Quest 'Lab of the Future' celebrated in Marlborough

Staff photo L-R: Quest Diagnostics CEO Steve Rusckowski; Denis Gallagher, vice president of operations for Quest's northeast region, and Marlborough Mayor Arthur Vigeant, were speakers at the grand opening of Quest's new Marlborough lab facility Thursday.

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By Emily Micucci

The new $80-million Quest Diagnostics laboratory in Marlborough will be a hub of innovation, as well as the center for medical testing services for patients throughout New England, Quest CEO Steve Rusckowski told guests gathered to celebrate the opening of the Forest Street facility Thursday morning.

Business leaders and local elected officials attended the ribbon cutting ceremony, in a lobby of the 200,000 square-foot, LEED-certified facility. Quest is billing the lab as a “state-of-the-art lab of the future” for Central Massachusetts. An estimated 50,000 samples will be processed daily at full operation at the facility, where some operations have already begun.

“Within these walls, Quest will provide the most advanced testing anywhere in the world,” Rusckowski told the audience.

The vast and bright meeting spaces at the Quest lab feature Scandanavian design elements, while clinical laboratory spaces are on display through large windows in airy corridors, accented with green paint. The layout is meant to foster collaboration, according to the company.

More significant than the aesthetics is the sophisticated medical testing Quest will conduct at the site, the former home of Hewlett Packard and Digital Equipment Corp.

Half a dozen Quest laboratories formerly housed in other locations in Massachusetts and Connecticut will now operate inside the new Marlborough facility. These include the outreach laboratory business formerly owned by UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, which Quest acquired in 2013, Quest’s former laboratory operations in Cambridge, and the laboratory business Quest purchased from Steward Health Care in Boston earlier this year.

In addition to routine blood work and cultures, Quest will develop advanced testing technologies in the areas of gene sequencing, neurology and reproductive genetics, among others, within the research & development center housed at the site.

Following the ribbon cutting ceremony, Rusckowski explained in an interview that Quest has large regional centers, like the one in Marlborough, throughout the U.S. The New England region was in need of such a center, he said. But the technology used at the Marlborough facility is unrivaled by other Quest labs.

Marlborough was a prime location, according to Rusckowski, because it’s central to the health care providers Quest services throughout New England. The highway access is ideal, and there’s a qualified and eager workforce in the area, Rusckowski said. Cost was a factor, too.

Quest brings with it 1,350 jobs to Marlborough, which Marlborough Mayor Arthur Vigeant highlighted in his comments at Thursday’s event. The city worked closely with Quest in permitting construction at the site, which had sat vacant for five years before Quest’s arrival.

“Anytime a company is bringing (1,350) new jobs to the city… we want to be a part of that,” Vigeant said. He added that the trickle-down effect on local businesses thanks to Quest’s arrival “cannot even be measured.”

The company said that the new facility is also expected to extend a relationship Quest Diagnostics and UMMHC formed when Quest acquired the UMass lab business last year.

About a dozen physicians and medical faculty employed by UMass Memorial Medical Group and the UMass Medical School will provide scientific leadership for several facets of laboratory testing for the Marlborough lab and will also counsel the region's physicians in the selection and interpretation of clinical laboratory tests, collaborate on R&D and assist with residency programs, according to Quest.