totals $250 million that The Center is going to be awarding. Those awards will be made on September 23, so we’ll just have to wait and see what comes next.
Massachusetts Life Sciences Center www.masslifesciences.com
* Angus G. McQuilken contributed to the composition of this article, and may be contacted at AMcQuilken@MassLifeSciences.com.
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