Blog

Dear Friends and Partners of LabCentral: 

It is with great pleasure that I share the LabCentral Impact Report early in each new calendar year. With all of what is happening in our world of Life Sciences (we will comment on that separately) last year's accomplishments already seem somewhat distant. Yet, taking inventory and reflecting on the year reveals the stories and accomplishments, both large and small, that show what we have achieved as a community of innovators - and where we can evolve.  

As an economic development nonprofit for Massachusetts, LabCentral continues to make a significant impact for our state's economy and the broader life sciences industry. In 2024, our resident companies and graduates raised $2 billion in fresh funding. To put this number in perspective for early-stage venture funding, if our community were a state, it would rank number four alongside biotech’s top VC markets, following Massachusetts and California, and coming in immediately after New York. This year’s $2 billion raised brings LabCentral’s residents’ and alumni’s cumulative total money raised to over $20 billion - invested for science since our opening in 2013. 

Zooming out, the LabCentral network, along with the broader industry, showed encouraging signs of recovery during 2024. Both public and private financings normalized, but the data also showed much of these financings concentrating in fewer deals and larger investment sizes, which means that our early-stage startups are still facing headwinds. 

Zooming out further, the trend towards an ever-increasing reliance of the pharmaceutical industry on external innovation continues. In fact, for many of the leading global players, nearly half of all their blockbusters on the market today have their roots in external innovation. This is why a healthy innovation pipeline and an ongoing flow of ideas and projects from academia through startups to bigger companies continues to be critically important to all stakeholders, and LabCentral provides a direct window into that world.  

In this context, we are particularly proud of the new clinical trials that LabCentral companies and alumni started last year, advancing development for new modalities and molecules towards regulatory approvals and to benefit patients.  With now seven therapies in Phase 3, our community is making real progress toward making life-changing new treatments available for patients.   

As we look ahead, we are steadfast in our commitment to building an environment where innovation thrives in Massachusetts, and where the industry comes together to support life sciences entrepreneurs. AI has become an increasingly important ingredient in many of our resident companies’ development process and we’re excited to meet the communities' growing needs with our recently announced AI BioHub, made possible by a Sector Spark grant from MassTech, which is being purpose-built to accelerate scientific innovation. It is science that offers the solutions for the world’s most pressing problems; we are proud to stand for science and honored to journey alongside our extraordinary partners and scientific pioneers. 

Please read the full 2024 Impact Report here and feel free to join any of our programming, as well.