Straight talk with...Donna Ambrosino

In the 1890s, a diphtheria epidemic was killing thousands of children across the US, prompting many state health departments to create laboratories to start extracting antiserum from horses' blood. More than a century later, however, only one of these public labs is still in operation: the Massachusetts Biologic Laboratories, known simply as MassBiologics. Established in 1894 as the Massachusetts Public Health Laboratories, it is now the only nonprofit, licensed vaccine and biologics manufacturer and research center in the country—which gives the lab a unique position to tackle diseases that 'big pharma' isn't willing to touch. Leading the charge is Executive Director Donna Ambrosino, who took the helm in 1998 after a 20-year career at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. On a snowy day in January, Elie Dolgin sat down to chat with Ambrosino at MassBiologics's brand new research center, opened last summer in the outskirts of Boston.