(New York, NY, April 6, 2020)—Deerfield Management Company, L.P. today announced the closing of the Deerfield Healthcare Innovations Fund ll, L.P., which will invest in advancements in science that may lead to important therapeutic interventions and back new technologies and infrastructure to improve the way healthcare is delivered to patients.

“Now more than ever, these unprecedented times underscore the importance of supporting the critical work of our nation’s scientists and healthcare systems,” said James E. Flynn, managing partner of Deerfield. “Our uniquely supportive model allows us to provide leverage to innovative companies and accelerate the benefit to patients.”

The Healthcare Innovations Fund II will collaborate with more than 15 leading academic institutions to seed novel scientific research. The Fund also has access to innovative medtech incubators created in partnership with two medical device industry leaders.

The Cure, the recently announced innovation campus located at 345 Park Avenue South, will become the central location of Deerfield where much of the work of the Healthcare Innovation Fund II will take place. Many of the early-stage companies will utilize the Cure’s wet and dry labs, engineering, computing and shared resource spaces.

The companies will also benefit from on-site programming, including the Fellows Program, Break into the Boardroom and Women in Science. Newly curated programs to be featured involve the “Cure Lounge,” a thought leadership and executive club, and other educational and certification initiatives.

The Deerfield Healthcare Innovations Fund ll is supported by the entire Deerfield infrastructure. 

Deerfield has been investing in and supporting the healthcare industry for more than 25 years, and partner companies benefit from its organizational capabilities.

Today, Deerfield has more than 130 experienced healthcare-focused professionals with specialized knowledge in medicine, life sciences, drug and medical device development, healthcare markets, public policy, value-based care, financial instruments, tax, accounting, operations, corporate strategy, market access research, marketing, biostatistics and sector dynamics, all of which can be leveraged by its partners.

Together, Deerfield team members fully fund and manage the Deerfield Foundation, which to date has committed or invested over $49 million to global organizations seeking to improve the delivery of healthcare, with a focus on underserved children. The Deerfield Foundation recently committed approximately 10 percent of its 2020 fiscal budget toward COVID-19 emergency funding to organizations in need of urgent resources in order to provide care to their communities.

About Deerfield Management 

Deerfield is a healthcare investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.

Contact:

Media
Deerfield Management
Karen Heidelberger, 212-692-7140
[email protected]

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(King of Prussia, PA, and New York, NY, January 22, 2020)—The Discovery Labs and Deerfield Management Company have formed The Center for Breakthrough Medicines, a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) and specialty investment company, to alleviate the critical lack of capacity that is preventing patients from accessing critically needed cell and gene therapies. The CDMO is occupying over 40 percent of The Discovery Labs’ 1.6 million square foot biotech, healthcare and life sciences campus in King of Prussia, PA.

The CDMO provides preclinical through commercial manufacturing of cell and gene therapies and component raw materials. It offers process development, plasmid DNA, viral vectors, cell banking, cell processing, and support testing capabilities all under one roof. The immense $1.1 billion facility will provide instant capacity as the largest known single source for accelerating the delivery and affordability of lifesaving and life-changing therapies from the bench to the patient’s bedside.

The Company has initiated a substantial hiring effort targeting the best and brightest of the life sciences community including, experts in CGMP manufacturing. The Company expects to hire over 2,000 team members within the next 30 months.

The CDMO has retained Nucleus Careers, a cloud-based specialty life sciences human capital recruiting and retention management expert, to buildout the entire team. Nucleus has proprietary recruiting and retention software designed for large scale human capital buildouts of high growth companies.

In addition to developing the world’s largest single-point cell and gene therapy manufacturing facility, The Discovery Labs is establishing THE COLONY which will provide custom built discovery labs, breakthrough funding, sponsored research agreements, housing and relocation for the world’s leading iconic experts in cell and gene therapy.

THE COLONY will seek to work hand in hand with scientists from both academic and pharmaceutical institutions to unlock and expedite groundbreaking therapies.

Marco A. Chacón, Ph.D., Founder of Paragon Bioservices and Chairman of The Discovery Labs states, “musicians, artists, members of religious communities and great thinkers throughout time have formed colonies where freedom of thought and expression combined with unlimited dreams and potential have resulted in the world’s greatest accomplishments. The United States of America is a perfect example.” Dr. Chacón went on to say, “the goal of THE COLONY is to unshackle the potential of the world’s greatest scientific minds.”

The ability for the industry’s greatest scientists to cohabitate, collaborate, cooperate, and communicate via technology and in person will create an exponential therapeutic “X FACTOR.” THE COLONY seeks to unlock institutional barriers prohibiting the world’s greatest scientists from moving at a pace necessary in today’s ever-changing therapeutic revolution. THE COLONY will partner with the institutions where the scientists currently work by providing equity, license fees, and revenue sharing.

