Terrestrial Bio to Lease Manufacturing Space at Allston Labworks

Terrestrial Bio, a Woburn-based therapeutics company, announced last week that it will lease a new manufacturing facility at Allston Labworks, a three-building life sciences hub on Western Avenue.

The company — formerly known as Vaxess Technologies — signed a more than 40,000-square-foot lease to manufacture its microarray therapeutic patches. The expansion follows a recent $50 million Series C funding round led by top venture capital firm RA Capital, which will support the move to Allston Labworks and the company’s rebranding.

The deal marks the first major lease in the neighborhood since F. Hoffmann-La Roche announced last year that it would establish an innovation center at Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus in Allston.

Founded in Cambridge in 2012 by two alumni of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, the company previously operated as Vaxess Technologies. Under that name, it won the $70,000 grand prize in the 2012 Harvard University President’s Challenge.

The lease also represents the first major commercial tenant for Allston Labworks, which offers 535,000 square feet of lab and office space across its properties at 250 and 280 Western Ave. Smaller residential and retail tenants — including FiDO Pizza, Molly’s Bookstore and Park Bagelry — have already opened in the development.

Allston Labworks was developed by King Street Properties, which owns 7 million square feet of life science space nationwide.

“They were an existing tenant of ours in a different building in Cambridge, and had a need to grow,” said Michael DiMinico, managing director at King Street Properties.

“Providing space for Terrestrial as part of this build-out was well within our business plan of what we designed the building for,” he added.

The Labworks complex includes a mix of move-in-ready lab suites, offices and open floors that tenants can customize to suit their needs. In addition to commercial space, the development also includes 35 residential units at 280 Western Ave.

“We built this project as a speculative project, without a tenant in mind,” DiMinico said. “So when we designed the infrastructure of the building, we built in a lot of flexibility, knowing that potential tenants could have a wide range of needs.”

The lease brings the first major biotech company to Allston, a neighborhood that has struggled to fill its commercial lab space. Nearly 70 percent of the 1.3 million square feet of lab space in Allston-Brighton remains vacant, according to a report from real estate consulting firm Colliers.

“I’m aware of all the headlines in the life science industry, but we have a great project here, and signing Terrestrial is a great step forward to create momentum in the projects,” DiMinico said.

—Staff writer Thamini Vijeyasingam can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @vijeyasingam.