OrganaBio Acquires Excellos Assets to Expand Nationwide Cell Therapy Testing, Development and Manufacturing Capabilities
OrganaBio, a U.S.-based manufacturer of GMP-compliant cellular products and provider of cell isolation and cryopreservation services, has announced the acquisition of substantially all operating assets of San Diego biotechnology company Excellos Inc.. The transaction marks a significant expansion of OrganaBio’s national manufacturing footprint and establishes the company as a newly strengthened bicoastal contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focused on supporting the rapidly growing cell therapy industry.
As part of the acquisition, OrganaBio has formed a new subsidiary named Excellos Labs, LLC, which will oversee operations at the San Diego facility moving forward. Through the integration of Excellos’ infrastructure, technical expertise, and manufacturing operations, OrganaBio aims to create a more comprehensive platform for developers of advanced cell therapies while expanding its geographic reach across the United States.
The acquisition reflects growing demand within the biopharmaceutical sector for scalable, reliable, and geographically diverse manufacturing services capable of supporting both clinical-stage and commercial-stage cell therapy programs. By combining complementary capabilities from both organizations, OrganaBio intends to provide developers with streamlined access to critical starting materials, enhanced manufacturing flexibility, and operational redundancy under a unified quality framework.
The newly combined organization now operates a broad network of facilities spanning both the East and West Coasts of the United States. OrganaBio’s headquarters in Miami, Florida, serves as the central hub for a wide range of manufacturing and sourcing activities. Through its subsidiary operations, the company supports adult leukapheresis collection, birth tissue sourcing, cord blood procurement, process development services, analytical testing, peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) isolation, and cryopreservation.
OrganaBio’s Miami operations are supported by its subsidiary HemaCenter, which specializes in adult leukapheresis collections, as well as GaiaGift, which focuses on birth tissue and cord blood sourcing activities. These services are increasingly important for cell therapy developers working with autologous and allogeneic treatment platforms that depend on high-quality starting cellular materials.
The company also operates cell processing and cryopreservation laboratories in San Francisco and Irvine, California. With the addition of the Excellos facility in downtown San Diego, OrganaBio significantly expands its West Coast manufacturing infrastructure and gains access to advanced cleanroom capabilities specifically designed for cell therapy production.
The San Diego facility includes five ISO 7 cGMP cleanroom suites constructed to support a wide range of cell therapy manufacturing activities. These capabilities include autologous and allogeneic cell therapy production, cell isolation and enrichment processes, cell expansion operations, and fill-and-finish manufacturing services. The site was purpose-built to address the specialized requirements of advanced cellular therapeutics and is expected to play a key role in supporting both existing and future customer programs.
OrganaBio confirmed that the core Excellos operational team has been retained following the acquisition, helping ensure continuity for ongoing customer projects and preserving institutional expertise within the organization. Maintaining operational stability for existing client programs has been identified as a major priority during the integration process.
The acquisition comes at a time when the cell therapy industry continues to experience rapid growth, driven by increasing investment in cancer immunotherapies, autoimmune disease treatments, regenerative medicine, and other advanced biologic platforms. As more cell-based therapies advance through clinical development and toward commercialization, developers are facing increasing pressure to secure reliable manufacturing capacity and dependable supply chain infrastructure.
One of the major challenges confronting cell therapy developers involves access to consistent PBMC isolation and cryopreservation services. Many organizations rely heavily on single-source providers for these essential processes, creating operational vulnerabilities and supply chain risks. At the same time, dividing manufacturing activities across multiple vendors can introduce variability in quality systems, manufacturing protocols, and process execution.
According to OrganaBio, the integration with Excellos is intended to directly address these concerns by offering customers geographically redundant manufacturing and processing infrastructure operating under a unified quality management framework. The company stated that developers can now access bicoastal cGMP manufacturing services, PBMC isolation for clinical trial samples, and cryopreservation of patient leukopaks prior to manufacturing, all coordinated through a single organization.
This integrated model is designed to reduce the operational trade-offs that often occur when developers attempt to distribute manufacturing activities across multiple service providers. By centralizing quality oversight while maintaining geographic diversity, OrganaBio believes it can improve supply chain reliability, reduce variability, and accelerate timelines for cell therapy development programs.
The combined company now supports a broad customer base that includes many of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies alongside numerous public and private biotechnology firms. Programs supported across the platform are concentrated primarily in oncology and autoimmune disease indications, two therapeutic areas that continue to drive substantial innovation and investment within the cell therapy sector.
