In 2017, FocusMaine announced a 10-year initiative to grow opportunity and prosperity across the state by catalyzing growth in some of the state’s most promising sectors, including Maine’s life sciences economy. Life sciences is the use of biological processes to create new products to improve human, animal, and environmental health. Life science jobs provide meaningful and impactful career opportunities, and produce beneficial products that are exported from the state, thereby bringing new private dollars into the Maine economy. They also create among the highest rate of spin-off jobs to support their operations.

Our original premise that we could recruit businesses from the global life sciences hub in Boston was challenged by the lack of state incentives and trained, available workforce. But the promise of the sector was buoyed by the growth of Maine’s own life sciences sector, including the growth of private companies, both large and small, as well as emerging research and development in Maine’s non-profit and academic research institutions. With these changing dynamics here in Maine, FocusMaine pivoted its strategy and focused on establishing the infrastructure needed locally to grow this sector from within Maine and to build on Maine assets and opportunities.

This decision was buttressed by the fact that Maine’s economy has always relied deeply on its natural resources. A more robust life sciences sector will allow our scientists and entrepreneurs to create new products to improve human, animal, and environmental health derived from Maine’s natural resources, as well as support existing life science companies with greater scientific capacity and a more dense workforce trained in the life sciences disciplines.

Over the past year, FocusMaine invested in helping to create the foundational infrastructure needed to accelerate growth in Maine’s life sciences sector, which is now in place, setting the stage for growing a vibrant life sciences future for our state. We retained Sarah Delmar as our life sciences consultant. Sarah is a Maine boomeranger who spent 16+ years in Cambridge establishing regional knowledge worker ecosystems across the globe. She worked closely with the FocusMaine Life Sciences Advisory Team, and the leaders at BioME, Maine Technology Institute, and the state government to help knit together and advance infrastructure developments.

We are excited that these collaborative efforts with MTI, BioME, and leaders in state government have resulted in the foundational infrastructure needed to take this effort into its next chapter.

• Governor Mills signed an executive order in September establishing the Maine Life Sciences Innovation Center at MTI.
• Sarah Delmar was named the Center’s Founding Director.
• Hatch.bio, whose owner was introduced to Maine by FocusMaine’s recruiter years ago, received an MTI grant to develop a commercial shared wet lab space by year end 2026.
• The Roux Institute at Northeastern University was awarded funding to expand its lab capacity and support Hatch.bio’s efforts.

These milestones mark a transformational step for Maine’s economy. The dedicated infrastructure now taking shape will accelerate growth, spur innovation and workforce attraction and development, and create new, meaningful jobs. Continued collaboration among leaders in the private sector, academia, research institutions, and government, supported by both public and private investment, will be essential to realizing the sector’s full promise.

FocusMaine’s role has been to catalyze growth—to help launch and structure efforts that can then sustain themselves within Maine’s broader innovation ecosystem. With the creation of the Maine Life Sciences Innovation Center, that vision has been achieved. The Center now provides the home, leadership, and coordination needed to carry this work forward. While FocusMaine will support the Center during its start-up year, this milestone represents the successful transition of our life sciences work from initiative to institution, exactly the outcome we set out to achieve.

Meanwhile, our three-year partnership with the Roux Institute at Northeastern University is coming to a natural end. For three years, FocusMaine has fostered stronger networks within the Maine life sciences community through partnerships with Northeastern University’s Roux Institute, the Maine Life Sciences Network, and BioME. These partnerships, among other things, convened the annual Maine Life Sciences Impact Forum, which united researchers and institutions in collaborations on shared projects, strengthening connections, and advancing Maine-based research. We also sponsored a Roux Institute-organized “field trip” of Maine life science leaders to Gainesville, FL to learn how that community built its life science ecosystem. Lasting relationships were seeded with these seminal activities, and we are grateful to Aileen Huang-Saad at the Roux for her vision and leadership on these initiatives.

We close our life sciences chapter with gratitude for the leadership of Governor Janet Mills, former Commissioner Heather Johnson, Commissioner Mike Duguay, Maine Technology Institute Director Brian Whitney, Senator Teresa Pierce, BioME Executive Director Agnieszka Carpenter, former FocusMaine Presidents Kim Hamilton and Dana O’Brien, and employee Leo Waterston, former FocusMaine Advisory Team members, and consultants Satish Tadikonda and Sarah Delmar, and many others who pursued this common vision with persistence and partnership. Congratulations to all involved!

To our funders, partners, and friends, thank you for your steadfast support over the past eight years, allowing us to fulfill our catalytic role in this endeavor.

Here’s to the next chapter of Maine Life Sciences!

Sincerely,

Andrea Cianchette Maker
Co-Founder and President, FocusMaine

Michael Dubyak
Co-Founder, FocusMaine
Former President, CEO, and Chairman, WEX Inc.