Excellos Announces Acceleration of Commercialization, New CEO

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Excellos Inc., a cell therapy contract and development manufacturing organization (CDMO), today announced it had taken additional investment to accelerate commercialization efforts. As part of the change new CEO Thomas VanCott, Ph.D., will step in to lead the company, while David Wellis, Ph.D., will transfer to Head of Strategic Partnerships.

Dr. VanCott previously held the role of Chief Scientific Officer at Combined Therapeutics, Inc. and prior was Chief Technology & Strategy Officer of Catalent Cell and Gene Therapy.

Excellos declined to disclose the origin of the multimillion-dollar investment, but according to CEO Dr. VanCott, it was provided by one of the current investors who expressed enthusiasm for Excellos’ expansion of the business team. “This investment allows Excellos to expand business outreach. It resolves one of the main scaling challenges at Excellos where the CEO role was hands-on for both operations and business development” stated Dr. VanCott. “Dr. Wellis will now focus on business development, and I will lead overall operations.”

According to Dr. Wellis, “2024 is shaping up to be an exciting year of significant growth for Excellos and there is nothing more important than tight, robust operations. We have built a magnificent facility, run by a highly skilled team, that large pharma and biotechs can trust to work with on cell therapies in clinical trials, as well as FDA-approved commercial products.”

Excellos announced previously this year a strategic partnership and investment from Vitalant that focused on extending Excellos’ collection network and the donor characterization technology platform, Excellos 360.

“With the technology investment earlier this year, these new resources and changes to business operations are a natural progression” said Dr. VanCott. “Excellos is now positioned to further assist our cell therapy and development partners with well-characterized metabolic and effector function profiles from highly-customized donors.”

About Excellos

Excellos provides custom cGMP services to develop and manufacture cell therapies. Featuring proprietary cell characterization technologies, Excellos reduces variabilities in clinical responses and increases the probability of successful outcomes. Current applications support TIL-based therapies, autologous and allogeneic CAR-T/NK therapies and TCR therapies. Customized services include donor recruitment, cell isolation, transduction, expansion and scale up GMP production. Learn more at www.excellos.com.

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