AABB interviewed Ronnie Aga, president and general manager at Eurofins CellTx, a participating organization in the Biotherapies Pavilion at the 2024 AABB Annual Meeting. Read the interview below to learn more about the Eurofins CellTx team.
My name is Ronnie Aga, president and general manager for the Eurofins CellTx business unit in Tucson, Ariz. I currently live in Lakewood, Colo., with my wife, who also works in the cell therapy field. Our daughter just finished her junior year at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where she is studying chemistry and mathematics.
I started working in donor testing immediately after graduation in 1990 as an HLA technologist at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Texas. I have participated in many roles during the past 34 years in laboratory testing, operations, sales, customer service and specimen logistics. I co-founded VRL Laboratories Human Cell and Tissue Division in September 2010. VRL Laboratories focused predominantly on deceased donor infectious disease and microbiology testing for organ and tissue donations. VRL was acquired by Eurofins Scientific in October 2016 and became Eurofins VRL. The name changed Sept.1, 2021, to Eurofins Donor and Product Testing.
In 2019, Eurofins VRL decided to build a new donor testing laboratory that focused exclusively on living donor human cell and tissue products (HCTPs). Like many initiatives, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed plans for the launch of this new laboratory as we focused on providing COVID-19 testing services for the transplant community.
In the fall of 2021, CellTx was founded as an affiliate lab of Eurofins VRL, and I was named president and general manager for this new laboratory. CellTx is an FDA-registered tissue establishment laboratory that is solely dedicated to offering critical testing support for living donor-derived source material (HCTPs): stem cell, bone marrow, cord blood, birth tissues, and egg and sperm donations. The laboratory’s extensive testing menu supports organizations from donor-sourced material to transplantable cell-based products, regenerative medicines and fertility applications.
Our new laboratory was built at the University of Arizona Technology Park in Tucson. The UA Tech Park is one of the nation's premier research parks. The UA Tech Park is a dynamic, interactive community where innovators and business leaders meet and where emerging companies work side by side. The park also offers many green initiatives, such as a 173-acre solar zone and a zero-discharge facility for on-site wastewater treatment and reuse. In January 2023, CellTx received our first donor samples for testing. We currently have 24 employees at CellTx, fulfilling our mission to deliver client-centric testing solutions that allow our health care partners to innovate and advance cell-based medicine.
Many of our challenges are the typical challenges that a pre-revenue startup business may face. Many are even more difficult in a post-COVID environment, such as construction, supply chain, product validation and licensing delays.
An area of strength for CellTx has been the experienced team we have been able to assemble. We have been fortunate to have many talented people from both Colorado and Arizona join our CellTx team. Additionally, our staff retention rates have been extraordinarily high. We are additionally very proud to have achieved our CLIA certificate of accreditation, ISO15189:2022 certification, and all state licenses within our first year of operation in 2023.
In 2024, we have been working on expanding our test menu to include microbiology to go along with our infectious disease marker offering. With some of our core laboratory licenses now in place, we are working to achieve additional accreditations such as AABB for our laboratory, along with continuity of business and resilience licensing initiatives.
We have also experienced double-digit growth this year in the number of clients we have been able to serve. It has been very exciting to watch our services mature in such a short period of time and continuously improve as we grow.
One area we have really developed is our extensive testing menu for both research and GMP cell therapy donors. This year, Eurofins launched the Eurofins Cell and Gene Therapy Collaboration Group. We have connected several of our Eurofins business units into a cohesive network, from discovery to product commercialization. In addition to our starting material testing at CellTx, we are able to offer initial research and development testing, clinical trial services, in-process product testing, GMP product testing and contract manufacturing.
CellTx is excited about future collaborations with AABB, especially in the professional development offerings that AABB provides, such as the Cellular Therapies Certificate Program and the Certified Advanced Biotherapies Professional Credentialing Program. We believe strongly in continuous development of our staff and offering programs like these not only to help in employee retention, but also to make us a better company. We plan to roll out these programs to our team this year.
In addition to professional development, we are extremely interested in accrediting our laboratory to AABB standards and we are very pleased to be participating for the first time in the Biotherapies Pavilion at the 2024 AABB Annual Meeting in Houston.
Becoming a CABP is a mark of distinction, establishing that qualified professionals have demonstrated – through a certification exam – that they have the necessary knowledge to credibly practice in the field of biotherapies.
The advancement of biotherapies is such an exciting space to live in as a company. It is incredible the number of therapies that have been approved for so many diseases. Additionally, the utilization of cord blood in these therapies continues to grow. We do need to find ways to improve access to these therapies, as the cost can be quite overwhelming to many families and individuals.
I have always found my “why” based in our mission. After 34 years of providing mission-critical services, it has always been about honoring the gift of donation and, as a laboratory, how we are caretakers of that wish. How do we build and continuously improve processes that reduce errors from collection of samples through the delivery of test results. I have been fortunate to do this work my entire career. I encourage others to find what area drives you and creates that spark of interest.
At CellTx, we play a role in ensuring the safety of donated tissue, whether it’s for a transplant, making regenerative medicine products, for a wound healing application or helping a family have a baby. It’s all pretty cool stuff, and it’s hard to not love what you do.
Find out more and register your interest regarding biotherapies pavilion connection packages and sponsorship opportunities at the 2024 Annual Meeting, October 19–22, 2024, in Houston, TX.
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