By Hannah Green
Charles River Labs has a new facility coming to Somerville next month.
The Wilmington-based contract research company is opening a Charles River Accelerator and Development Lab (CRADL) site on Chestnut Street in Somerville at the end of July.
Charles River Laboratories International Inc. (NYSE: CRL) provides products and services to pharma and biotech companies to help accelerate research and drug development. Its CRADL facilities are a more flexible space for clients to do rodent in vivo preclinical studies.
Julie Freebersyser, executive director of NA insourcing solutions at Charles River, said the Somerville site is the fourth CRADL location in Greater Boston, following two in Cambridge and one in Watertown. Another CRADL site opening is already planned in Fenway for the fourth quarter of 2024. There are more than 30 CRADL sites globally.
“Somerville is a place where biotech is going … we see it as an up-and-coming market and we want to make sure that we get services there and ready for what we feel is going to be clients coming into the region, needing the spaces,” Freebersyser said.
But the Somerville CRADL site is different from its Massachusetts predecessors, Freebersyser said. Charles River’s Somerville location is co-located with Nest.Bio, which provides rentable laboratory and office space.
“An emerging company that’s just virtual right now and has nothing could potentially come into one location. They could rent a desk, they could get a little bit of lab space and they could get a shared space at CRADL and then they would be able to have their little bit of footprint that they need for their operations,” Freebersyser said.
Clients using CRADL range from biotech startups to pharma companies to academia. Freebersyser said the facility also serves clients working in different disease areas, including cell and gene therapy, oncology and cardiometabolic disorders.
Freebersyser said CRADL provides an alternative to companies building their own infrastructure. Companies can elect into different services, from running the experiments themselves to letting CRADL staff run most of it, and change their space needs, from renting a single shared row to dedicated rooms.
“It really allows them to pick and choose what they like to utilize that’s going to be the most financial and scientific benefits,” Freebersyser said.
She said Charles River also provides CRADL clients with free scientific advisory services.
CRADL employs over 30 people in the Boston area at its different sites, Freebersyser said.