Program Design
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center’s (MLSC) Access and Accelerate Grant Program is designed to help early-stage Massachusetts life science companies (Applicant) overcome critical go-to-market and commercialization barriers that are difficult to finance through traditional investment or research funding. The program seeks to accelerate company growth, private investment, federal funding success, strategic partnerships, product development, market readiness, and commercialization timelines.
Many promising companies reach technical milestones but struggle to access specialized expertise, market validation, regulatory planning, reimbursement strategy, manufacturing planning, or commercialization support needed to attract follow-on investment and advance toward patients.
Unlike traditional R&D grants, Access and Accelerate focuses specifically on activities that reduce commercialization risk. Funding supports specialized expertise that often falls outside the scope of research grants but is essential for attracting investment and bringing innovations to market.
By supporting targeted go-to-market and commercialization activities, the Access and Accelerate Grant Program helps bridge critical funding gaps, enabling promising companies to move more quickly from innovation to patient impact while strengthening the Commonwealth’s leadership across therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, and emerging life science technologies.
Program Highlights
- The program provides non-dilutive grants up to $150,000 for targeted projects that reduce commercialization risk, accelerate company growth, and strengthen the Massachusetts life sciences ecosystem.
- Average awards are expected to be $75,000 – $100,000.
- The program will run quarterly, and each quarter will focus on a different sector of life sciences such as therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, research tools, and enabling technologies.
- At the opening of each quarterly application cycle, the MLSC will post information on the website and through social media on the specific grant focus, maximum grant award, and the eligible use of funds for the application.
Program Goals
- Accelerate commercialization of innovative life science technologies
- Help companies overcome early business and technical barriers and other steps necessary to bring the concept to market in the Commonwealth
- Enable informed strategic decisions before raising capital
- Increase competitiveness for federal funding and private investment
- Support growth of Massachusetts-based companies and job creation
- Strengthen connections between startups and Massachusetts service providers and commercialization experts
Program Eligibility
- Eligible Applicants must not have raised more than $5 million in dilutive capital prior to submission.
- Applicants are required to be registered to do business in Massachusetts.
- Applicants must be in compliance with all existing agreements with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, if applicable.
- Applicants must be life sciences organizations or provide services to the life sciences industry. “Life sciences” is defined as: “advanced and applied sciences that expand the understanding of human physiology and have the potential to lead to medical advances or therapeutic applications,” – Massachusetts General Laws (MGL), ch. 23I, sec. 2.
- Applicants, if selected, must enter into a grant agreement which shall include Standard Terms, a Schedule of Deliverables, General Terms and Conditions, MLSC Confidential Information Policy, and a Certificate of Compliance of Laws. A sample of these terms may be distributed electronically using the Center’s website. It is the responsibility of Applicants to check the Center’s website for any addenda or modifications to these terms. The Center, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and its subdivisions accept no liability and will provide no accommodation to Applicants who submit an application based on an out-of-date version of these terms.
Application and Review Process
Applications must be submitted online through the Submittable platform. The MLSC will conduct an initial screening for application completeness and program fit, then will submit applications to a panel of external experts for review. Applicants may receive invitations to present their proposals to address questions or provide clarification. The MLSC will provide final recommendations to its Board of Directors for approval.
Applications may be evaluated based on commercial impact, company readiness, clearly defined milestones, ecosystem benefit, and potential to secure follow-on funding.
Priority may be given to early-stage companies, SBIR/STTR awardees, seed-stage companies, companies preparing for institutional investment, first-time founders, and underrepresented entrepreneurs.
Projects should address a specific commercialization challenge that can be completed within approximately six to twelve months. Examples include reimbursement strategy development, customer discovery, FDA pathway assessments, investor-ready commercialization plans, manufacturing feasibility analyses, health economic models, IP landscape analyses, and partnership preparation.
The following are requirements of the Access and Accelerate Grant Application:
- A brief business plan including milestones and timelines to be achieved with the grant funding
- Information on operational readiness and experienced management
- A completed budget containing only allowable costs (see Funding section below) demonstrating the proposed use of the grant funds
- Certificates of Good Standing from both the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth (click on links to begin process).
Funding
Awards of up to $150,000 may be used to engage qualified consultants, access specialized equipment, contract experts, or specialized service providers. Priority will be given to Applicants who are using the funding for Massachusetts-based experts, service providers, and infrastructure, including equipment in the MLSC’s R.E.D. (Research Equipment Database).
Examples include:
- Commercial Strategy: market assessments, competitive analyses, customer discovery, commercialization planning.
- Regulatory & Quality: FDA strategy, clinical development planning, quality systems.
- Reimbursement & Market Access: coverage strategy, health economics, coding/payment assessments, payer landscape analyses.
- Product Development: access to specialized equipment, manufacturing readiness, supply chain planning, prototype optimization.
- Business Growth: partnering strategy, licensing, IP landscape analyses, investor readiness.
- Validation Activities: stakeholder interviews, workflow assessments, customer validation, pilot planning.
This award is NOT able to fund: direct labor, overhead/indirect costs, renting space for data storage, cloud storage fees, publication fees, other subscription fees, software development, legal expenses, travel, paying off debt, paying board members, paying for operating costs such as rent and utilities and activities funded by other funding sources.
The number and amount of awards will be determined by the number and quality of the proposals.
The MLSC reserves the right to adjust the requested amount of funding for each proposal and the right to not fund any proposal(s).
