Martin Landon, CEO, BioBridge Global
San Antonio is on its way to becoming one of the biomedical capitals of the United States, says Martin Landon, CEO of BioBridge Global. “We think we have the right mix of people and the right mix of therapeutic development, innovation and cooperation for San Antonio to continue to grow in this area,” Landon told Invest:.
What were the main highlights and achievements for BioBridge Global during the last year?
We’ve had growth in all of our segments, particularly surrounding advanced therapies, or cell and gene therapy, so much so that at the beginning of this year, we announced the combination of all of our advanced therapies capabilities into a single operating unit that we now call BBG Advanced Therapies. In that unit, we now bring together starting materials, or the basic cell, for cell and gene therapy, the advanced testing that goes with those therapies, and the bioproduction or manufacturing within those cells.
Those cells generally need to be cryo-preserved, stored, and distributed. We were able to bring all the capabilities from different parts of the organization and put them together under one integrated and coordinated operating unit. We’re excited about that. We now have a seamless package to offer customers as we go forward.
It’s been a year of growth. Our 50th year led us to the highest income and revenues that we’ve ever recorded in our history, which supports our efforts to expand our mission. We’re quite excited about what the next 50 years will bring.
What specific opportunities do you see for expanding services and operations in the human cells and tissue space?
We see growth across all areas. We’re lucky that South Texas and our city are growing substantially. The need for blood and tissue services continues to grow.
There continues to be significant work done in the pharmaceutical space. We support the testing of plasma collections to support pharmaceutical growth. We also have growth in our testing organization. Additionally, we’re able to support advanced therapies, where developers are bringing cell therapies to market in many new applications.
We see growth opportunities across each of our segments. Of course, the most rapid growth that I think we’re going to see in the short term is probably in advanced therapies because we’re seeing some breakthrough therapies and some things moving from just providing care into providing actual cures. We’re excited to be able to support those.
How does BioBridge Global mitigate challenges like the supply chain?
We’re fortunate on the blood services side of things, and even on the testing side of things, because we’re part of a large network of independent blood centers called Blood Centers of America. Through the Blood Centers of America, we pool our purchasing requirements with the rest of the cooperative.
We’re able to bring a lot of purchasing power to the marketplace. We’ve set up service depots across the United States. As a result, we have not suffered some of the supply chain disruptions that others have.
We’re always cognizant of the issue and do as much advanced planning as we can. But being a part of that network is favorable for us. Also, because the economy has been good overall and because we do work in healthcare, the criticality of some of these products means they always stay at the upper end of urgent. We’re lucky that we haven’t experienced shortages like other areas of the economy.
What growth have you seen in your scientific staffing for R&D and other areas?
It’s almost like we can’t grow fast enough. In 2023, we were spending about 2% of our revenues on R&D, and we decided we wanted to increase that. We saw almost a doubling of our total R&D investment and the workforce within R&D. We’ve been able to grow there, and we’ll grow again. Interestingly, the work that our team is doing has been such that the net cost to us, because they’re doing interesting work that is in demand, has been lower than we anticipated, which allows us to go a little faster.
We’re continuing to grow our number of PhDs and engineers. We’re always interested in what the universities are doing, and we’re lucky that we have good partnerships there.
In terms of partnerships, how is your organization working with businesses, other healthcare providers, and local governments to expand its reach?
We’ve gotten a little more formal in terms of our internship programs. We now have a set number of paid internships so that we can enhance those connections to the universities and work on a regular basis with institutions like UT Health San Antonio on clinical research.
We do clinical research support out of our new BBG Advanced Therapies unit and collaborate with other suppliers in the healthcare space. We think that’s one of the things that, as a nonprofit, we enhance.
Our goal is to grow our mission and help as many people as we can. We’re not so concerned about whether we’re the lead in a program or initiative or just a support organization. For-profit organizations may prioritize whether they are the lead or support, but as a nonprofit, we just want to be a part of the initiative. If we’re growing our mission and helping more people, everything that we do goes back into the business. We think our model helps us be a little bit more collaborative than some as we go forward.
What are your top priorities for the near term?
In the short term, we want to grow the advanced therapies area. We think that there’s going to be a lot of innovation coming out of the work that these therapeutic developers are doing, and we want to support that work.
We want to help improve and change the practice of medicine. We also want to make sure that we continue to add depth to our organization because we are working on more complex initiatives. For us, we’re spending a little bit more time on how we, in a quality fashion, digest growth because we believe that the growth is going to be there for the next few years. We want to make sure that we have the processes, people, materials, and products in place to support all that innovation.
If we do that, then this will be a healthy organization for a long time, and we’ll continue to build out the community of San Antonio as a biomedical hotspot, which we believe it is. We think we have the right mix of people and the right mix of therapeutic development and innovation, and cooperation that San Antonio is going to continue to grow in this area, and we want to be a part of that.
What is the outlook for the cell and gene therapy space in San Antonio?
We’re growing by double digits, and we would expect that others in this space are doing the same. The opportunity exists, and we’re going to see more and more therapeutic breakthroughs, which we’re excited about.
Anything that improves the lives of people and patients is a great thing. We think that’s going to continue here in San Antonio. We’re lucky that a lot of military physicians, for example, like to retire to San Antonio. They come down here and continue their research work. We think there’s going to be a lot of innovation emerging from this area. We want to support that. We think San Antonio will increasingly get on the map for being a biomedical hotspot.
