Jack Hoppin, inviCRO cofounder and managing director; Marc Seaman, inviCRO imaging scientist; Deval Patrick, governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts; Maurice “Mo” Cowan, former U.S. Senator; Matt Silva, inviCRO senior director of imaging research; and (behind) the inviCRO Lab Team celebrate inviCRO’s expanded development agreement with Israel-based Aspect Imaging.
Boston – Governor Deval Patrick recently visited inviCRO, a fast-growing Boston life sciences firm, to join in announcing the company’s expanded development agreement with Israel-based Aspect Imaging. The commercial agreement comes as a direct result of the governor’s recent Innovation Partnership Mission to Israel. inviCRO was represented as part of the life sciences delegation on the mission. The extended software development contract with Aspect Imaging will seek to develop advanced imaging analysis tools for the company’s innovative, compact MRI platform.
“I am pleased that our recent Innovation Partnership Mission continues to produce beneficial commercial relationships between Massachusetts-based companies and companies in Israel,” said Governor Patrick. “inviCRO has chosen Massachusetts as a great place to expand, and their partnership with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center will help facilitate the company’s growth.”
“We were honored to be part of Governor Patrick’s Innovation Partnership Mission to Israel, and we are excited to announce this collaboration as a direct result of that mission,” said Jack Hoppin, cofounder and managing director of inviCRO. “There is perfect synergy between Aspect Imaging’s novel MRI platform and inviCRO’s imaging software solutions, which allows Aspect Imaging to accelerate their time-to-market and bring the most robust quantitative solutions to their global customer base.”
“Global demand for our innovative, compact MRI systems continues to grow as researchers in academic and pharmaceutical research continue to seek new imaging solutions. Such solutions allow them to increase efficiency in obtaining insights in understanding biological processes or understanding therapeutic efficacy,” said Uri Rappaport, founder and CEO of Aspect Imaging. “inviCRO’s software solutions are creative and innovative. We are pleased to have inviCRO as a development partner who can offer our customers the most complete suite of analytic, multimodality, and application-specific solutions for their research.”
As part of the development contract, inviCRO will extend functionality on Aspect Imaging’s LumiQuant platform, a hardware and software solution for multimodal imaging 3D quantitative luminescence data, as well as develop tools for automating and streamlining MR analysis for molecular imaging on Aspect Imaging’s compact MRI platform. As part of the collaboration, inviCRO will also host an M3 and an M7 compact, high-performance MRI system from Aspect Imaging for in vivo demonstrations and use in inviCRO’s research at its multimodality, preclinical imaging suite in Boston’s Innovation District.
“Collaboration is critical to life sciences innovation,” said Susan Windham-Bannister, Ph.D., president and CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. “Governor Patrick has been a strong promoter of innovation partnerships, and this exciting new partnership is a direct result of his trade mission to Israel. The collaboration between inviCRO and Aspect Imaging will lead to improved technologies for medical imaging, while further strengthening the growing business ties between Massachusetts and Israel.”
inviCRO, a life sciences research organization focused on medical imaging, has received several forms of support from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), the agency charged with implementing Governor Patrick’s 10-year, $1-billion Life Sciences Initiative. The company has received more than $260,000 in tax incentives to encourage employment growth in Massachusetts. At the beginning of 2014, inviCRO received $250,000 from the MLSC as a part of the Center’s International Collaborative Industry Program (ICIP) to support the company’s research and development collaboration with Quebec-based Biospective, Inc., focused on Parkinson’s disease. For the past four years InviCRO has participated in the MLSC’s internship challenge program, receiving assistance with finding qualified interns and reimbursement for the interns’ salaries.
inviCRO was recently named one of the fastest-growing privately owned companies in the United States, according to Inc. Magazine (top 350 in 2013; top 700 in 2014). In November of 2013 the MLSC worked with inviCRO to organize a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the company’s new facility in Boston’s Innovation District. During his visit, Patrick toured inviCRO’s 12,000sf facility, which houses both the company’s headquarters and state-of-the art imaging equipment.
Governor Patrick’s visit also highlighted the extraordinary growth going on in the state’s life sciences sectors. Over the past six months, major global life sciences companies, including GE Healthcare, Baxter and Shire, have announced plans to locate more than 1000 new jobs in Massachusetts.
“Through Governor Patrick’s Life Sciences Initiative we have made Massachusetts the world’s leading ecosystem for life sciences innovation and growth, with companies large and small investing and creating jobs here,” said Susan Windham-Bannister, Ph.D., president and CEO of the MLSC. “Companies like inviCRO are an important part of that ecosystem, and we look forward to an ongoing partnership as the company continues to grow here.”
