Those who gathered on Thursday, Oct. 27, for the grand opening of the Blavatnik Harvard Life Lab Longwood were there not just to admire a new state-of-the art research facility but to celebrate the promise of biomedical science to transform health and well-being for all.
- By JAKE MILLER
The 10,000-square-foot space houses wet and dry labs and includes offices and collaborative workspaces designed to nurture nascent biotechnology and life science enterprises. Available for lease to early-stage, high-potential biotech and life sciences start-ups founded by Harvard students, alumni, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty, the lab can accommodate up to 12 companies.
The Life Lab is a centerpiece of the Harvard Medical School Therapeutics Initiative, which aims to help HMS researchers transform their most promising fundamental biological discoveries into high-impact medicines faster, more efficiently, and more affordably. The initiative is a sweeping effort to advance therapeutics research, accelerate translation of discoveries into medicines, and train the inventors of future medicines.
"It's a thrill to see this essential component of our Therapeutics Initiative come to fruition," said HMS Dean George Q. Daley. "The Boston biomedical ecosystem represents the greatest basic and translational life sciences cluster in the world, and Harvard Medical School is a major reason. The work conducted in the Blavatnik Life Lab will accelerate the process of transforming our community's fundamental scientific discoveries into therapies that impact patients, advancing our mission to improve health and well-being for all people."
The new lab will operate as a sibling lab to the Harvard Business School's Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab in Allston as part of Harvard University's ecosystem of Innovation Labs. This collaboration will help cement a partnership between HMS and HBS focused on life science innovation, as the two schools work to provide business and scientific support to companies at both facilities.
"Progressing a medicine toward approval will almost universally require creating or working with a company," said Mark Namchuk, executive director of therapeutics translation and professor of the practice in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. "With the addition of the Life Lab we can provide members of the Harvard community infrastructure and expertise in both therapeutics R&D and company creation to help launch companies that can deliver impactful medicines."
The lab is one of the key elements supported by a 2018 gift from the Blavatnik Family Foundation that provided $200 million to accelerate the pace of therapeutic discovery and support initiatives aimed at solving some of humanity's most acute biomedical challenges.
"I'm proud to support this multidisciplinary initiative and help drive the discovery and application of new therapeutics throughout the Harvard medical community," said Len Blavatnik, founder and chairman of Access Industries and head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, who was on campus for the lab opening event. "The Life Lab will also connect scientists with business mentorship through Harvard Business School, further benefiting the life science ecosystem."
Critical resources
The Blavatnik Life Lab's location on the medical school campus allows resident start-ups convenient access to several of the School's research core facilities, which offer highly specialized services, equipment, and staff to help move research forward.
For example, the newly established Drug Discovery Sciences Core provides deep expertise in the science of therapeutics discovery, testing, and execution, and in the specifics of project management for the kind of complex operations involved in life science based start-ups. The core is adjacent to the Blavatnik Life Lab and offers support both to tenant companies and the broader HMS research community.
The Blavatnik Life Lab will also serve as a training ground for HMS postdoctoral research fellows interested in therapeutic drug development, Namchuk said, noting that there will be no academic research conducted in the Blavatnik Life Lab and that HMS itself will not be commercializing drugs.
The open house was the first opportunity for community members to see the new wet lab facilities at the heart of the lab. Scientists in the start-ups benefit from an integrated infrastructure and governance provided by leaders of the Therapeutics Initiative and the Blavatnik Life Lab, as well as their partners at LabCentral.
"Our goal is to help new companies succeed and grow," said Timothy Jarrett, associate director of operations for LabCentral, who led a tour of the facilities. Start-ups will have access to research tools and infrastructure and an opportunity to sharpen their business skills while they conduct crucial early experiments in a flexible, affordable space, Jarrett said. A company can start small by renting a single research bench month-to-month without having to make a large capital investment, he added.
