How Stable Is Your Contract Vivarium?
Six research programs faced an unexpected vivarium transition. What it took to keep their research moving became a real-world test of CVO stability.
Recently, a competing CVO announced it was closing its Philadelphia facility, requiring several biotech companies conducting preclinical in vivo research to find new contract vivarium space.
Relocating an active in vivo program requires careful coordination, particularly when studies are already underway. There may be no way to pause studies being conducted along precise timepoints and simply pick up and resume the work somewhere else. Animals would need to be replaced or safely transferred without introducing variables that could compromise the study. Every delay would consume more time and capital, potentially pushing back critical data collection and the milestones tied to it. Some studies could even be forced to come to an early end.
The companies were now faced with complex decisions about how to proceed. Could the work continue as planned? Was there another CVO nearby with the right space and capabilities? What would be required to transition their research with as little disruption as possible?
For teams committed to keeping studies in-house, the priority was finding another contract vivarium that could support both the transition and the ongoing needs of their research.
Over the weeks that followed, six of those paths would converge at Mispro, Philadelphia’s only other contract vivarium, putting a larger question to the test: What does CVO stability actually look like when your research depends on it?
When Space Isn't Enough
When Mispro's Director of Business Development for the Mid-Atlantic, Anthipi Paxinos, learned about the closure, she knew there would be research teams looking for new vivarium space. Mispro approached the closing CVO about coordinating a transition, hoping to give those researchers a clear path forward. The offer was declined, leaving affected companies to navigate their next steps independently.
With Mispro located just a few blocks away, companies began reaching out to see if their studies could transition to Mispro’s contract vivarium facility with as little disruption as possible.
As inquiries reached Paxinos, the scale of the transitions came into focus. Mispro’s Philadelphia location had space, but the conversations quickly moved beyond square footage. Six companies would be moving into Mispro’s facility at the same time, each bringing its own study protocols, animal models, equipment needs and requirements for technical support.
On paper, it was a sales team's dream: six companies needed vivarium space, Mispro had it, and the clock was already pushing them toward a decision. The commercial playbook could have ended there. Prepare the rooms, sign the contracts, issue the keycards and let six experienced research teams get back to work.
But simply providing rooms would not be enough. The teams needed to transition active research, which meant preparing the facility and aligning resources around the specific needs of each program.
“These companies were being asked to trust another CVO to support their in vivo programs through a significant transition,” Paxinos said. “A signed contract would only guarantee that we had space when they needed it. We still had to earn their trust.”
Getting them through the door was one measure of success. Making Mispro Philadelphia feel like somewhere they could confidently maintain and grow their in vivo program would require much more.
What Can a Healthy CVO Handle?
With all six companies ready to move forward with Mispro, the challenge shifted from finding space to making sure the specific research needs of each company could be supported. Immediate priorities to facilitate the migration smoothly became clear quickly: protocols, people, equipment and, importantly, maintaining timelines.
Keeping Protocols Moving
Getting research started at a new facility typically follows a linear process. Study protocols move through IACUC review and approval, researchers complete IACUC orientation, and Site Operations conducts its own orientation before work begins.
“With a typical onboarding, there’s time for each step to happen in sequence,” said Claire Johnson, Mispro's Director of Quality Assurance & Compliance. “These teams were working within a much shorter transition window. We looked at where we could bring steps together, eliminate some of the duplication and get the right people in the room at the same time.”
Johnson brought Site Operations into the IACUC orientation, replacing separate meetings with one conversation which removed standard, but not critical, redundancy from the onboarding process. Meanwhile, protocols were accelerated through the IACUC review process.
Understanding that the incoming research teams also had to adapt to a new vivarium environment and supporting staff, that same approach extended beyond onboarding. Mispro’s IACUC, animal care, technical services, and site teams worked in parallel to prepare for their arrival and address the needs of each incoming program. That coordination gave each team a clearer path to continue its research despite the abbreviated transition period.
Even under a compressed timeline, protocol review kept pace with the move.
Putting the Right People in Place
The incoming programs brought more research into Mispro Philadelphia in a short period of time, and the team quickly increased headcount to support it.
