For months, I’d been reaching out to South San Francisco-headquartered Cellares, the well-funded startup and self-described integrated development and manufacturing organization (IDMO), to get a tour of their flagship “smart factory” in Bridgewater, New Jersey. You can imagine my excitement when the company finally agreed for me to get a behind-the-scenes look at the facility.

As a journalist who has reported on the cell therapy space for years, I’m all too familiar with the challenges the sector continues to face with developers and contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs) shuttering doors and downsizing workforces. While these potentially curative therapies offer hope to millions of patients, they remain complex and difficult to manufacture with scale-up an obstacle to regulatory approval and commercialization.

However, Cellares has marketed itself as the industry’s first IDMO and a pioneer when it comes to cell therapy manufacturing, combining digitally connected and automated platforms with smart factory infrastructure to overcome the limitations of “manual” CDMOs.

The company’s 118,000-square-foot commercial manufacturing facility in Bridgewater is touted as integrating “best-in-class automation” across supply chain, inventory, media/reagent filling, fill-finish, and cryostorage, “all tied into a unified digital backbone spanning ERP/LIMS, eBR, and COI/COC, delivering low-touch execution, real-time visibility, and a continuous state of compliance where materials move, data follows, and every action is traceable.”

But my August 25 visit to the site to see these technologies in action — particularly Cellares’ Cell Shuttle automated manufacturing platform — was, in the end, not meant to be. Less than a week before my trip to New Jersey, the tour in Bridgewater was abruptly canceled by Cellares.

“Reaching out ahead of next week’s tour in Bridgewater to let you know that Cellares needs to reschedule,” read an August 18 email. “The leadership team we wanted you to meet and lead the tour will now be in San Francisco that week.”

At first, I chalked it up to last-minute scheduling conflicts. However, now it all makes sense to me. Management didn’t want to have a reporter on site in New Jersey this week after it went public with the news that a “large pharmaceutical customer” recently made the decision to end its partnership with Cellares. Though Cellares did not disclose it, that customer is Bristol Myers Squibb.

“Following a comprehensive evaluation, Bristol Myers Squibb determined that the Cellares-partnered Cell Shuttle system could not meet the necessary requirements to make commercial Breyanzi,” a Bristol Myers Squibb spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Pharma Manufacturing. “This determination is specific to Breyanzi and its established, regulatory-approved manufacturing process.”

Cellares subsequently issued a statement to Pharma Manufacturing strongly disagreeing with Bristol Myers Squibb’s characterization that the Cell Shuttle system could not meet the necessary requirements to make commercial Breyanzi.

“The Cell Shuttle has already manufactured GMP drug product in an FDA-regulated clinical program, with doses meeting all release specifications, delivered on time and administered to patients,” a spokesperson said, adding the company protects the confidentiality of its customers and does not discuss confidential program details publicly. “Cellares is supporting a growing portfolio of clinical- and commercial-stage programs, with its customer base more than doubling since the beginning of the year.”

What’s next for Cellares? 

While Cellares has other customers, Bristol Myers Squibb’s decision to end its partnership is a gut punch. Cellares CEO Fabian Gerlinghaus said in January the company was “seeing really strong operational progress and delivering on all the milestones” for its $380 million partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb for commercial-scale manufacturing in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. “That’s why we’re building out these facilities,” he added.

For now, Gerlinghaus is putting on a brave face. While the loss of the Bristol Myers Squibb partnership will require Cellares to resize, he posted on LinkedIn that the company continues to support a “strong and growing portfolio of clinical and commercial customer programs” after more than doubling the number of customers since the beginning of 2026.

The question remains how losing Bristol Myers Squibb as a customer will impact Cellares’ plans for an initial public offering, something Gerlinghaus previously said was in the works for 2027. It also remains to be seen what impact it has on the battle between Cellares and rival Ori Biotech to automate cell therapy manufacturing, as both companies look to raise capital in a race to scale infrastructure.