The application period will run from Aug. 4 – Nov. 21, 2025 at 1 p.m. EST.
The MLSC launched the Accelerating Research through Collaboration (ARC) Awards to accelerate the research of pressing life science questions through collaboration and to attract and train scientists in the Commonwealth. These public-private partnerships are collaborations between not-for-profit applicants and at least one for-profit Massachusetts life science company. These awards provide approximately $750,000 to cover direct costs and require the hiring of a postdoctoral scientist.
As the leading life sciences ecosystem, Massachusetts recognizes that the role of data sciences in life science innovation has rapidly evolved and has the potential to catalyze that innovation at unprecedented rates. Investment in generating well-annotated datasets and training data scientists for life science research is required to sustain Massachusetts’s global leadership position in life science research and development.
The novel therapeutics delivery track fosters the development of novel technologies and techniques for the delivery of existing or innovative therapies by working at the intersection of engineering, biology, chemistry, and medicine. Specifically, it strives to capitalize and incentivize translational projects to address complex challenges in “therapeutic” delivery – from biomanufacturing, to targeted delivery, to biomaterials, medical devices and more.
This track supports collaborative projects that aim to improve the discovery, technical innovation, and/or analysis of datasets to answer pressing life science questions around women’s health. It incentivizes translational projects that develop novel solutions to treat conditions that solely or disproportionately affect women or have a different presentation between genders.
Utilize our Research Equipment Database where you can search the equipment that MLSC has funded, all of which are available to external researchers.
Over the past six years, the MLSC has awarded $47.2 million in capital funding through 3 tracks of the ARC Awards. Approximately, $750,000 in funding per project has gone to 65 cross-sector projects focused on imaging, cancer, neuroscience, drug discovery/delivery, women’s health, and many other healthcare sectors that develop capital assets, data resources, and novel algorithms to address a myriad of health issues. The success of these projects has led to over $145 million in follow-on funds, 250 publications, and 30 patents filed. Additionally, these projects train the next generation of post-doctoral scientists. The non-profit and industry partners on these projects have contributed more than $78 million in funds.
Learn more about our prior awardees from 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, including the principal investigator, industry partners, and the innovative projects.
Olaris is a precision diagnostics company that is on a mission to revolutionize how diseases are diagnosed and treated. By leveraging their CEREBRO platform (Comprehensive Early Responsive Evaluation of Biomarkers Related to Outcomes), which combines metabolomics and machine learning, they are able to harness the power of the body’s own communication system to discover and develop their pipeline of myOLARIS precision diagnostics.