The manufacturing and development programs supported by OrganaBio span both autologous and allogeneic cell therapy approaches. Autologous therapies involve the use of a patient’s own cells, while allogeneic therapies utilize donor-derived cellular materials that can potentially be manufactured at larger scales for broader patient populations. Both approaches require highly specialized manufacturing infrastructure and rigorous quality control processes to ensure product consistency, safety, and efficacy.
Justin Irizarry, Chief Executive Officer of OrganaBio, said the acquisition strengthens the company’s ability to support the evolving needs of cell therapy developers and the patients awaiting these advanced treatments. According to Irizarry, combining the infrastructure, scientific expertise, and operational teams of both organizations creates a more capable and reliable manufacturing partner than either company could offer independently.
He emphasized that OrganaBio’s immediate focus will be ensuring uninterrupted support for all customer programs during the integration period. At the same time, the company plans to gradually expand available services and capabilities as the organizations become more fully integrated over the coming months.
Irizarry noted that the broader goal is to provide developers with manufacturing partnerships capable of matching both the speed and quality demands associated with modern cell therapy development. As advanced therapies move more rapidly from early-stage research into clinical and commercial manufacturing, CDMOs are under increasing pressure to provide flexible and scalable infrastructure solutions.
Tom VanCott, Chief Executive Officer of Excellos, also described the transaction as beneficial for both companies and their customers. He stated that the acquisition ensures continuity for Excellos customers while simultaneously expanding operational redundancy, geographic reach, and access to additional services and cellular materials, including cord blood resources.
VanCott highlighted that the partnership allows Excellos programs to continue progressing without disruption while gaining access to broader infrastructure and capabilities available across OrganaBio’s expanding platform.
In the near term, both organizations will continue operating existing customer programs and partner activities without major changes. OrganaBio indicated that full operational integration is expected to occur over approximately the next 12 months. During this period, the company plans to focus on improving operational efficiency, maintaining quality standards, expanding service offerings, and supporting future growth across the combined organization.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The transaction also reflects ongoing consolidation within the contract development and manufacturing sector serving the advanced therapy market. As cell and gene therapies continue to attract substantial investment and regulatory momentum, manufacturing partners capable of offering specialized expertise, regulatory compliance, and geographic scalability are becoming increasingly important to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
Industry demand for advanced therapy manufacturing services has intensified significantly in recent years due to the growing number of clinical-stage cell therapy programs entering later phases of development. Developers are increasingly seeking CDMO partners capable of supporting not only process development and early-stage manufacturing, but also long-term commercial production strategies.
By expanding into a fully integrated bicoastal platform, OrganaBio is positioning itself to compete more aggressively within the highly specialized and rapidly evolving cell therapy manufacturing market. The company’s expanded infrastructure, unified quality systems, and broader service portfolio are expected to strengthen its ability to support the next generation of cellular therapeutics aimed at treating cancer, autoimmune diseases, and other serious medical conditions.
As integration efforts continue, OrganaBio’s leadership believes the combination of East Coast and West Coast operations will provide customers with enhanced operational flexibility, greater manufacturing resilience, and improved access to critical services necessary for advancing innovative therapies from development to commercialization.
About OrganaBio
OrganaBio, LLC is a vertically integrated cell therapy contract development and manufacturing organization (CTDMO) headquartered in Miami, Florida, with cGMP manufacturing and cell processing facilities in Miami and San Diego and regional cell processing labs in San Francisco and Irvine. Through its wholly owned, FDA-registered subsidiaries – HemaCenter, LLC (adult leukapheresis) and GaiaGift, LLC (birth tissue and cord blood) – OrganaBio operates proprietary supply chains for ethically sourced human tissues and blood-derived cellular products.
The combined platform delivers GMP isolated cells, clinical-sample processing including PBMC isolation, cell isolation and cryopreservation services, cGMP manufacturing for autologous and allogeneic cell therapies, process development, analytical testing, quality assurance, and regulatory support under a single quality framework, enabling cell therapy developers to accelerate the path from development to patient. For more information, visit www.organabio.com.
About Excellos
Excellos was founded in 2021 as an independent spinout of the San Diego Blood Bank. A full-service cell therapy contract development and manufacturing organization based in downtown San Diego, Excellos delivers apheresis donor cell collection, cell processing, cell isolation and enrichment, transduction, expansion, fill/finish, and third-party cryopreservation services under cGMP across five ISO 7 cleanroom suites. Following the acquisition, Excellos operations continue as Excellos Labs, an OrganaBio subsidiary.
