Moffitt Cancer Center plans to cool down fledgling Florida research site with Cryoport biorepository

As it works to build a 775-acre research campus in the Florida heat, the Moffitt Cancer Center is looking to cool things down—literally. The center has forged a partnership with life sciences supplier Cryoport to establish a biorepository on the campus to securely store frozen biological specimens.

Moffitt’s campus, called Speros, is being built near Tampa in Florida’s Pasco County and will house a Cryogene biorepository from Cryoport, according to a news release shared with Fierce Biotech.

“It'll be a 30,000-square-foot building, and it will be state of the art in terms of its power and its backup systems,” Cryoport President and CEO Jerrell Shelton told Fierce in an interview. “We provide for storms. We provide for power outages. We provide for emergencies of all types.”

The facility is set to open in 2026, Moffitt Cancer Center’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, Sabi Singh, told Fierce in a joint interview with Shelton. The site will also feature a proton therapy unit and an ambulatory clinic

The biorepository will allow for research samples, including human cells and tissues, to be stored in a central location in tightly maintained, consistent conditions, Singh and Shelton said.

The Cryoport partnership is part of Moffitt’s goal to turn Speros into a global hub for cell and gene therapy, Singh said.

“We see Speros as an innovation hub and a magnet for all kinds of industries, almost like a research park in North Carolina or in Boston,” Singh said. “This is, in a way, one of the building blocks toward that vision.”

Speros will be Cryogene’s third location, after Houston and San Antonio, and will likely be Cryoport’s premier site, Shelton said, because it can take advantage of what has been learned at the Texas locations.

The ultimate goal of the Cryoport partnership, and Speros as a whole, is to further Moffitt’s mission of preventing and curing cancer, Singh said. Housing samples so close to the research center and care providers “generates lot of synergy,” he added, and “accelerates the pathway from the bench side to the bedside cures and treatments.”