What if a scientific meeting didn’t just report on innovation—but actively moved it forward?
That’s the energy surrounding the 2025 AABB Annual Meeting this October in San Diego, especially in the biotherapies space. This year’s meeting is emerging not just as a place to present—but as a place to test, refine and launch. Whether you’re working at the bench, navigating regulatory hurdles or preparing to scale a therapy, the AABB Annual Meeting is an essential platform to take the next step—and maybe meet the right collaborator while you’re at it.
More Than Updates—It’s Momentum
For those of us tracking or shaping the future of cell and gene therapy, this year’s AABB Annual Meeting agenda offers much more than updates; it offers momentum. With so much happening across the four-day program, it’s impossible to capture it all here in my Cell Notes. But a few sessions stand out for me as especially timely in showing how biotherapies innovation is moving forward. Take for example:
Sessions That Spark Movement
“Building a Translational Arm to Your Cellular Therapy Laboratory”: This session will dive into how cellular therapy labs can evolve into fully translational environments, bridging the gap between academic research and regulated manufacturing. It’s a timely discussion, especially as academic centers increasingly build internal GMP capacity to keep pace with CGT demands.
Oral Abstract Spotlight: “Biotherapies and Cell Transplantation”
This session will give us a front-row seat to some of the most exciting work in early clinical and translational science. Abstracts highlight diverse approaches—from new scaffold-free strategies to enhance cell delivery, to refinements in cell selection and storage—all grounded in real-world application.
Cord Blood Connect Programming
Cord blood, a longtime biotherapies mainstay, takes center stage in this year’s integrated programming. Sessions such as “Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation: A Very Good Curative Option for Pediatric Patients with Congenital Disorders Even in the Setting of Underrepresented Minorities” will help bring issues of equity and access into sharper focus. Others, like “Ex Vivo and In Vivo Potency of CD34+ Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells Isolated from Cord Blood Using a Novel Technology,” will remind us that potency, purity and platform matter—and that the science is still evolving.
CABP Celebration Hour: Innovation Through Credentialing
There will be a spotlight on the Certified Advanced Biotherapies Professional (CABP) Credentialing Program during the CABP Celebration Hour. Here, AABB will bring together recent CABP recipients to share how they prepared and how the credential is shaping their work. It’s a powerful moment where professional development meets innovation—as exemplars of quality, leadership and practice-setting convergence.
Sizzling Topics: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Biotherapies
This series has become one of the hottest tickets at the Annual Meeting—so much so that this year’s session is already sold out. The 2025 session focuses on AI’s promise and potential pitfalls for cellular and gene therapies. Speakers will frame AI through “the good, the ugly and the challenges,” sparking candid conversation about how this transformative technology is reshaping our field.
Solve It! Scenarios in Cellular Therapy: Collaboration in Action
In a lively roundtable format, participants will rotate from table to table, tackling real-world scenarios and challenges in biotherapies. The design not only surfaces practical solutions but also creates one of the Annual Meeting’s most effective networking opportunities—where problem-solving and connection go hand in hand.
ICCBBA Learning Lab: Standards in Action
Standards and identifiers are often the invisible backbone of biotherapies progress. The ICCBBA workshop will make that backbone visible. By diving into the latest on ISBT 128 labeling for cellular therapies, the workshop will underscore how shared language and harmonized standards enable safe, scalable innovation. It’s a reminder that breakthroughs at the bench only reach patients when the infrastructure to deliver them is in place.
From Booth to Breakthrough
The Annual Meeting Exhibit Hall features a dedicated space presented by Abbott to showcase the future of biotherapies. This area, the Biotherapies Pavilion, transforms the floor into a collaborative launchpad for biotherapies professionals and organizations.
Innovators including BBG Advanced Therapies, Charles River Laboratories, Eurofins CellTx, FerroBio Technologies, Save the Cord Foundation, Versiti and Vitalant will be on hand to connect, demonstrate and exchange ideas. Think of it as a booth-side laboratory where spontaneous dialogue can seed future partnerships.
The Biotherapies Pavilion also hosts informal meetups, open-mic style exchange, and even opportunities to test messaging or gather feedback on early-stage concepts—making it as much about collaboration as exhibition.
Networking That Builds the Future
One of the greatest values the AABB Annual Meeting provides is the opportunity to build lasting professional relationships. With so many sectors converging—academia, hospital-based biotherapies programs, community blood centers, startups and regulators—the Annual Meeting becomes a networking hub where hallway conversations can lead to real collaborations.
It’s not just who you know, but who you meet—and what you create together. That’s what always makes the AABB Annual Meeting special. It’s not just about sitting in sessions; it’s about what happens in the hallways, at the posters or while grabbing coffee (or other fuel of choice). Sometimes the most important breakthroughs start with a quick recharge and a good conversation.
Whether you’re debuting a new assay, seeking advice on potency metrics, exploring accreditation pathways or just hoping to meet someone solving the same problem you’re facing, you’ll likely find your moment at AABB 2025.
So, the question isn’t just what you’ll learn at the Annual Meeting; it’s what you might launch. For a detailed schedule visit the AABB Annual Meeting
website. We hope to see you there!