A New Home: AI-Powered Biotech Startup Moves Uptown
Thomas Burrus, JLL associate vice president and member of the firm’s New York City life science team
Commercial real estate company JLL has announced that it has completed a new lab lease for pioneering biotech startup Waypoint Bio at 430 East 29th St. within the Alexandria Center® for Life Science—New York City.
A startup founded in 2021 with a mission to leverage AI, pooled screening, and spatial biology to build a next-generation platform for drug discovery, Waypoint Bio has relocated from Biolabs Incubator, the biotech co-working facility at 180 Varick St. in New York’s Hudson Square neighborhood. The company will occupy 3,413 square feet of lab and office space across the 6th floor of the West Tower at 430 East 29th St.
Waypoint Bio co-founders Xinchen Wang and David Phizicky, both MIT alumni, built a platform to speed up the process of testing how different cell therapy options work to create new treatments for solid tumors and autoimmune diseases. They launched their company earlier this year with $14.5 million in seed funding to expand their team and design CAR-T cell therapies to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Says Wang, “The Alexandria Center for Life Science is a one-of-a-kind home to world-class pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and we are thrilled to find a home here as we work to build new spatial biology technologies and advance our cell therapies towards the clinic. Being in a flagship location for New York City's life sciences sector provides us with the ideal environment to foster innovation and accelerate our mission.”
Innovating at the vanguard and heart of New York City's life science ecosystem, Alexandria has been catalyzing and growing the cluster through the development and operation of the city's first and only commercial life science campus at the Alexandria Center® for Life Science—New York City and through the company's leading venture investment platform and unparalleled ecosystem-building expertise. Located on Manhattan's East Side Medical Corridor, the Alexandria Center® for Life Science offers unique proximity to the City's top academic medical institutions and major hospitals and provides a campus setting with robust amenities that create a vibrant ecosystem, attract top-tier talent, and bring together high-quality life science companies to translate scientific discoveries into new treatments and cures for patients.
Thomas Burrus, JLL associate vice president and member of the firm’s New York City life science team, represented Waypoint Bio in arranging its lease. Alexandria was represented inhouse.
Says Burrus, “New York’s life science market is primarily driven by new company formation and JLL’s deep experience in navigating this nuanced intersection enables us to identify specialized, flexible space that meets the physical and business needs of our clients. We are thrilled to complete this new lease with Waypoint Bio as they start the next chapter of their evolution.”
