From Columbus Business First, Women of Influence is an interview series showcasing some of the most powerful women in the Central Ohio business community. Hosted by Eleanor Kennedy, Assistant Managing Editor.
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episode 41: Crisis Management: Expanding Andelyn Bioscience on becoming for-profit, navigating pandemic
Even before starting construction on a $100 million facility, a biotech affiliate of Nationwide Children's Hospital had to adapt to two huge changes simultaneously: Switching into for-profit mindset and securing safety in a pandemic.
Andelyn Biosciences Inc. is building a 185,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for the genetic materials used in gene therapy research and treatments. Eventually the factory could double in size if it adds enough commercial-scale clients.
The company already has grown to 120 employees from 100 at the start of the year, most of whom transferred from the hospital's Research Institute. With more than a decade supporting research and clinical trials, the staff already was flexible, adaptable and committed to quality, CEO Mayo Pujols said.
"So as we’ve transitioned to a for-profit, geared towards commercial company, the I think the add-on for our team has been more of around a mindset of scalability, and the mindset of: It is important to think about it as a business," he said in the latest episode of Columbus Business First's Crisis Management podcast.
That means paying more attention to controlling costs while investing in processes and systems to ready for a much larger production output.
"Rather than just having quality as a mindset and you have to do quality work, we actually put the systems in place to ensure quality is engineered into everything we do.
"We kind of took it a step further and preparation for being a commercial entity, and that’s been new to the team. ... And they’ve done really well."
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in Ohio coincided with an already planned shutdown to bring in new equipment for larger production capacity within the Research Institute, until the new facility is ready. Before reopening in September, Andelyn had to layer in safety measures such as modifying work schedules to keep employees distant if they can't work from home.
Some employees did contract Covid-19 or had to quarantine because of exposure, Pujols said.
"More recently, we are starting to now see impacts from our suppliers," he said. "And I think we’re not alone.
"We were able to do a little bit of stockpiling, but not probably enough to say we’re out of the woods."