Authored by Amy Lamperti BioCentriq’s Vice President of Marketing
On May 23rd BioCentriq had the great pleasure of hosting ten leaders from five different Salvadoran businesses who are participants in Bpeace’s Pharma Maximizer program including Laboratorios Suizos, Laboratorios Hifar, SYM Lab, Meditech Laboratories, and Laboratorios Rodim.
The group convened at BioCentriq’s Newark, NJ facility and participated in an afternoon of dialogue with leaders from BioCentriq who shared details about how we operate as a cell therapy CDMO (Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization) here in the United States. The discussion focused on U.S. based business practices, quality systems, facilities, and engagement models.
The goal of this session was to foster knowledge sharing between both BioCentriq and the participants, and it was a very illuminating conversation for all. The ideal outcome is that the business leaders involved are inspired to take action that will help them grow and drive innovation in their own enterprises. After a very lively discussion full of questions and answers between the two groups, the team visited the McKinsey owned Digital Capability Center which is operated by BioCentriq.
In the center, the Salvadorian business leaders had the opportunity to see demonstrations of how digitization can be applied in cell therapy manufacturing to streamline and improve processes that are either overwhelmingly manual, inefficient, or time-consuming today.
The BioCentriq team, including student operators, demonstrated the use of a digital checklist to control the operation of equipment, virtual reality for training, a yield optimization dashboard powered by AI and the use of augmented reality to provide remote assistance to a manufacturing operator working in a clean room or laboratory.
The Business Council for Peace (Bpeace) is an award-winning nonprofit working in crisis-affected communities to grow small and medium-size businesses, create significant employment for all, and expand the economic power of women.
Bpeace has a community of 600+ volunteers and worked with 400+ small and medium-size business owners in the U.S., El Salvador, Guatemala, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Rwanda. In 2021, Bpeace helped create 1,900 new jobs and employ 14,000 people who supported 55,000 family members.
The Bpeace Pharma Maximizer is a 12-month program, funded by the USAID Economic Competitiveness Economic Project, aimed to advise 12 Salvadoran pharmaceutical and vitamin manufacturers to help them improve their competitiveness, open new markets, increase their income, and create new employment opportunities.
BioCentriq, established in 2019, is a full-service, collaborative CDMO specializing in cell and gene therapy and focusing on all stages of process development and clinical manufacturing. We have an expert team, established quality systems and the infrastructure required to support the release of autologous and allogeneic drug products. We’ve also recently released our LEAP™ Advanced Therapy Platform designed to help early-stage biotech companies get to clinic in as short as six months from the time they contract with us. For more information, visit BioCentriq.com or contact us.
You can read Bpeaces’s press release about this visit here.