Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | March 20, 2023 | wbjournal.com Making life sciences affordable WPI's CERES lab offers researchers and companies with limited resources the opportunity to access expensive, hard-to-find equipment vital to development success BY KEVIN KOCZWARA WBJ Staff Writer K enneth Dwyer leans forward when he walks. He turns and faces me as he talks and walks, selling the high points of the Cell Engineering Research Equipment Suite laboratory at Worcester Polytechnic In- stitute he's charged with managing and opening to the public for use. Dwyer nearly bangs into a cart as he maneuvers around a table of breakfast food put out for students who are being trained in another series of labs on the floor where CERES is located. Dwyer almost walks into a rack of laboratory coats but catches himself, spins round again, and hunches forward, propelling toward the laboratory door. He's still talking, arms outstretched, moving and gesturing. Excitement rises in his voice. He gets more animated as he gets closer to the door. He stops and pulls the handle open. Inside, there's a low-level hum and a bunch of computer-tower-looking machines that could pass for a NASA computer 10 years ago. And they are computers, but they're not trying to li a rocket into space. Instead, they're reach- ing into cells and extrapolating data. e machines in here don't look like the old science classrooms or even the classrooms we see in movies. Instead, it's sterile and more like a command center. ese machines aren't for experimen- tation; they're to see if your experiment works. "An amazing amount of data," Dwyer said when pointing at one of the ma- chines. at data is invaluable for small companies, students, and entrepreneurs interested in cell therapy. e fee-for- use lab and its machines can be rented by interested parties aer a training session. And without that kind of access, some of these upstarts wouldn't be able to move on to the next stage of fund- ing, research, or investment because the machines cost into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Searching for them on the Internet and the cost of opening a lab that only spits out data – it doesn't even do the experiments – becomes mind-numbing. One of the machines, a Bio-Rad QX200 Droplet Digital PCR Life sciences jobs, by county % of statewide % of statewide research biomanufacturing jobs and development jobs Worcester 20.4% 4.1% Essex 10.4% 2.0% Middlesex 45.3% 70.8% Norfolk 10.6% 2.2% Suffolk 7.0% 18.8% Source: Massachusetts Biotechnology Council Drugs in development in Mass. Drugs in pipeline for Stage Mass.-headquarted companies Pre-clinical 1,111 Phase 1 328 Phase II 394 Phase III 119 Filed 25 Source: Massachusetts Biotechnology Council Kenneth Dwyer, lab manager at the CERES lab, oper- ates a CytoFLEX 5 system machine. PHOTOS | COURTESY OF WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

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