Strategic Advsor and Independent Board Director

Bryan Poltilove

sat down with Bryan Poltilove, strategic advisor and independent board director focused on bioprocessing and advanced therapy manufacturing, to discuss how just-in-time, point-of-care manufacturing is revolutionizing biopharma without compromising quality.

Watch the 2-part video interview with Poltilove:
Part 1: 

Bryan Poltilove on Evolving Bioprocessing Manufacturing Paradigms

Point-of-Use Media Manufacturing Could Cut Bioprocessing's Carbon Footprint by Two Thirds

What's Changing in Bioprocessing and Advanced Therapy Manufacturing and What Is Staying the Same?

The fundamentals aren't going anywhere, validation and GMP manufacturing. Nobody's willing to take risks there, nor should they be. The industry standard is well established and well understood.

What is changing is how and where manufacturing happens. We're seeing a significant shift toward point-of-care and place-of-care models, more distributed approaches to manufacturing, and supply chains that are becoming increasingly flexible in how reagents and other products are delivered to the industry. Cost has always mattered, but now environmental sustainability and supply chain resilience are becoming equally important drivers of that change.

It's a genuine paradigm change, a change in mentality and approach, not just a tweak to existing processes. The best analogy I can offer is the auto industry in the 1980s moving from large, inventory-heavy operations to just-in-time manufacturing. Biopharma is undergoing something very similar right now.

The key challenge is achieving that flexibility without compromising on the things that cannot be compromised. Reproducibility, availability, quality standards, those are non-negotiable. The goal is to find technologies and supply chain approaches that reduce inventory, make logistics more seamless, and give manufacturers more operational flexibility, all while keeping the product and the regulatory standards fully protected.

Where Are You Seeing this Play Out Most Concretely?

Cell therapy is probably the clearest example. We're seeing modular clean rooms, new cell processing technologies, and unit operations that can realistically be executed in a hospital setting. It's a remarkable development when you think about where cell therapy manufacturing stood even a decade ago.

I'm currently working with Nucleus Biologics, which has a particularly innovative approach to media manufacturing. The model is almost like a Nespresso or Keurig concept for cell culture media. Rather than producing a large, centralized batch and distributing it broadly, you're enabling on-demand, point-of-use manufacturing of the media itself. Their Krakatoa technology is built around that idea, storing powders on-site and only requiring water on-demand, rather than shipping and storing large volumes of liquid media.

What's the Practical Significance of that Powder-Based, On-Demand Approach?

The potential is substantial. Shipping requirements drop considerably because you're moving powder rather than liquid, and storage needs on-site shrink accordingly. Beyond the logistics, you gain the ability to manufacture exactly when and what you need, no excess, no waste.

What makes it compelling is that it combines the best of both existing formats: the ease of use and flexibility of liquid media with the logistical and cost advantages of powder. Bringing those two things together in a single workflow is genuinely innovative.

How Significant Is the Environmental Sustainability of this Shift?

It's increasingly central to how the industry evaluates these decisions. Best-in-class sustainability thinking now looks at total environmental impact from sourcing all the way through disposal, not just what comes out of a single step in the process.

Based on figures I've seen, moving to a distributed, point-of-use model for cell culture products can reduce end-to-end carbon footprint by roughly two-thirds compared to traditional centralized manufacturing. There's enormous promise here, or the industry and for the world more broadly.

It's just getting off the ground. A prototype system has been deployed in academic and industrial labs across multiple continents, used hundreds if not thousands of times, and has demonstrated strong reproducibility, consistency, and reliability at that scale. The commercial launch is happening now. Scaling that performance up to full bioprocessing scale is the next step, and I have every reason to believe the results will follow the same trajectory.

