Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1496515
Central MA Life Sciences Report 13 sciences hubs in Natick, Marlborough, and Worcester, where UMass Chan Medical School and the UMass Memorial Medical Center can provide their own beacon of research and medical practice. So how does the money eventually start to move to the area? According to a 2022 Massachusetts Biopharma Funding Report, Massachusetts companies received $8.72 billion in venture capital funding in 2022, behind 2021's $13.66 billion, but most of it went to companies in and around Cambridge and Boston. Cambridge received 49% of the funding while Boston got 23%. Communities like Natick and Framingham each had companies get more than $89 million in 2022, which is far less than the more than $4 billion for Cambridge or even the $916 million in Waltham, but it's a start. And that start is happening because companies are beginning to look outside of the hub to find the space they need at a reasonable price. One of the places startups have begun to look is in Natick where Raphael Nir co-founded ABI-LAB with Gary Kaufman. Nir co-founded SBH Sciences, which is a Natick biotech company paying for its research by providing preclinical development research and services to other biopharmaceutical and biotech companies. He also founded SBH Diagnostics, which is a contract research organization. But what he really wanted to do was to help foster more startups, so with Kaufman, he opened ABI-LAB in September 2016. "We built out for 15 companies and underestimated the demand," Kaufman said. ABI-LAB has quickly grown from one building for 15 companies to preparing to open a third in 2023. Ripe for talent, investment Kaufman and Nir looked at different places to open that first lab and found Natick was the sweet spot for them. It was close enough to Boston and Cambridge to bring talent and venture capital money in. They discovered a lot of the people who worked in Greater Boston lived in the MetroWest area, and they could convince them to shorten their commute and give Natick consideration to start their next venture. They built purpose-driven buildings with state-of-the-art plumbing, electricity, and HVAC, which are vital in lab settings needing specific conditions to operate. Drew Croke performs research at the ABI-LAB incubator in Natick. P H O T O / E D D C O T E Raphael Nir, co-founder of ABI-LAB Continued on page 14