Cellares Appoints Former MaxCyte Commercial Chief Ali Soleymannezhad as Chief Commercial Officer to Lead Global IDMO Expansion, Catalyze Next Wave of Partnerships, Prepare for IPO
- Industry veteran brings two decades of platform commercialization experience in cell therapy, bioprocessing, and bioanalytics as Cellares prepares to support multiple clinical trials in 2026
- Appointment follows five global manufacturing agreements with partners, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Kite, and leading academic institutions, as well as the FDA's first Advanced Manufacturing Technology designation for a cell therapy manufacturing platform.
Cellares, the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), today announced the appointment of Ali Soleymannezhad as Chief Commercial Officer. Soleymannezhad, formerly Chief Commercial Officer at MaxCyte (NASDAQ:MXCT) and Executive Vice President at Tosoh Bioscience, will lead global commercial strategy as the company deploys its network of IDMO Smart Factories across the United States, Europe, and Japan. Soleymannezhad's appointment is key to driving the commercial expansion and pipeline growth in preparation for a future IPO.
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Pictured: Cellares Chief Commercial Officer Ali Soleymannezhad
Soleymannezhad brings more than two decades of experience building global commercial organizations around advanced life-science platforms. At MaxCyte, he led commercial strategy and execution across sales, business development and licensing, marketing, product management, and field applications, expanding adoption across the United States, Europe, and Asia while securing enterprise and partner agreements with leading biopharmaceutical companies.
At Tosoh Bioscience, he directed global strategy and P&L, securing multi-year supply agreements that embedded the company's technologies into critical bioprocessing workflows. At Cellares, he will leverage his experience to secure long-term, multi-program partnerships that anchor sponsors' cell therapy portfolios on Cellares' IDMO Smart Factories and expand patient access to life-changing therapies.
Soleymannezhad's appointment comes at a time when manufacturing capacity and cost-efficiency remain the primary barriers preventing patients from receiving curative cell therapies. Most approved cell therapies today are personalized cancer treatments produced one patient dose at a time, with sponsors relying on manual workflows in region-specific cleanrooms. Each geography requires separate technology transfer and validation, creating fragmentation that delays global launches and forces companies to make manufacturing decisions country by country instead of portfolio-wide.
Cellares offers a unified alternative. As a strategic partner for global cell therapy manufacturing, the company proactively engages and educates regulators to accelerate clinical and commercial pathways for its partners. The Cell ShuttleTM is the first end-to-end cell therapy manufacturing platform to receive the FDA's Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) designation. This designation provides expedited review and regulatory support for developers leveraging Cellares' IDMO services, enabling faster INDs, BLAs, and global launches while reducing the risk of adopting automated manufacturing.
"Throughout my career, I've worked to bring breakthrough technologies to patients, but Cellares is different," said Ali Soleymannezhad, Chief Commercial Officer of Cellares. "Too many patients miss out on life-changing cell therapies because global manufacturing capacity simply can't keep pace. With Cellares' first-of-its-kind Cell Shuttle and global IDMO infrastructure, we finally have the ability to meet total patient demand. I'm honored to join Cellares on this mission, and am committed to ensuring that every therapy capable of transforming lives can actually reach the patients who need it."
As Chief Commercial Officer, Soleymannezhad will oversee global enterprise sales, business development and licensing, and strategic marketing. He will partner with biopharmaceutical companies to build multi-year, multi-program portfolios that leverage Cellares' IDMO Smart Factories as shared global infrastructure for current and future cell therapy programs.
"Cellares is positioned to fundamentally transform cell therapy manufacturing," said Fabian Gerlinghaus, Co-founder and CEO of Cellares. "As we establish a strong cGMP track record supporting multiple clinical trials in 2026, I'm excited for Ali to channel the rapidly expanding customer demand into our expanding commercial-scale manufacturing network in the United States, Europe, and Japan."
Cellares is delivering on its mission to meet total patient demand through a global network of IDMO Smart Factories. Sponsors work with Cellares to avoid recreating capacity region by region and can accelerate market entry faster.
The company pairs this reach with proven execution: Cellares has automated more than half a dozen manual processes on the Cell Shuttle with a 100% automation success rate. This performance underpins the Biotech Incentive Program, through which Cellares funds and executes process automation while assuming the upfront technical risk.
Soleymannezhad holds an MBA from Rice University and B.E.Sc. and M.E.Sc. Degrees in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from Western University.
About Cellares
Cellares is the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) and takes an Industry 4.0 approach to mass manufacturing the living drugs of the 21st century. The company is developing and operating integrated technologies for cell therapy manufacturing to accelerate access to life-saving cell therapies. The company's Cell Shuttle integrates all the technologies required for the entire manufacturing process in a flexible and high-throughput platform that delivers end-to-end automation. While the Cell Shuttle automates cell therapy manufacturing, the Cell Q™ automates quality control at high throughput, both for in-process and release QC. Cell Shuttles and Cell Qs are being deployed in Cellares' Smart Factories around the world, enabling each Smart Factory to produce 10 times as many cell therapy batches as conventional CDMOs with the same facility size and headcount. Partnering with Cellares enables academic medical centers, biotechnology companies, and pharmaceutical companies to accelerate cell therapy development and scale out manufacturing, lower process failure rates, lower manufacturing costs, and meet global patient demand.
The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, California, with its first commercial-scale IDMO Smart Factory in Bridgewater, New Jersey. Cellares is building a global network of IDMO Smart Factories, with additional facilities under construction in Europe and Japan. The company is backed by world-class investors and has raised over $355 million in financing.
For more information about Cellares, please visit cellares.com.
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