Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | March 20, 2023 | Worcester Business Journal 9 System, which is a fancy testing machine for laments, costs upwards of $114,392. A college-incubator partnership Eric Young is an assistant professor in the bioengineering department at WPI, and he and other faculty need the equipment as well. Faculty had asked the school to fund the lab space as they started to look more into gene therapy and other cell treatments, but it was too expensive. In came the Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives incubator, and a partnership was formed. e CERES lab was funded by a 2020 Open Capital Award from the Massachusetts Life Science Center. WPI received $877,314 from former Gov. Charlie Baker's administration for the equipment. As part of the deal, a partnership between WPI and MBI was formed to design and create the space. "e CERES lab and other labs like it make equipment accessible, " said Jon Weaver, MBI president and CEO. A lot of the equipment in the lab is specific and because of that, it's hard to get. "A droplet PCR system is usually only for larger companies," Young said. Take, for example, the CytoFLEX 5 system in the lab. It sorts cells and has four laser-flow cytometers and cell sorters, enabling a scientist to sort cells to collect data. It looks a lot like a laser printer, but inside the box, it's a high-powered machine that will spit out paper-ready data to be used by a company to hit its research benchmark or prove its hypothesis; and thus move onto the next stage in funding. e reason a lot of this equipment is so expensive and so hard to come by is because it's new. e technology still hasn't filtered out into the market, so it hasn't become more common nor replicable on a larger and more affordable scale. "When I was a little kid, microwaves were expensive. Now, they're a lot cheaper," Young said. Building more space e other reason is this specific type of lab space is still difficult to come by outside of Cambridge, Boston, and the Route 128 belt. According to a Newmark Group report for the fourth quarter, there were 1.15 million square feet of life science buildings in the I-495 market (Newmark did not have a simi- lar number for Greater Worcester) and 2.2% was vacant in the fourth quarter. Compare that to Cambridge, which has 3.85 million square feet of space with 6% vacant and another 3.03 million un- der construction. It's easy to see why it's hard to find a place to house the kinds of machines that WPI is offering. ere is more possibility for lab space. Pembroke construction firm Acella Construction Corp. in March competed turning an old library at Clark Univer- sity in Worcester into two laboratories with offices, conference rooms, and a student lounge. Acella is in the process of completing another 980-square-foot lab for $1.2 million on campus as well. Ryan Lavangie, vice president of sales and marketing at Acella, and Eric Garber, a project manager, said the company is seeing more lab construction work in Central Massachusetts, and the compa- ny's expansion to working at Clark was a way for it to branch out into the growing market. So, like the microwaves and televi- sions of the past, for now people will have to share the expensive equipment and space at a lab like CERES, becom- ing an important cog in the life science ecosystem moving forward. W Build more lab space Worcester Polytechnic Institute is home to a Cell Engineering Research Equipment Suite lab space, a fee-for-use facility mainly targeting companies developing cell and gene therapies. The space is utilizing a unique rental format in the region while a growing number of life science companies compete for an increasingly limited supply of startup lab space. When polled online, the overwhelming majority of WBJ readers said creating more laboratory space in Central Massachusetts should be a priority for communities. Should Central Mass. communities prioritize building more lab space to help grow the region's life sciences ecosystem? F L A S H P O L L READER COMMENT: "There is declining demand for lab space, and millions of square feet already in the pipeline." Yes. 83% Price of Mass. lab space County Price per sq. ft. Worcester $31-$45 Essex $35-$61 Norfolk $49-$52 Middlesex $94-$97 Suffolk $107-$110 Source: Massachusetts Biotechnology Council Lab space in Mass. Total life sciences lab Year space (in square feet) 2011 18.4 million 2021 40 million 2022 55.9 million Currently under construction 14.86 million Source: Massachusetts Biotechnology Council The CERES lab may seem small and unassuming, but the machines are powerful data-generating tools. No. 17% W

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