A new Massachusetts-based consortium hopes to smooth the path for cutting-edge gene therapy and cancer immunotherapy from research lab to hospital clinic.

The newly announced center will include a board of directors from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., and have contributing members from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, MilliporeSigma, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

"This is a momentous opportunity,” noted Martin Meeson, president and COO of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, U.S. "Our participation as one of the founding members is to enable these very important therapies to be accessible to patients. We seek to bring very much needed expertise and capacity to the one of the leading biotechnology ecosystem in the world."

The $50 million Center for Advanced Biological Innovation and Manufacturing will be an independent nonprofit, and will get an official name within a year, according to a Harvard report.

“Biomedical science has reached a unique inflection point,” George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School stated, adding, “This collaboration will undoubtedly reshape the way we deliver on the promise of turning insights made in the lab into actionable cellular and gene therapies.”

The collaboration brings world-class expertise together and will doubtless advance these state-of-the-art therapeutic approaches. “This powerful collaboration embodies the deep and broad world-class expertise in multiple disciplines that exists across this region,” said Harvard University president Lawrence Bacow.

The goal of the collaboration is to speed “transformative therapies” to clinical applications by bringing together experts in the multiple disciplines to achieve such breakthroughs — especially by providing three critical services to those participating in the Massachusetts “life science ecosystem,” according to the Harvard report.

These include:

– Provide preferred access to a new manufacturing facility at favorable pricing, reducing wait time and costs thanks to pharmaceutical-grade manufacturing in about eight clean rooms used to make cell and vector products for phase 1 or phase 2 clinical trials.

– A shared innovation space for scientists from industry and academia to work together.

– Provide a platform for workforce development and training.

The center will also use a modular design to make it simpler to adapt to rapid changes in technology.

The report noted that there are several unique features to this collaboration that set it apart from existing efforts, including plans to produce cell and viral vector products in the same place; the bringing together of hospitals, industry and academia; and its “aspiration” to service both researchers and startups.

"It is designed to address a gap that we've heard is the most important gap in our region over and over again — that is, how to support early stage research in biological therapies," Harvard provost Alan Garber told WGBH.

"When they develop an exciting new insight, it's very hard for them to then take it to the point where they can expand it enough and manufacture enough, particularly of a biological agent or a cell to be actually tested in humans," he told the station. "And it's not solely a matter of quantity. It's also a matter of meeting FDA standards for being eligible to be tested in humans."