The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center opened a grant program that pays for commercialization work rather than research. Access and Accelerate awards up to $150,000, with typical grants of $75,000 to $100,000. The current submission period closes October 30 at 1 p.m. ET.
The money can go to consultants, legal fees, specialized equipment and service providers. The center's own examples include FDA pathway assessments, health economic models, manufacturing feasibility analyses and patent landscape mapping. A project has to address one specific commercialization problem and finish inside 6 to 12 months. Applicants must be Massachusetts-based early-stage life science companies.
The first cycle aims at medtech developers chasing payer coverage. MassMEDIC helped design the program, and its president Brian Johnson put the average gap at 5 to 7 years. Later cycles run quarterly, with the 2027 themes still unannounced.
Non-dilutive money that pays a reimbursement consultant or buys a health economic model is unusual. Reimbursement strategy is also where most first-time device teams are thinnest, so the fit is better than the dollar figure suggests.