Governor Baker and Lieutenant Governor Polito had the chance to spotlight workplace safety standards for laboratories and hear about research work being done to push back against COVID-19 at LabCentral. The visit offered an opportunity to highlight the important work LabCentral startups are doing to combat COVID-19 (aka COVIDBusters): E25Bio, Affinivax Inc., and HelixNano.
According to the Cambridge-based incubator, its startups have created 2,400 new jobs in Massachusetts since 2014, raised $1.1 billion in venture capital funding in 2019 alone, and raised more than 20 percent of national Series A funding in biotechnology in 2019.
In October 2019, the Baker-Polito Administration announced a $5 million grant to LabCentral to fund a new resource for the life sciences industry and the local bio-economy with LabCentral 238, a fully functional life sciences laboratory with a focus on scale-up bio-manufacturing comprising approximately 100,000 square feet.