“The Center for Breakthrough Medicines will be serving companies from the earliest stages through commercialization. Its exceptional scale and offering will quickly relieve the production bottleneck for advanced therapies by reducing the time, complexity, and cost of commercializing vitally needed gene and cell therapies,” noted Audrey Greenberg, Board Member and Executive Managing Director for The Discovery Labs.

The addition of this end-to-end manufacturing capability is expected to significantly enhance the offerings of The Discovery Labs in an area that has become one of the largest life sciences hubs in the world. Renovations are underway to construct a total of 86 plasmid, viral vector production, universal cell processing, CGMP testing, process development and cell banking suites. The viral vector and cell processing suites will be fully compliant with both U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency standards. All suites will offer the flexibility to meet client-specific workflows and will be able to adapt quickly to meet demand. The Company is in the process of reserving capacity now for late 2020.

“Today brilliant scientists are advancing an unprecedented number of gene and cell therapy drug candidates. The real tragedy, however, is a scarcity of manufacturing know-how, which is complex and expensive,” said Alex Karnal, Partner and Managing Director of Deerfield Management and a Board Member of the Discovery Labs. “With its visionary business model, it is hoped that The Center for Breakthrough Medicines will help realize the promise of cell and gene therapies in time to treat the many patients who need them.”

The Discovery Labs provides a central campus where the world’s greatest scientists can collaborate on new therapeutic discoveries to eradicate diseases affecting small and large segments of the global population. The Center for Breakthrough Medicines will work with these leaders, life sciences companies, large pharmaceutical companies, and academic and government institutions.

This new manufacturing capability is a transformational addition to The Discovery Labs market offering and dovetails with The Discovery Labs biotech incubator, Unite IQ. Unite IQ offers immediate space to emerging life sciences companies and scientists giving them the ability to grow from startup to enterprise company on one campus. The incubator and accelerator space at Unite IQ provides a comprehensive home for startups with every resource needed to initiate business operations. Unite IQ tenants are expected to utilize the discovery, development, testing, and manufacturing capabilities of the Center for Breakthrough Medicines with seamless forward integration of processes and analytics, and seamless tech transfer from research lab to large scale production

The Emerging Field of Cell and Gene Therapy in Pennsylvania

The demand for clinical and commercial manufacturing capacity is acute and expected to remain that way. The current shortfall in manufacturing for cell and gene therapies is severely underserved with few approved products. There are currently approximately 1,100 advanced therapies in the pipeline pending FDA approval. This will greatly increase highly skilled manufacturing demand. Dr. Peter Marks, Director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, states, “what keeps me up at night is will we be able to manufacture these on a scale that will allow us to bring the benefit of these therapies to patients?” He further added that “if we can help see cost of goods and ability to manufacture reproducibly improve, I think that’ll be a big thing.” All of this adds up to a supply constrained market that The Center for Breakthrough Medicines aims to help address.

With the potential to treat and even cure disabling, and deadly diseases, gene and cell therapies are ushering in a new era of medicine. These therapies may eventually be able to cure genetic conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, hemophilia A, and a range of cancers. The Philadelphia area has become the epicenter for the flourishing field of gene and cell therapy. Research from CBRE currently ranks the market among the top biotech clusters for medical research and health services. The cluster has become known worldwide as “Cellicon Valley” for its leadership in research and development of this rapidly evolving field. The Discovery Lab’s suburban Philadelphia location offers a talent rich environment due to the area’s preponderance of large pharmaceutical companies and the Philadelphia region’s position boasting the top 10 universities and primary school systems in nation.

Over the past three years, multiple Philadelphia companies have received approvals for major breakthroughs in cell and gene therapy. In 2017, the U.S. FDA approved the first-ever CAR-T cell therapy, Novartis’s Kymriah, which originated at the University of Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter, the FDA gave landmark approval for the first-ever gene therapy to treat a genetic blindness condition to Spark Therapeutics, a start-up founded by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. These discoveries and others in the pipeline are attracting billions of dollars of venture capital. The Greater Philadelphia Region set a recent record in venture capital financing.

The Discovery Labs Center for Breakthrough Medicines joins more than 25 healthcare, life sciences and tech-enabled companies that already call The Discovery Labs King of Prussia home.

Contact Audrey Greenberg at [email protected] for more information about development services, manufacturing capacity, incubator space or leasing information at the property.

About The Discovery Labs

Part of MLP Ventures, The Discovery Labs is a global provider of world-class cGMP manufacturing, turnkey laboratory solutions, critical materials and office space that support therapeutic products and services to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry so that groundbreaking medicines get to the patients that need them. The location in eastern King of Prussia is a prototype for a global rollout of The Discovery Labs, providing Big Pharma, emerging life sciences, consumer and technology companies flexible, end-to-end technical real estate and business infrastructure for the customer’s entire lifecycle from discovery to delivery, including manufacturing capacity. It is the first fully integrated environment that merges technology and life sciences under one roof to drive innovation.

