‘A HUB FOR RESEARCH’
New medical lab debuts in city — in century-old chocolate factory
STAMFORD — Health care information firm Sema4 announced Thursday the opening of its lab in the city’s Waterside section, a new complex that will become the base for several hundred employees.
The approximately 70,000-square-foot hub in the Harbor Landing complex, at 62 Southfield Ave., will process thousands of genomic tests per day — a major boost for the company in its efforts to provide information related to thousands of genetically identifi
able diseases to patients across the country.
It replaces the firm’s laboratory at the Mount Sinai Health System campus in Manhattan and complements its lab in Branford and main offices at 333 Ludlow St., in Stamford’s South End.
“The new facility will be a hub for research and development, enabling us to further improve health outcomes and personalize patient care through innovative predictive modeling solutions and next generation, information-driven
testing,” Sema4 founder and CEO Eric Schadt said in a statement. “Our opportunity for success will be driven in large part by our highly talented team as well as the access in Connecticut to a large pool of well-qualified candidates to supplement them.”
About 225 employees will be in the new lab by the end of this month, and the company expects to hire next year about 150 more to work there.
In addition to lab employees, the new site can accommodate 100 other employees, including genetic counselors, bioinformatics specialists and support staff.
About 250 employees are based at 333 Ludlow, most of whom are still working remotely. Approximately 100 are based at the Branford lab.
At 62 Southfield, Sema4 has taken over and entirely renovated a building dating to 1904 that once operated as a chocolate factory. It has built out about 25,000 square feet for its lab operations, compared with only about 3,500 square feet of usable lab space at Mount Sinai.
To support the local economy, Sema4 said it has used only Connecticutbased vendors to build out the lab. Those firms include Stamford-based general contractor A. Secondinio & Son, Meriden-based architecture-and-design firm BL Companies, Stamford Office Furniture and Stamford-based CPG Architects.
“I’ve closely followed Sema4 over the last few years as the company has significantly expanded its commitment to Stamford,” Stamford Mayor David Martin said in a statement. “I’m delighted that Sema4 is now opening a new facility in Stamford and is bringing a significant number of additional highquality jobs to the city.”
Growth in Connecticut
In 2017, Sema4 was spun off from Mount Sinai into its own firm and immediately opened its headquarters at 333 Ludlow St. Since then, it has focused largely on reproductive health
based testing and analysis.
Sema4 announced the lab project in April 2018, with a commitment to add more than 400 jobs in the state in the next five years.
To support the expansion, the state Department of Economic and Community Development gave Sema4 a $6 million loan. In 2015, DECD had awarded the company a $9.5 million loan to create 145 jobs.
Investors are also accelerating the firm’s growth. Earlier this year, the company received a $121 million infusion from a group of backers that included the state-chartered investment agency Connecticut Innovations and Greenwich-based Oak HC/FT. The investment helped the company achieve an overall valuation of more than $1 billion.
At the same time, the company has expanded its services to respond to the coronavirus crisis. At the Branford lab, it has built out a testing program that has been processing about 20,000 to 25,000 viral tests each week.
The firm has also expanded into antibody testing to identify people who have been exposed and
whose immune systems have responded to the coronavirus.
“I had the opportunity to recently visit Sema4’s new state-of-the-art facility in Stamford and was very impressed by the innovative
team they’ve brought together and the cutting-edge automated technology,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, said. “The company is at the forefront of the rapidly growing biotech sector in Connecticut and has been an
outstanding partner to the state as we navigate the continued impact of COVID-19.”
A number of other elected officials, including Martin and U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, also participated in the tour in September that Murphy referenced.
“I’m excited to see Sema4 officially open its laboratory in Stamford and grow its workforce in Fairfield County,” said Himes, whose district includes most of Fairfield County. “Our region has become a magnet for stellar biotech and digital health companies and talent. As a health intelligence company on the leading edge of science, Sema4 is at the forefront of the innovation that we see across Connecticut.”
Other recently launched programs include Sema4 Signal, a group of products and services providing “data-driven precision oncology solutions.”
Across all its operations, Sema4 has amassed about 10 million patient records, according to company officials.
The firm’s name refers to semaphore — a system used to send signals. In previous statements, the company has said it aims to “discern signal from noise across trillions of data points” to gain insights into human health.