Articles

Validation and GMP rigor remain non-negotiable in bioprocessing, but manufacturing paradigms are shifting toward distributed, point-of-care/place-of-care models that prioritize flexibility, resilience, and sustainability alongside cost. This represents a just-in-time mindset change analogous to automotive manufacturing’s 1980s evolution, requiring inventory reduction without sacrificing reproducibility or quality. Cell therapy is the clearest near-term proving ground, enabled by modular clean rooms and hospital-executable unit operations. Powder-based, on-demand media manufacturing could materially reduce logistics burden, waste, and end-to-end carbon footprint.

Bryan Poltilove discusses how distributed, point-of-care manufacturing is reshaping biopharma supply chains and cutting carbon footprints.

Q&A: Bryan Poltilove on the Future of Bioprocessing

At INTERPHEX 2026, Bryan Poltilove highlights a new technology as a promising point-of-use media manufacturing approach with major sustainability and logistical benefits.

Watch Part 1 of this interview on how the industry is shifting!

, Bryan Poltilove, strategic advisor and independent board director focused on bioprocessing and advanced therapy manufacturing, discusses 

technology and its potential to transform how cell culture media is produced and distributed.

Poltilove describes the core innovation as a point-of-use media manufacturing approach that stores dry powder components on site, requiring only the addition of water to produce media on demand. This model delivers what he characterizes as a compelling combination: the ease and flexibility of liquid media paired with the logistical and cost advantages of powder. The reduction in shipping requirements and on-site storage footprint, driven by the fundamental differences in volume and weight between powder and liquid formats, represents a significant operational shift for bioprocessing facilities.

From a sustainability standpoint, Poltilove points to figures suggesting roughly a two-thirds reduction in carbon footprint when comparing point-of-use distributed manufacturing of cell culture products to traditional centralized manufacturing models. He frames this within a broader concept of total environmental impact of ownership, encompassing everything from sourcing through production to disposal, a lens he sees increasingly reflected in industry best practices around green sustainability.

On the technology's current status, Poltilove notes that Krakatoa is only just launching commercially, though a prototype system has already been deployed across academic and industrial laboratories on multiple continents, demonstrating strong reproducibility, consistency, and reliability. He expresses confidence that scaling the technology to full bioprocessing environments will follow the same proven trajectory, with meaningful real-world impact expected in the coming months.

Videos

At INTERPHEX 2026, Bryan Poltilove highlights a novel technology as a promising point-of-use media manufacturing approach with major sustainability and logistical benefits.

Bioprocessing veteran Bryan Poltilove discusses how biopharma manufacturing is shifting toward distributed, point-of-care, just-in-time models without compromising quality standards.

 Bryan Poltilove on Evolving Bioprocessing Manufacturing Paradigms

Bryan Poltilove, a strategic advisor and independent board director with over two decades of experience in bioprocessing and advanced therapy manufacturing, shares his perspective on how the industry is shifting in Part 1 of a two-part interview with 

Poltilove emphasizes that while GMP manufacturing and validation remain non-negotiable table stakes, the broader manufacturing landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. He draws a parallel to the automotive industry's shift toward just-in-time production in the 1980s, arguing that biopharma is undergoing a similar paradigm shift, moving away from large, centralized inventory models toward more flexible, distributed approaches.

Key to this evolution is the growth of point-of-care and place-of-care manufacturing, particularly in cell therapy, where modular clean rooms and specialized cell processing technologies are enabling production at hospital settings. Poltilove stresses that this shift must not come at the expense of reproducibility, quality standards, or regulatory compliance. The challenge lies in achieving greater logistical flexibility while preserving those fundamentals.

As a concrete example of innovation in this space, Poltilove highlights Nucleus Biologics, whose approach to cell culture media manufacturing he describes as a "Nespresso/Keurig-type model,” enabling on-demand, point-of-care reagent production rather than reliance on large pre-made lots. Having spent nearly 20 years in the cell culture media space, including leading portfolios of Thermo Fisher’s Gibco products for more than a decade, Poltilove called the Nucleus Biologics technology one of the most potentially revolutionary he has encountered throughout his career.