Houston Biotechnology Company Brings Manufacturing Ops Home With New Facility
Houston-based clinical-stage biotechnology company FibroBiologics Inc. opened a manufacturing laboratory at 9350 Kirby Drive in the Texas Technology Park.
It will bring manufacturing operations in-house, meaning the company will no longer outsource to Charles River Laboratories in Memphis, Tennessee, the Houston Business Journal reported.
The new 10K SF facility is in addition to FibroBiologics’ 23K SF headquarters at 455 E. Medical Center Blvd.
“With this added capacity, we are not only scaling up our research efforts but also paving the way for in-house manufacturing of our cell therapy products,” FibroBiologics CEO Pete O’Heeron said in a press release. “Having full control of the manufacturing process will help us streamline the supply chain and reduce our reliance on external partners.”
FibroBiologics has hundreds of issued and pending patents for the development of therapeutics and potential cures for chronic diseases using fibroblasts, which can regenerate tissue and organs like stem cells but are easier to harvest, the HBJ reported.
The new lab will increase the company’s pace of discovery, and it plans to hire more researchers to help staff the facility.
Jeff Oetting and Brandon Farine of Houston-based Featherwood Capital represented FibroBiologics, while Gary Garcia and Stewart Smith of Fuller Realty represented the building owner, Ind Houtx Ttp Legacy LLC, according to the HBJ.
The lab space was previously leased to Marker Therapeutics, another Houston-based biotechnology company.
Manufacturing is a very small but nearly full sector of Houston’s industrial market. The 91M SF of manufacturing inventory in the Houston metro was more than 98% occupied at the end of 2024, though hopes are high that the Trump administration's focus on onshoring manufacturing could lead to even more demand for that space locally.
“With all these different trends of reshoring and advanced manufacturing, I would expect that we continue to see a really strong manufacturing demand over the next few years,” said Jordan Raney, Houston-based senior vice president of industrial for JLL.
