Cell Notes: When Biotherapies Become Everyday Work

In her monthly column "Cell Notes," AABB's Christina Celluzzi, PhD, MS, CABP(H), shares insights, findings and commentary on emerging topics in biotherapies. Subscribe to CellSource, AABB's biotherapies newsletter, to receive "Cell Notes" and the latest news directly in your inbox. 

Every new year comes with a familiar, even obligatory, ritual. We feel almost compelled to look back at what launched, what landed, what surprised us and what quietly reshaped our work along the way. In biotherapies, there is plenty from the past year of which to be proud. New programs were built, education expanded, accreditation continued to evolve, and more professionals stepped into the field through training and certification, including many new certified advanced biotherapies professionals (CABPs). Important work moved forward, often behind the scenes, but still moving.

What stayed with me most from the past year wasn’t just what we accomplished. It was how different many of the conversations sounded.

People aren’t just talking about what might be possible someday. They are talking about what they are trying to make work right now in their hospitals, their collection centers, their processing labs and their quality programs. The questions felt a bit less theoretical and more operational. Less about promise (though there of course still is), and more about practice.

This feels like an important turning point. If you have been reading my columns, you may have noticed I do like to insert a good quote here and there – and this month’s column is no different.

Louis Pasteur, whose December birthday makes his words feel especially fitting this time of year, has been quoted as saying that chance favors the prepared mind. That thought resonates now more than ever. New discoveries may move quickly, but the ability to use them well is built slowly through standards, accreditation, training and communities that learn from one another. Throughout the past year, we’ve seen growing attention to how potency is defined and measured in practical terms, how point-of-care manufacturing might actually function inside health systems, how AI can support documentation and training in realistic ways and how urgent true workforce development has become. These are not abstract questions anymore. They show up in scheduling, staffing, audits, validation plans and troubleshooting.

What strikes me most is where this progress lives. It’s happening in the spaces between disciplines:  where apheresis meets manufacturing, where accreditation meets operations, where education meets practice. That is where AABB has always operated best, and it is where the field now seems to be moving with real intention.

That blending of science and daily responsibility brings to mind another reflection. This one is inspired by Rosalind Franklin. Her X-ray diffraction work was essential to revealing the structure of DNA, and she once observed that science and everyday life should not be separated. That distinction feels especially relevant now.

Biotherapies now live in that everyday space. They are part of donor conversations, transport decisions, freezer management, training programs, competency assessments and accreditation visits. They are no longer only the work of specialized researchers. They are becoming the shared responsibility of a much larger health care community.

We should absolutely carry forward what we learned past year. Those lessons steady us. But this new year feels less like a pause for reflection and more like a time for building. Not just building new therapies, but building the systems, standards and people that make it possible for those therapies to reach patients safely and consistently. At year’s end, that balance between looking back and building forward feels exactly right!

That is the year ahead—and we at AABB look forward to being a part of it.