Company Story

The why behind Sublime Stericeuticals

We kept experiencing a pain point on behalf of our pharmaceutical clients: challenges with conventional lyophilization. 

In our own words

As consultants, our services have been contracted at numerous US manufacturing facilities from coast to coast. Working to solve problems for our clients, we identified countless quality, compliance, and efficiency issues at nearly every site.
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One issue in common — inefficiencies and inconsistencies of operating a conventional lyophilization process. 

We had gained a wealth of knowledge about what can go wrong, and had experienced the pain that things will go wrong.  Armed with both, we were inspired to find a way to greatly reduce the opportunities for error through thoughtful system design. Our quest became to elevate our customer’s ability to achieve right-the-first-time manufacturing.  Every single time.  

We've reached the stage of design, development and testing where we can confidently state that Sublime Stericeuticals’ Cryophilizer delivers equivalent or superior drug product while significantly increasing factory throughput. Our pharmaceutical manufacturing friends will soon be able to rapidly upgrade their sterile freeze-dried drug manufacturing operations to be efficient and compliant, every single time. 

Joel Lennon-Meyer
President/Co-Founder

Shawn Stimson
Vice-President/Co-Founder/Process Architect

Founders' Story

Founders Shawn Stimson and Joel Lennon-Meyer, met in 2006 and worked together on a project, and again several years later, as consultants for the same client. They shared yet a third client, and have worked together whenever possible ever since. 

With over 44 years combined experience in pharmaceuticals, their work has focused on quality, compliance, remediation, process engineering, and validation consulting.
 
In 2016, Shawn called Joel with an idea for a method to produce high quality lyophilized products, without the traditional cost structure. In typical fashion, they quickly teamed up to validate both science, and business model. The idea matured as they continued their consulting careers, and in 2018, the pair felt they had to move forward. They founded Sublime Stericeuticals.

The team's first year was spent immersed within the Startup Factory at Iowa State University. Both Joel and Shawn credit this program with helping them accelerate validation of their business model and achievement of key R & D goals. 
 
In 2020, while searching for possible components for their lyophilization system, Joel discovered a cryogenic spraying system designed to cool certain powder coating processes. The system source was a Fortune 500 company, Air Products & Chemicals, which coincidentally had also investigated nutraceutical production. In the fall of 2020, the company approached Sublime with an opportunity for a joint development agreement.

​In the fall of 2021, the two companies finalized and announced their agreement.  This joins two technologies into a single, commercially viable system to introduce continuous lyophilization to the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, and others in the future.