Discovery Lab 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 e