Virginia has invested in recent years to become a leader in biotechnology. This week, city and state leaders cut the ribbon on a new facility in Roanoke.
RoVa Labs is opening as a new, 40,000-square-foot biotech incubator located in the middle of the Roanoke Innovation Corridor, which has emerged in the last 20 years as a hub for biomedical research.
RoVa Labs marks another step in that work, and will provide a place for scientists to commercialize their work and spin it off into private companies.
"Now we have commercial space for our biotech startups," said Erin Burcham, CEO of the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance. "We have great research assets, higher ed assets. Our researchers at Carilion Clinic are interested in becoming entrepreneurs, but they didn't have a commercial space to spin out into labs in Roanoke. So this is giving them the opportunity to stay in Roanoke and advance their technologies."
RoVa Labs was funded by a $15.7 million grant from the state, and more than $10 million in regional investment. It represents another step in Virginia's efforts to build its biotechnology sector.
John Newby, CEO of Virginia Bio, the state's trade association for the life science industry, laid out some of that history at the ribbon-cutting.
"By the early 2000s we had the realization that if we're going to grow this ecosystem, we need lab space" Newby said. "2014, Prince William County opened the Endeavor incubator space, that was 10,000 square feet. 2021, Prince William County opened the Northern Virginia Bioscience Center. 2021, Virginia Beach also opened up 6,500 square feet of space in Virginia Beach. 2024, 2025, we had the announcement about AstraZeneca coming to Charlottesville. Eli Lilly coming to the Richmond suburbs. and our good friends in Elkton who have been there for 85 years, our good friends Merck, announcing they're going to build a 400,000 square foot facility. And finally we had investments by the commonwealth to build the facilities in Charlottesville, the Commonwealth BioAccelerator, and also the great 40,000 square feet of space here at RoVa."
And RoVa Labs is important for Roanoke, too. Eddie Amos, co-chair of the RBIA board, says the project sits square in the middle of Roanoke's innovation corridor.
"I call the area from Tanglewood Mall to the Higher Ed Center our 'miracle mile,' after our friends in Boston," Amos said. "Well, we've got the Riverside campus. We've got the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. We've got the Fralin Biomedical Institute. We have the expansion of the cardiovascular center, which is a beautiful addition across the way. We took an empty storefront at Tanglewood Mall and created the Carilion Children's Hospital. We've got the new kidney center coming online, and the new cancer center, which if you haven't been over on riverside lately, I think we're up to four stories now. it's going to be a monumental testament to the work that's happening in this community. So today, it's the next critical piece of this journey that we're on as we grow this ecosystem. it's about RoVa Labs."
Amos said RoVa Labs fills in a crucial gap in Roanoke's emerging bioscience sector.
"What makes this project important is not simply the building, but it's what the building's purpose is," Amos said. "For a midsize region like we are right now, RoVa Labs creates something that entrepreneurs, researchers, startups have needed for years: shared wet and dry space labs where ideas can move from research to prototypes and commercialization."
RoVa Labs' first tenant will be Tiny Cargo Company, which recently opened a manufacturing plant in Northeast Roanoke and will use RoVa Labs for research and development.
