These 2 Biotechs Just Won Bristol-Myers' Golden Ticket Award

Princeton, NJ-based Bristol-Myers Squibb and Cambridge, Mass.-based LabCentral announced the two winners of the Bristol-Myers Squibb 2017 Golden Tickets for LabCentral. The “Golden Tickets” underwrite the expenses of one lab bench for one year at LabCentral’s facility in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Mass.

LabCentral is a 70,000 square-foot facility in Kendall Square that offers fully permitted lab and office space for as many as 60 startups. Its facility provides space, administrative support, lab personnel, a domain-relevant expert speaker series, and other critical services. It is a private, nonprofit institution funded in part by two $5 million grants from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, and with support from its real-estate partner, MIT. Founding sponsors include Triumvirate Environmental and Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

“We are delighted to award Golden Tickets to Neutrolis and Remora Therapeutics, two emerging, innovative companies with significant scientific potential,” said Carl Decicco, Bristol-Myers’ Head of Discovery, in a statement. “The winners align with our commitment to enabling scientific innovation in our research areas of focus. We look forward to seeing these promising companies advance their research programs at LabCentral. Our sponsorship of LabCentral has facilitated important collaborations between Bristol-Myers Squibb researchers and the Cambridge community, as we prepare for our research site opening in Cambridge next year.”

Neutrolis is working on inflammatory diseases related to uncontrolled neutrophilic inflammation. These diseases include lupus and sepsis. The company has a proprietary genetic technology platform and is working to develop drugs that neutralize excessive neutrophilic inflammation in addition to a companion diagnostic that could be used to identify appropriate patients.

Remora focuses on platelet-based cell therapies. Platelets are involved in blood clotting, but are also implicated in many human diseases, including cancer and autoimmune diseases. The company’s proprietary technology was developed to engineer platelets to fight diseases.

“Bristol-Myers Squibb’s first two Golden Ticket winners, PanTher and Suono Bio, have each met important research milestones and have been terrific contributors to the LabCentral community,” said Johannes Fruehauf, LabCentral’s co-founder and president, in a statement. “We are pleased to welcome Neutrolis and Remora Therapeutics—impressive startups—and we expect that they will likewise thrive here.”

LabCentral has been so successful that it plans to open LabCentral 610 in December 2017, with support from Pfizer. It will have an additional 33,000 square feet and be able to support up to six early- to mid-stage companies by 2018.

On Oct. 24, it announced that Elemental Machines was expanding its commitment to LabCentral, doubling the installation of its smart lab technology, the Elemental Machines Sensory Network in support of the expansion. The system is an IoT-based network of wireless sensors and cloud-based dashboard software that allows LabCentral and its resident companies insight into lab operations. It monitors critical equipment performance and ambient factors related to bench work, such as temperature, humidity, air pressure, and light.

“We are delighted to support LabCentral, which is addressing a critical need in startup ecosystem for science-based companies, and are honored that they have chosen our system,” said Sridhar Iyengar, Elemental Machines’ chief executive officer and founder, in a statement. “As a state-of-the-art facility, their adoption of smart lab technologies is an important validation of this emerging category of solutions.”

Celina Chang, LabCentral’s director of laboratory operations said in a statement, “Since we began using the Elemental Machines system, our team has come to rely on data and insights to monitor and manage equipment, understand equipment usage patterns, and make strategic decisions about maintenance and replacement. Moreover, residents are finding numerous ways to use the system data to their advantage, as well.”