Among those hired were two staff members from the closing CVO, one in Technical Operations and one in Animal Care, who had already worked with some of the researchers making the move. Mispro needed the additional support, and the new team members already knew the research, workflows and people behind it.
The hires also gave some of the incoming teams an added measure of continuity, with familiar staff moving alongside their programs.
For some researchers, their first day at Mispro included a familiar and capable face.
Delivering the Capabilities Research Needs
Space and staffing would only go so far if the environment could not support the work researchers were bringing with them. Several of the incoming programs relied on IVIS imaging, a capability Mispro Philadelphia did not yet have.
That was not unusual. IVIS systems are expensive, highly specialized machines, and imaging is often a capability researchers outsource rather than maintain on site. Mispro had already been exploring broader IVIS access across its network, but the needs arriving in Philadelphia gave that conversation new urgency.
“We knew how important IVIS was to the work these teams were bringing with them,” said Paul Chamberlain, Mispro’s Associate Director of Technical Operations. “If they were going to continue that work here, we needed to figure out how to get the capability here, too.”
Mispro leveraged an existing relationship with an established bioimaging vendor, giving the team a place to start. What had been a longer-term conversation about expanding IVIS access across Mispro quickly became an immediate effort to get a system into Philadelphia and ready for research.
A stable CVO needs the ability to respond as research requirements change. It can evolve as the research does.
The IVIS arrived at Philadelphia the day the clients started.
The Human Side of Stability
Protocols, staffing and equipment were three different challenges, handled by different teams across Mispro. But inside the organization itself, there were no long chains of approvals or departmental handoffs slowing down the response. The people closest to the research could make decisions, pull in the right resources and act on what the clients needed.
But agile and accommodating teams were only part of what the incoming clients needed from their next CVO. They needed a partner that would give them the autonomy, flexibility and expertise to keep their focus on their studies and data collection.
One researcher described that experience as having the “liberty to run our studies with minimal support, while still being able to get help when it was needed.” At Mispro, that meant direct access to the people caring for their animals, managing the facility and providing technical services support, without giving up control over how the work itself was conducted.
For the CEO and Founder of one of the incoming biotechs, that translated into just how much their team could accomplish:
“As a small preclinical biotech, speed, bandwidth and cost efficiency are critical. Conducting our studies at Mispro allows us to do more with limited resources. We can potentially run two studies for roughly the cost of outsourcing one, while benefiting from a responsive staff and an IACUC team that helps us quickly resolve issues and keep moving.”
Our facilities are intentionally designed around an operational and financial derisking model that supports longterm sustainability. Taking on unnecessary risk compromises that model and, ultimately, the stability our clients rely on. If the model becomes unsustainable, clients may be forced to invest limited capital into fixed, capital-intensive infrastructure that does not directly advance their science or generate ROI.
The companies initially came to Mispro because they needed a new home for their research. What they found was a CVO able to bring together the infrastructure, people, processes and capabilities needed to support their programs and keep their research moving.
The Value of a Stable Contract Vivarium
The displacement experienced by these companies exposed an issue that extends well beyond these six teams. Biotech companies choosing the contract vivarium option are making a deliberate decision to retain control of their in vivo research rather than outsource it to a CRO. To do that, they need to trust that their CVO will provide a stable, safe and reliable environment that allows them to focus on their research, not the infrastructure behind it. That stability is fundamental to the role CVOs now play in the preclinical research ecosystem.
A large footprint, significant investment and a recognizable presence in the market can all signal strength. None of them, on their own, proves that a CVO is stable.
For research teams evaluating a CVO, stability can be seen in how the organization operates: how it invests in its facilities and capabilities, how quickly its people can make decisions and how effectively it responds when research needs change.
Facilities open, change ownership, and close. That’s true of any growing organization. Stability isn’t a guarantee that nothing will ever change. It’s how an organization treats your research when something does: how much runway you get, who’s coordinating the handoff, and whether anyone picks up the phone.
CVO stability is easy to overlook when the research is running according to plan. The transition of six research programs to Mispro Philadelphia demonstrated what that stability can look like when plans change.
Six companies needed to transition their research to a new vivarium. Mispro showed what it takes to help them keep moving.