About Deerfield Management

Deerfield is a healthcare investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.

Media Contact:
Tony DeFazio, DeFazio Communications
(o) 484-534-3306 (c) 484-410-1354
[email protected]

Karen Heidelberger, Deerfield Management Company
212-551-1600
[email protected]

NEW YORK, NY, September 26, 2019—In a major move, Deerfield Management Company, L.P.  is investing $635 million to create a transformative life sciences campus in New York City, designed to integrate the capabilities of innovators from academia, government, industry and the not-for-profit sectors to tackle unmet needs in healthcare. Deerfield additionally announced that it intends to commit more than $2 billion in research and seed funding by 2030 to develop much-needed new and innovative medicines and treatment solutions.  Deerfield expects this world-class infrastructure and funding to contribute to the prevention, cure or management of dozens of still deadly and debilitating diseases.  

As the foundation of this bold undertaking, Deerfield has acquired the 345 Park Avenue South property, which boasts more than 300,000 square feet. The site, designated a NYCLifeSci campus, will bring together scientists, entrepreneurs and leading organizations from around the world to work shoulder-to-shoulder to conceive of and develop new treatments and better ways to prevent and defeat disease. The campus will provide turnkey laboratories, and engineering and computing space, as well as other amenities and supportive services.  

“We are proud to be part of a community of people in New York who strive to save and extend lives. Creating an environment in which innovative thinking, ground-breaking advances in scientific discovery and where the development of new paradigms of patient care will occur every day is tremendously exciting,” said James Flynn, Managing Partner of Deerfield.  

“We are thrilled that our partnership with Deerfield will not only create quality jobs for New Yorkers but will also help provide a home for emerging companies to develop breakthrough scientific discoveries. New York City already has the best research institutions in the world. By investing in this Life Sciences campus to bring new lab space and programming for healthcare and early-stage biotech companies, we can strengthen the City’s position as a global leader in life sciences,” said NYCEDC President & CEO James Patchett.

The $540 million in financing for the acquisition and renovation of this world-class facility was led by Blackstone Real Estate, which has been a strong supporter of life sciences.  

Nadeem Meghji, Senior Managing Director, Head of Real Estate Americas at Blackstone said, “We are thrilled to finance this important project, which will advance life sciences research in New York City. With our investment in BioMed Realty, and elsewhere across our businesses, life sciences is among our highest priority investment sectors. We look forward to continuing to support the growing demand for research and innovation.”

The building construction and programming is being backed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Industrial Development Agency. It is expected to be in move-in ready condition for Deerfield and other innovators in healthcare by early 2021.

Due to obstacles, including a lack of capital and siloed approaches, promising new therapies and improvements in care management frequently fail to make it to patients. In addition to leveraging the value of public and private organizations in developing solutions, the Deerfield innovation campus will pursue all forms of technology, including digital, medical device and biotherapeutic approaches.  

“Many leaders have come together to build this incredible ecosystem, capable of accelerating the fight against disease. This campus should create the ideal backdrop to advance innovation,” said Alex Karnal, Partner and Portfolio Manager at Deerfield. “We are grateful to our partners, including the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Blackstone, as without them, this ambitious project might not have been possible.”

Having proven its ability to mobilize innovators in this space, MATTER, a healthcare focused incubator, in collaboration with Deerfield, will be supporting startups of all stages within the innovation campus.  MATTER has developed extensive specialized programs to train C-suite executives in the early stages of their career and to introduce young companies to established organizations for mentorship, collaboration and potential acquisition.  Combined with Deerfield’s operating support capabilities which extends to legal, finance, information technology, human resources, and market research, among other skillsets, companies formed within the campus will have unparalleled access to capabilities of the highest quality at low cost.

“Deerfield’s expertise and resources, combined with MATTER’s capabilities and experience, will create a healthcare and life sciences campus unlike any other,” said MATTER CEO Steven Collens. “We are thrilled to be a part of this endeavor to help entrepreneurs and innovators develop technologies and solutions that will improve the healthcare experience.”

Along with new educational programming being developed—and to complement the services provided by MATTER—Deerfield also announced that it will be growing its existing Deerfield LifeSci NYC Fellows and Break into the Boardroom programs. Deerfield additionally introduced a new initiative, Women in Science, focused on training women on how to commercialize their potentially lifesaving discoveries and create companies. The investment company has a rich history of developing and leading programs supporting diversity.

About Deerfield

Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy.

For more information, please visit www.deerfield.com

Contacts

Deerfield Management Company
Karen Heidelberger, 212-551-1600
[email protected]