Blog

We recently celebrated our first decade here at LabCentral, which was a cause for deep reflection for me. It was a terrific opportunity to thank everyone who has been part of this odyssey and to look forward to our continued journey of innovation.  

In advance of inviting the community that has made LabCentral what it is today – entrepreneurs, scientists, mentors, experts, academics, investors, our sponsors, industry visionaries, LabCentral team members and so many more – I had the opportunity to think about some of the success drivers for entrepreneurs. I’ll take some time over the next few months to explore a few of them both here and in a new video series, The Dish, that we’ve recently launched. For now, we’ll focus on speed.  

For innovation in any industry – from technology to life sciences – speed matters. It’s a business imperative to accelerate the research and development process, create and protect intellectual property (IP), and build high-growth companies. 

Take generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) pioneer, ChatGPT. Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has shaped a disruptive new software category, unlocking a seemingly endless array of new applications. Just two months after its launch, ChatGPT was the fastest-growing software application ever with 100 million users. While for much of the world it may have seemed like generative AI and  ChatGPT appeared overnight, work on artificial intelligence had been going on for decades – just as innovations in biotech and life sciences, where lengthy timelines are a well-known fact.  

New drugs, therapies, devices and diagnostics take years to bring to market, they require significant upfront capital investments, and have rigorous regulatory requirements. Our back-of-the-envelope estimates are that it takes one to two million U.S. dollars and a full year to get an early-stage biotech company up and running and provide lab infrastructure for a small team of scientists. This includes the time and money to set up office and lab space, obtain permits, purchase the required equipment and have it installed and calibrated. And typically, the ones doing all that work – from ordering lab equipment to getting construction permits – are the founding scientists who aren’t experts in negotiating leases or setting up new commercial buildings, and whose time would be much better used advancing their scientific research towards the next milestone or value inflection point.  

After living through this process with our own early stage companies, Peter’s and my vision for LabCentral was to create a turnkey environment customized to the specific needs of biotech start-ups. We wanted to develop a place where biotech founders could walk in and start doing bench science on day one and get so much more, as well. We also knew that many scientific founders would benefit from a collaborative environment where they could find support, connections and guidance about drug development, venture capital, IP and the numerous other topics that are essential to the success of their startups but that they might not yet know much about. This approach – integrating science and all the ancillary resources needed to build a successful company – now significantly accelerates our residents’ time to data,  milestones, and clinical trials. On average our residents take only 4.3 years from when they join LabCentral to starting a clinical trial.  

The value of our innovation infrastructure and community is evident in the data from our 2023 Impact Report, which showcases progress made towards improving human health by the nearly 300 companies we have supported since we started ten years ago. As our residents continue to push the boundaries of scientific discovery over the next decade, we look forward to seeing biotech impact patient health worldwide, but also make an increasing impact in other areas, such as nutrition, global warming, material science, data storage and many other critical fields.  

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A bit about ‘The Dish,’ our new video series 

In this new YouTube series, Johannes Fruehauf, LabCentral’s President and Executive Director, dives deep into the dynamic world of biotech with a series of founders. The series spotlights the stories at the heart of Cambridge’s vibrant biotech culture offering a front-row seat to the innovations that shape the future of biotech. Click here to watch our first episode of the series and be sure to follow us on social media to catch new episodes monthly as they’re released.