Blog

LabCentral 238, the first coworking infrastructure available to startups beginning to scale up processing, is fully-staffed and fully-operational, and it just may be our most colorful facility yet.

After more than two years of planning, designing, permitting, building, training, and searching for the perfect orange chairs, all during a global pandemic, the LabCentral community came together to celebrate the first phase of its newest facility in Kendall Square coming online.

LabCentral 238 is the newest addition to the LabCentral fleet of state-of-the-art coworking lab facilities and is set to be our biggest endeavor/operation. By this time next year, LC 238 will have over 100,000 square feet of space dedicated to process development for startups manufacturing next generation cell and gene therapies, and other complex modality treatments for areas of high unmet medical need. This is the first time coworking infrastructure is available for startups going through their product scale up processes, and LabCentral is thrilled to continue to provide support for the evolving needs of innovative startups in the biotech space.

Six new resident companies have already moved in over the course of the fall and have hit the ground running with their incredibly important work to design and test the processes for their novel compounds with our new and sophisticated biomanufacturing equipment.

To cap off this momentous feat and a tremendous year, on December 13 we held our Spotlight on 238 event and invited our LabCentral community of startups, sponsors, and colleagues to celebrate together in achieving our goals of opening the first phase of the facility on schedule, including training and successfully onboarding a robust and dedicated team.

Guests in attendance had the pleasure to tour the vibrant facility to see the six state-of-the-art lab spaces, each painted a different color with lab benches to match! The Chroma Café was also a stop on the tour featuring a floor-to-ceiling rendition of our emblematic LabCentral Chunky Rainbow. Guests could also explore the shared and private office space – again, all brightly colored with glass walls, reflecting LabCentral’s commitment to diversity, transparency, and creativity of thought, people, and science.

None of this incredible progress could have happened without the support from our sponsors and supporters Astellas, Baker, Thermo Fisher, Eppendorf, waters, Millipore Sigma and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center who have joined us on this journey to impact the life sciences industry. We are incredibly grateful to this community that has come together to collectively change the way startups develop and manufacture new treatments as LabCentral 238 has been designed to alleviate the operational and financial burdens startups currently face when creating their own manufacturing processes.

On the day of our Spotlight event, Founding Sponsor Astellas was able to move into their new office at the heart of our LabCentral 238 facility. We can’t wait for them and our other sponsors and supporters to lend their deep expertise to our resident companies and foster crucial collaborations to bring new therapies to patients faster.

Stay tuned to hear about our Grand Opening in the spring of 2022 when Phase II is complete. We will have an official ribbon cutting ceremony to recognize the work of our sponsors and the incredible work being done by our residents.

238 Site Head Lyndsey Rissen welcomes the crowd of resident companies, sponsors, and community members

Hide Goto, President, Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine from Founding Sponsor Astellas spoke of their enthusiasm to be part of LabCentral’s newest offering for growing startups

A view of the lab space complete with colorful walls, comfy seating and even local art.

The signature LabCentral Chunky Rainbow is featured in our Chroma Café!

Two delicious specialty cocktails were featured during the event, and even housed in beakers provided by Thermo Fisher Scientific