Company joins UCF Business Incubation Program with plans to add 40 more employees in Central Florida

ORLANDO, Fla. (September 13, 2022) — By nearly all measures, Escalate Life Sciences is a very successful company. It employs more than 100 employees around the world. It works with some of the biggest names in biotech, like Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.

Today, the company, which provides specialized engineering, staffing, consulting services and turnkey project solutions for manufacturing & laboratory operations, is poised to become one of Central Florida’s top companies servicing the life sciences industry.

“Orlando has everything we need to significantly grow our company and to help showcase all of the attributes of this region to companies around the world,” says Edgar Torres, CEO and founder, Escalate Life Sciences. “We thought our move to Orlando would have been temporary, but we truly found a home.”

Torres founded Escalate in Puerto Rico. After Hurricane Maria virtually destroyed the island, he relocated to Orlando temporarily as part of a business continuity plan. Shortly thereafter, when COVID shut down travel, Torres decided to relocate the global company headquarters to Lake Nona.

And as the pandemic’s effects waned, he decided he wanted to use Orlando as a place to grow. He joined the Lake Nona Innovation District to become more integrated into the Central Florida economy and grow his business.

“We were very impressed with what Edgar has already accomplished in the life sciences arena and believe his company is exactly what we look for in our Innovation Districts – companies that can scale into global powerhouses,” says Carol Ann Logue, director, programs & operations, Innovation Districts & Incubation Program, University of Central Florida. “We’re looking forward to being a part of his success.”

The services provided to life science companies is extremely diversified. One of their key services is working from concept to completion on research & regulated manufacturing & laboratory facilities. This includes services such as commissioning, validation, procurement and project management.

A significant feature is qualification of the laboratory/manufacturing equipment and research/operations processes to have them ready for commercialization based on the global regulatory requirements.

An example of that are projects that Escalate works for Moderna, J&J and Baxter worldwide.

In Orlando, many of the company’s functions being provided at locations throughout the world will be able to be centralized. In addition, Dr. Torres will be adding a specialized division focused on procurement, cost management and project management/controls solutions from its Orlando headquarters.

“What this community built is very impressive and is well poised to capture a lot of the growth in life sciences in the coming years, especially with amenities like Lake Nona, Academic Institutions/Universities like UCF, innovation districts and location near the Orlando International Airport,” Torres says. “We’re just looking forward to being a part of making this the center of this industry very quickly.”

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Contact:

UCF Business Incubation Program: Carol Ann Dykes Logue, 407-635-9882, carolann.dykeslogue@ucf.edu; Alan Byrd, Alan Byrd & Associates, 407-415-8470, Alan@ByrdConnections.com

Escalate Life Sciences: Edgar Torres, 877-213-7740, etorres@escalatesciences.com

About Escalate Life Sciences: We are a specialized engineering, quality systems and science-based company with the unique value-added proposition of providing hands-on expertise, staffing, consulting & turnkey project services/solutions to the regulated Life Sciences Manufacturing Industry (Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, Medical Devices). For more information, please visit escalatesciences.com

About the UCF Business Incubation Program: The University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program is a community resource that provides early-stage companies with the tools, training and infrastructure to become financially stable, high growth/impact enterprises. Since 1999, this award-winning program has provided vital business development resources resulting in over 300 local startup companies reaching their potential faster and graduating into the community where they continue to grow and positively impact the local economy.

With eight facilities throughout the region, the UCF Business Incubation Program is an economic development partnership between the University of Central Florida, the Corridor, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia Counties, and the cities of Kissimmee, Orlando and Winter Springs. For the 2017/2018 fiscal years, the activities of these participating firms have helped to sustain more than 6,725 local jobs and have had a cumulative impact of over $725 million on regional GDP and over $1.3 billion on regional sales. During the same period, the program has returned more than $12.00 in state and local taxes for every $1.00 invested in the program. In addition, for every $1.00 of public investment the firms also produced $118 of additional regional GDP and $226 of regional sales. For more information, visit  www.incubator.ucf.edu.