United Therapeutics Corporation (Nasdaq: UTHR), a public benefit corporation, today announced the opening of its third Designated Pathogen-Free (DPF) facility, The Dr. Bartley P. Griffith and Dr. Robert A. Montgomery Xenograft Production Facility, in Houston, Texas.
United Therapeutics opened its first DPF facility in Christiansburg, Va. in 2024 to produce xenografts for ongoing clinical trials. The company celebrated the opening of its second facility, The Thomas E. Starzl Xenograft Production Facility, in Stewartville, Minn. on August 12, 2026. The two new facilities in Stewartville and Houston are designed to enable United Therapeutics to scale commercial production of its xeno-organs following approval of these products. All three facilities are crucial for advancing the company’s organ manufacturing program.
These facilities are a feat of biotechnology engineering, requiring a strictly controlled, biosecure barrier environment, including air filtration, filtered water, filtered feed supplies, and state-of-the-art decontamination entryways. They include hundreds of miles of carefully calibrated air and water conduits to support the transplantability of the final xenograft products and to help prevent contamination from pathogens. United Therapeutics also installed solar arrays on the remaining land for all three facilities, allowing them to offset a significant portion of their energy use with solar power.
“Every day, people with end-stage organ disease die waiting for an organ that never comes. With our third xenograft production facility now open and clinical trials underway, United Therapeutics is moving closer to its goal of providing transplantable organs to the people who need them. It is fitting that this facility is named for Dr. Griffith and Dr. Montgomery, whose first-in-human surgeries turned xenotransplantation from a theoretical possibility into a clinical reality,” said Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D., Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of United Therapeutics.
Bartley P. Griffith, MD, FACS, FRCS revolutionized medicine by pioneering artificial hearts that have now been implanted over 15,000 times. He made history by successfully conducting the world’s first transplants of United Therapeutics’ xenohearts in 2022 and 2023. Dr. Griffith’s creation of a nationwide network of expert organ procurement surgeons has supported United Therapeutics’ Lung Bioengineering program, which uses ex vivo lung perfusion technology to enable transplant surgeons to evaluate marginal donor lungs that frequently go untransplanted, and it has led to hundreds of lung transplants.
Robert A. Montgomery, MD, DPhil, FACS is known for many transformative innovations in transplantation that have enabled thousands of successful transplants. His research efforts led to “kidney exchanges” and passage of the Norwood Act, which allows living kidney donors who are biologically incompatible with their own intended recipients to swap with another incompatible pair. Dr. Montgomery’s work drastically improved treatment for antibody-mediated organ rejection, a significant obstacle to successful xenotransplantation. In 2025, Dr. Montgomery successfully transplanted the first xenokidney into a patient with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in United Therapeutics’ EXPAND clinical trial, a watershed moment for United Therapeutics’ vision to broaden access to transplantable organs.
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