Life Sciences Testing Center

Located at the Northeastern University Innovation Campus at Burlington, MA

About the LSTC

Mission Statement

The mission of the Life Sciences Testing Center at Northeastern University is to provide the highest standard of excellence in molecular diagnostic testing to meet critical public health needs. We are committed to supporting our local community and fellow educational institutions through innovative partnerships which advance our shared goal to promote public health. Through integrated research in method development and process improvement, we are dedicated to training the next generation of scientists, leaders, and innovators.

Scope of Service

The Life Sciences Testing Center (LSTC) was founded in July of 2020 to meet the testing needs of Northeastern’s ambitious reopening plan, by providing regular and accessible testing to the Northeastern community. With a turnaround time of 12-48 hours, the LSTC was quickly established as a leader among testing facilities for our high testing quality and speed of resulting. As the nature of the pandemic landscape has changed since 2020, so too has the lab’s approach, adapting to partner with Ginkgo Bioworks and ThermoFisher Scientific to provide K-12 testing, back-to-work surveillance screening, pooled airport testing and environmental aerosol monitoring.

As of October 2022, the laboratory’s clinical scope of service includes SARS-CoV-2 testing, multiplex influenza A/B and SARS-CoV-2 testing, and SARS-CoV-2 testing via at-home collection. Our operating hours are from 6 am to 9 pm, 7 days a week. To read more about the Life Sciences Testing center in the news, visit Northeastern Global News for feature stories and highlights of the COVID-19 research effort at Northeastern.

The LSTC shares staff, resources, and equipment with the Biopharmaceutical Training Analysis Laboratory (BATL), directed by Jared Auclair. Drawing on the combined laboratory expertise, collaborative partnerships, and industry connections, the LSTC is uniquely positioned at the intersections of clinical validation, research and development, industry implementation, and world-class education.

BATL is the only source for a one-place partnership focused on collaborations that unite various scientific stakeholders across the globe with unique offerings to meet the needs of multiple and diverse scientific and medical stakeholders, including early discovery and development in industry, experiential training, global regulatory convergence, and use-inspired research. BATL is proudly recognized by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH), the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) as a neutral, global facilitator of collaboration between academia, industry, and government toward regulatory convergence.

Our Leadership

Jared R. Auclair, PhD is currently the Director of Executive Training and Biotechnology Programs in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern University. In addition to being Director of Biotechnology, Dr. Auclair also directs the Biopharmaceutical Analysis Training Laboratory, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Center of Regulatory Excellence in Biotherapeutics and oversees the International Council for Harmonisation training. These appointments allow Dr. Auclair to collaborate with both academic researchers and industry in the area of biopharmaceutical development and analysis, as well as international regulators on best practices and new advances in the regulatory sciences for drug approvals.

Prior to joining Northeastern, Dr. Auclair received his bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in Biomedical Science from the University of Massachusetts Medical. In both instances, Dr. Auclair’s research focused on understanding the molecular mechanism of HIV-1. Upon graduating with his PhD, he did a post-doc under Greg Petsko, Dagmar Ringe and Jeffrey Agar at Brandeis University. Here Dr. Auclair used protein biochemistry, protein crystallography and protein mass spectrometry to study the molecular mechanism of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Currently, Dr. Auclair uses his expertise in Analytical Biochemistry to address topics as broad as protein chemistry, lipid biology, proteomics, and metabolomics.

Dr. Gyorgy Abel, MD is the Medical Director of Molecular Diagnostics, Clinical Chemistry/Immunology, and Point of Care Testing at the Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts. He also serves as Instructor in Pathology, Part-time, at Harvard Medical School. Gyorgy received his M.D., and a Ph.D. degree in immunology in Hungary, completed post-doctoral research fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and pathology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and received board certifications in Clinical Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics. He made significant contributions to hepatitis C virus research by demonstrating the use of LDL receptor by the virus as a port of entry into hepatocytes. His professional interests include precision medicine testing (Next Generation Sequencing for oncology), rapid molecular testing for infectious disease agents, and autoimmune disease diagnostics.

Dr. Abel has held office in professional organizations such as the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), the College of American Pathologists, the American Association of Immunologists, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). He is the current President of the AACC Academy. He is also an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, U.K. Gyorgy is the author or co-author of approximately 100 peer reviewed articles, book chapters, and scientific conference presentations. He frequently speaks nationally and internationally on current issues in clinical pathology and molecular diagnostics.