Life Science Insights From An Industry Visionary

By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

When Parrish Galliher first founded Xcellerex, now part of GE Healthcare, he referred to the business idea as “bugs on wheels” because unlike traditional stainless steel biologic manufacturing facilities which can’t be built quickly, easily changed or moved, his concept for the FlexFactory allowed manufacturers to build and/or modify manufacturing capacity quickly and at far less cost. Moreover, no longer did companies have to take three to four years to build a plant that could manufacture only one product, but could build structures that could be changed quickly from manufacturing one product to another. The idea was, at the time, quite disruptive to our conservative industry where, according to Galliher, it can take close to a decade for companies to adopt new technology. Galliher confided that in the early days of starting Xcellerex in December 2002, he struggled to get funding for the business. That all changed when he met Jamie Rosenfield, cofounder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), at a Gap International breakthrough thinking for business management training course. Rosenfield became the first investor of Xcellerex. In March of 2012, the company was acquired by GE Healthcare Life Sciences. Though financial terms were not disclosed, the fact that the fourth largest public company in the world desired to add Xcellerex technology to its stable of offerings solidifies Galliher’s place as “industry visionary.” Galliher sat down with Outsourced Pharma to share his thoughts on trends and strategies he believes are shaping our industry.