As a relative newcomer to the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) sector, Resilience has seen its share of ups and downs since its founding in 2020, including site closures and layoffs due to capacity expansion outpacing industry demand.

A year ago, the company announced an updated business strategy to prioritize the high-growth segments of biologics and aseptic drug product operations, while consolidating its manufacturing sites to better align with market dynamics.

To become a “leaner, stronger” CDMO with the right focus and footprint, Resilience made the decision in 2025 to close six underutilized facilities — Alachua, Florida, Fremont and San Diego in California, as well as Allston, Bedford, and Marlborough in Massachusetts — while maintaining production sites in the Cincinnati area (Blue Ash and West Chester, Ohio), Philadelphia, and Toronto. 

“Our Philadelphia site covers cell therapy development and manufacturing,” said Catherine Hanley, vice president of corporate communications at Resilience. “In Toronto, we’re doing drug substance development and manufacturing, and a little drug product. We also have plasma capabilities there. In the West Chester facility, we’re doing drug product manufacturing and fill-finish. The Blue Ash facility will be for device assembly and packaging, as well as our headquarters, and we’re building that out now.”

Resilience contends that it is building a streamlined, high-performance manufacturing network to meet the evolving needs of its clinical and commercial-stage customers. At the same time, the company has relocated its headquarters from San Diego to Ohio.     

Access to capital has not been a challenge for Resilience. The company has raised over $2 billion since its founding. Launched in 2020 with $800 million in funds from venture capital firms, the CDMO promised to provide “new, better, faster ways” to manufacture cell and gene therapies.

In 2025, Resilience’s updated business strategy was supported by $250 million in “bridge financing” from existing institutional investors. In October of last year, the CDMO said it will use long-term financing of up to $825 million to accelerate its shift toward biologics and aseptic drug product manufacturing. The investment funds the expansion of the company’s “go-forward manufacturing operations” anchored in Cincinnati and Toronto. The Toronto operation is being upgraded to expand biologics production and support future growth in cell-based medicines.

Resilience’s Cincinnati area facilities

The Blue Ash site will serve as a drug product packaging and supply operation spanning more than 450,000 square feet, with capabilities including visual inspection, device assembly, packaging, labeling, as well as cold storage warehousing.

“Blue Ash is really going to help us expand our drug product manufacturing at the site,” according to Josh Matson, Resilience’s vice president and general manager. “The first lines that are under construction are for visual inspection, device assembly, and two packaging lines. Those are first ones slated to go in there.”

Matson described Blue Ash as being in the “project phase” with plans to have the first line running commercial production in early 2027 and to add approximately 200 jobs over the next 18 to 24 months.

A new fill-finish line at the 580,000-square-foot West Chester facility, located approximately 10 miles from Blue Ash, will expand capacity across multiple injectable formats and product types for biopharmaceutical customers.

“In West Chester, we have two buildings,” said Matson, who has been with Resilience since the company acquired the site in 2023. “One is for sterile manufacturing that’s got our formulation drug product filling. Today, we do filling in vials and syringes and we have a cartridge fill line and flex fill line arriving later this year.”

Building two in West Chester has visual inspection, device assembly, and packaging operations — complementing the expansion of capabilities at Blue Ash, he added.

“There’s definitely a lot of demand right now from larger pharma companies with high-volume products in prefilled syringes, cartridges, and even vials,” Matson said. “We’re trying to see how quickly we can ramp up the assets that we have and bring on new assets to help meet that market demand. At the same time, there still is a need for a smaller volume niche. That’s why we’re bringing in the flexible fill line.”

As a U.S.-based CDMO, Matson believes Resilience is benefitting from the current geopolitical environment and the strong onshoring trend.    

Resiliency in action

An industry source told Pharma Manufacturing that Resilience is aptly named, given the company’s ability to seemingly overcome adversity in its relatively short time as a CDMO.

Resilience’s marketing tagline remains the “CDMO that’s changing the game” by focusing on delivering high-quality, scalable manufacturing solutions for biopharma customers, enabling them to bring medicines to market faster and more reliably.

“Last year, we closed some sites and really just focused on what we do well and what we do best,” Hanley said, pointing to the company’s capabilities in biologics drug substance, cell-based therapies, and aseptic drug product manufacturing mostly for large molecules. “We did some right-sizing.”