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In a “report card” presented on Wednesday, Massachusetts Life Sciences  Center (MLSC) President and CEO Susan Windham- Bannister, PhD, shared both good news and caution following the Center’s first full year of operation.

MLSC was funded in 2008 to steward the  10-year, $1B  Massachusetts Life Sciences Initiative– launched by Gov. Deval Patrick in 2007 to accelerate  biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics and bioinformatics in the state.

The good news, Bannister told an audience of approximately 100 over lunch at the Cambridge Innovation Center,  is that investment of $48.5 M in public dollars has attracted nearly $359M in matching investments from companies, foundations, government, institutes and other private investors—an 8-fold return.  “There’s still capital out there and life science is a good place to put your money,” she said.  “By putting state money into the pot, we have ‘de-risked’ investment that the state would have had to find elsewhere”.

Bannister pointed out that the funded projects  could lead to some 950 permanent or building-trade jobs in the near future.

She cautioned, however,  that in the current economic downturn, tax revenues are “iffy” and it’s not yet clear how much money will be available for the Initiative in 2010.

Headquartered in Waltham, the MLSC provides grants for public infrastructure products; tax incentives to encourage corporate growth and expansion; a loan program for early-stage companies, an “innovation fund” to promote potential job creation, revenue enhancement and   scientific advancement; and funds to encourage workforce development.

Bannister said that over the past year, MSLC has invested:

*Nearly $25M for capital projects including:

• $5.2M for construction of a new wastewater facility to serve the Framingham Technology Park. The project, she said, will allow Genzyme Corporation to build a new facility expected to create 300 new manufacturing jobs in 2009.
• $10M to renovate part of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. The investment leveraged an additional $15 M in funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and is expected to create 200 jobs in the building trades and up to 50 permanent jobs.
• $9.5  M to support construction of the New England Regional Biosafety Laboratory at the Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton. The $33.6M project is projected to create 56 full-time equivalent construction jobs and 29 long-term positions—and one of just three comparable facilities in the nation.

*Accelerator” loans totaling $3.4 M for 7 companies, an expansion grant of $7.4M to a Canton company, and $12M to research institutions for collaborations with industry or other universities, attracting new faculty and funding young scientists.

*$695,000 in continued funding for the International Stem Cell Registry, a joint initiative between the Center and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

(In 2008, the MLSC invested $570,000 in the registry and $7.7 million in the affiliated Massachusetts Stem Cell Bank, which maintains and provides stem cell lines to the research community. The MLSC’s stem cell investments should help Massachusetts compete for new federal research dollars and provide stem cell lines to national and international academic commercial organizations, according to MLSC documents.)

*Funds  to companies for student internship opportunities, and is in discussions with several universities about new degree programs aimed at professional training that will combine business and science.

In 2009, Johnson and Johnson donated $500, 000 to MSLC—with no strings attached, Bannister said.

By adding employment opportunities,  these  investments and incentives could help to absorb some of the job losses expected in other sectors, according to Bannister.

Frank Reynolds, CEO of InVivo Therapeutics, which is developing stem cell/ polymer technology aimed at halting the effects of traumatic spinal cord injury, said that receiving a $500 thousand loan just as  venture capital possibilities tanked this fall made a tremendous difference in his company’s ability to proceed. ”  It’s a great program,” Reynolds said. (Disclosure:   I work with InVivo).

MLSC also provided loans ranging from $400,000 to $500,000 to:

• Eutropics Pharmaceuticals ($500,000), a Dorchester company that is developing cancer drugs
• Good Start Genetics of Boston, which is developing a low-cost pre-pregnancy test for 50 genetic disorders
•  PluroMed of Woburn, for  pioneering injectable plugs that occlude blood flow to provide surgeons with bloodless fields
• SpectraAnalysis of Marlborough, for  developing instruments to analyze the molecular structure of each compound in a complex mixture
•  Wadsworth Medical of Westborough, which is developing a painless, needless wound closure system without anesthesia or sutures and
• Wolfe Laboratories of Watertown, which provides quantitative testing, formulation and strategy for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Co-operative research grants were awarded to:

• U Mass Lowell and Boston Scientific for new polymer materials
• The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science and Physics and Rain Dance Technologies for development of a functional fluorescent-activated cell sorter
• Massachusetts General Hospital and Idera Pharmaceuticals for targeting of toll-like receptors in auto-immune diseases
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Biomeasure for design and testing of a new regenerative protein for delivery
• UMass Medical School and RXi Pharmaceuticals for development of orally-delivered RNAi therapeutics.

—Anita M. Harris,  Harris Communications Group,  Cambridge, MA         
Copyright: Anita M. Harris