Landmark Bio

Launched in 2021, Landmark Bio is an unprecedented venture bringing together the best of industry, academia and research hospitals to accelerate life sciences innovation. A public benefit company, their work advances emerging technologies, demonstrates therapeutic potential, and improves human health.

Landmark Bio’s founders include Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, Cytiva, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. Collaborating partners include Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Boston Children’s Hospital.

What Landmark Bio Does

Landmark Bio’s subject matter experts partners with life sciences innovators to accelerate the pace of innovation towards the ultimate goal of improving human health. Landmark offers therapeutic development expertise, end-to-end, best-in-class development strategy and technologies, including innovative product development, state-of-art manufacturing technologies, GMP production and in-house quality control capabilities, extensive regulatory support, and efficient supply chain management practices to enable speed-to-clinic and commercialization.

In 2022, the company opened its state-of-the-art full-spectrum development and biomanufacturing facility in Watertown. This 44,000 square-foot facility includes laboratory space for translational research and early development, process and analytical development, and technology innovation. The biomanufacturing area comprises eight cleanrooms for cell therapies; genome editing; viral vector, mRNA, and lipid nanoparticle production; and fill and finish and quality control (QC) testing.

In addition, Landmark Bio provides wraparound services such as drug development and regulatory consulting, program management, and other support services.

History of Landmark Bio

Launched in 2021, Landmark Bio was conceived to accelerate life sciences innovation. The company’s cross-sector network, expert staff and consultants, state-of-the-art facility, and broad definition of how a true partner can expedite translational research are what makes them unique.

How can MIT faculty and researchers use Landmark Bio for translational projects?

There are many potential use cases for working with Landmark Bio. A few examples include:

• MIT faculty and research teams could be seeking opportunities to implement new manufacturing technologies and/or devices in an industrial setting to gain real-world experience and feedback. Landmark Bio provides opportunities to collaborate and advance such prototypes in actual test runs, including in potential use cases with hospital or industry partners.
• MIT faculty and their research teams could be developing a potential new cell or gene therapy orgenetic material delivery approach, and they could advance their research by leveraging Landmark Bio’s various capabilities and services (e.g. covered by a current NIH-sponsored project).
• MIT faculty and their research teams could be developing bioinformatic, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and modeling tools to aid design and prediction of formulations for genetic material deliveries. The design tools and predictions could be tested for actual projects executed in Landmark Bio’s laboratories.
• MIT faculty and their research teams could be developing novel tissue engineering and/or organoid materials and seeking to test their utility in pre-clinical research and development. Landmark Bio could scale-up such technologies and produce sufficient material quantities to support non-clinical research needs.

If you’re interested in working with Landmark Bio, please initiate a conversation with the MIT advisory group for Landmark Bio (LB-MIT AG) or with a member of the Landmark Bio leadership team.

Bios available here

Leadership Team

• Ran Zheng, Chief Executive Officer
• Gregg Nyberg, Chief Technology Officer
• Michael Covington, Chief Quality and Regulatory Officer
• Aileen Baquiran, Vice President Business Operations
• Zhimei Du, Vice President Translational Research & Early Development

Board of Directors

• Alan Garber, Board Chair, Provost, Harvard University
• Amanda Halford, President, Bioprocess, Cytiva
• Cynthia Barnhart, Provost, MIT
• Martin Meeson, Chief Executive Officer, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies
• Brett Geiger, Associate Science & Technology, Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc, Alexandria Venture Investments

Landmark’s 44,000 square-foot integrated facility in Watertown includes:

• Innovation and development labs
  • Translational research and early development
  • Process development
  • Analytical development
• GMP manufacturing
  • 4 cell processing suites
  • 2 viral vector (upstream and downstream) suites
  • 1 mRNA and LNP suite
  • 1 fill and finish suite
• Quality control labs
• Office space

• Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Mass General Brigham
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Boston Children’s Hospital