Massachusetts Company helps fight COVID-19
We feel an obligation as researchers and scientists to help in the fight against the pandemic in any way we can. Kevin Causey, VP of Business Development, MatTek Corp
On April 14, Massachusetts Governor Baker visited the MatTek Corporation, an Ashland, MA Life Science Company because of their response to his request to the Massachusetts industries for products to aid in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
MatTek, a privately owned company, was founded at MIT in 1985. It has about eighty employees in its Ashland facility and a hundred world-wide. These are primarily scientists, chemists and biologists, which includes their business people. Their grown human tissue is used globally for non-animal testing for researchers and product manufacturing companies. Compared to animal testing, using their tissue is better science rendering more human-relevant results. Using MatTek’s products is good business both ethically and financially. In vitro grown tissue does not eliminate the need for human testing in FDA approval. It does, however, eliminate many products before the more costly testing phases, fail quick, and fail cheap.
While MatTek recently added new tissue models for COVID-19 research, the two new products, hand sanitizer and viral transport medium, are unlike their core products. They were developed in response to the governor’s call. MatTek started manufacturing and donating hand sanitizer solutions to hospitals, police, fire stations, hardware stores, schools, and others. It is available at their company store, https://www.mattek.com/store/. Before writing this article, I bought some MatTek Hand Sanitizer for my family.
Their second new product is a viral transport medium kit used to move COVID-19 test samples from the collection site to the testing laboratory. The transport medium is also available in volume. This product was the one that brought the Governor to MatTek. The two things I think needed to defeat this pandemic is a vaccine and broad-based testing. MatTek’s repurposing their manufacturing laboratory to produce this kit makes possible the level of testing needed to track and stop the virus spread.
I spoke with Margaux Babineau, Director of Marketing, and Kevin Causey, Vice President of Business Development. Like other Companies, COVID-19 has changed MatTek. Most of the business employees have moved to work-from-home, but their laboratory staff still works on-site, Babineau said.
Their business has slowed, but universities that were closed have restarted their orders and they see their business starting to return, Causey said. Their employees feel a sense of pride in their ability to respond to the Governor to help fight this pandemic. It’s been strange but also a rewarding experience. Our scientists worked long days to define and rapidly create these products. These two products are not part of our regular business, rather more of a passion project for us, he said. We help because we can and we should. They are not for profit. In fact, we lost money on them, but we plan to continue doing this work as long as it is needed.
MatTek is a credit to Ashland’s Industry. This is one of the many good actions seen as a result of COVID-19. My thanks to MatTek for their civic-minded response, their innovation, and hard work, and for the part they play in beating this pandemic.
