The Worcester life sciences incubator Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives has won a $252,000 federal grant to help spur regional economic development and biomedical entrepreneurship.
The grant, which MBI announced Monday, was given to 44 organizations nationwide from a program called the Scaling Pandemic Resilience Through Innovation and Technology, or SPRINT, Challenge. The funding is meant to help MBI pair entrepreneurs work with biomedical companies to get their products to the market.
One out of five MBI incubator companies are working on treatments for COVID-19, said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, a Worcester Democrat, who supported MBI’s grant application to the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
MBI has more than doubled the size of its incubator operations over the past year, and said it’s now focused on supporting the growth of its startups. MBI, which began at Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Gateway Park, has since expanded to new space a few blocks away on Briden Street, which it has found tenants for at a pace that has exceeded expectations, despite the pandemic.
