Massachusetts Life Sciences Center

Funds life-science development in Massachusetts through research commercialization, workforce building, and healthcare innovation infrastructure.

Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) is a Massachusetts quasi-public state agency created in 2007 to accelerate medical breakthroughs, scientific education, research opportunities, and workforce expansion. It sits inside the Commonwealth's life-sciences policy stack and has deployed more than $2.6 billion in public commitment since launch. The center organizes its work around human, innovation, growth, and intellectual capital.

MLSC funds companies, researchers, schools, and workforce pipelines through grants, internships, tax incentives, and infrastructure support. Its active routes include Impact Catalyst at up to $250,000 for early-stage, high-risk translational work, ARC Awards at about $750,000 per project for collaborative research, and research infrastructure awards that can reach $5 million. The tax incentive program is a refundable jobs credit, not a grant, and the center also runs MassNextGen, Neuroscience Consortium, Pathmaker, education and workforce grants, and internship programs.

The strongest applicants are Massachusetts-based or Massachusetts-serving organizations that can show collaboration, public benefit, and a clear route to translation or workforce impact. MLSC leans hard into partnerships between companies, hospitals, universities, and nonprofits, and some tracks require open-access commitments or matched investor support. It is one of the state's main levers for moving life-science ideas from lab, to workforce, to commercial scale.