The following is an excerpt from a Boston Globe story published on June 19, 2025:
Fabien Dépis couldn’t afford admission to the BIO International Convention this year at the jam-packed Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. He needed the money — hundreds of dollars — to pay the rent on his lab space in Allston.
Instead, Dépis, an immunologist and CEO of startup TregShield Bio, spent the week running back and forth to the Seaport to attend networking events surrounding the biopharmaceutical industry’s annual conference. His hope: to meetan investor who could extend the life of his newborn company.
Funding has become an even greater challenge for young biotechnology companies as the industry, which famously burns through money like wildfires, tries to recover from a post-COVID downturn. The high-flying days capped by the pandemic, when venture capital firms seemed to write big checks to any promising technology, are long gone, and cuts in federal research spending under President Trump are worsening the money drought.
Early stage startups, operating without much financial cushion, are feeling the impact sooner than better-established companies.
Dépis, and many entrepreneurs like him, are looking for ways to get their science funded. For example, LabCentral, a biotech startup incubator, has a program that allows big pharmaceutical companies to invest in cutting-edge science without making long-term commitments. Pharma companies cover the costs of lab space for individual scientists for a year, providing an easy exit if the research doesn’t prove promising.
In its recent five-year strategic plan, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council pitched the idea of a seed fund to support companies that graduate from the trade group’s incubator program. Discussions are underway with MassBio’s partners such as LabCentral and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public state agency.
“What’s happened this year just validated our plans,” said MassBio CEO Kendalle Burlin O’Connell. “We knew that we needed to support these early stage companies. We really, really feel it’s imperative for Massachusetts to be an entrepreneur, founder-centric ecosystem.”