OrganaBio has expanded its cell processing and cryopreservation facility in Irvine, California to support cell therapy clinical trials.
The Miami, Florida-headquartered firm cited a contract with an unnamed pharmaceutical company as motivation for the expansion, explaining it will provide clinical trial services.
In a press release OrganaBio wrote: “As its pharmaceutical partner looked to add a new site in the region for an existing clinical trial, CPC Services quickly and simply duplicated activities performed at its Miami-based location.”
At present the Irvine facility offers services like peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) isolation and cryopreservation, as well as storage, logistics, and batch shipping on request.
OrganaBio also said its CPC Services business will soon expand to locations in Chicago, Nashville, Ann Arbor and Atlanta.
Expansion strategy
The expansion comes a year after opening the Irvine lab. In a statement issued at the time OrganaBio said the facility would leverage its cell isolation, characterization, and cryopreservation systems.
The news also follows just months after OrganaBio launched its CPC services division.
At the time the firm said the division had been developed to provide decentralized clinical trial support, including timely sample processing and data capture that are essential to accurately gauge the outcomes of clinical trials.
The expansion also follows just a few years after the contractor started GMP manufacturing operations at a new 19,000 square-foot cell therapy manufacturing facility in Miami, Florida.
More recently, OrganaBio rolled out an on-demand current good manufacturing practice (cGMP)-compliant manufacturing service for CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) ethically derived from fresh human cord blood.
The expansion program is in keeping with the strategy outlined by CEO Justin Irizarry at the 2024 JP Morgan investor conference.
“We started OrganaBio to really be a trusted partner to what we saw was a lot of customers needing this supply of tissue and isolated cells in cell and gene therapy
“A lot of these biotechs need external support and assets that they might not develop themselves such as supply of tissue isolated cells.”
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