Deerfield Discovery nets $50M grant from the state of New York and parent company

29 Mar 2023
endpts.com
The discovery arm of the healthcare investment player Deerfield Management Company is getting a major financial boost. Deerfield Discovery and Development will receive $25 million, over five years, from the state of New York and Empire State Development, a state organization that offers grants, loans and other assistance to companies. Another $25 million will come from Deerfield Management. The funds will go toward the buildout of a 6,000-square-foot lab space at Cure, a healthcare campus founded by Deerfield at 345 Park Ave. South in New York City. The money will also be used for purchasing equipment and software, operating costs and other items. Deerfield Discovery and Development began talks with the state in April 2020 to try to find a more “economically feasible” way to do preclinical research in New York, CEO Michael Foley said in an email to Endpoints News. The lab itself, dubbed the Lab of the Future, is a collaborative effort between Deerfield and other parties. Foley said that during the pilot phase, Deerfield Discovery plans to work on new and existing research initiatives with its academic research partners, along with residents at Cure and other Deerfield partners. Certain parts of the lab are expected to come online in 2024, with the expectation for it to be fully operational in 2025. Foley said that after those five years, Deerfield Discovery and Development will establish an “independent commercial entity” based on the lab’s technology and drug discovery approach and will make the tech widely available to other biotechs. At that stage, Foley added that more capital would be needed to stand that company up. As for the lab’s work, Foley said it will develop predictive algorithms for generating new molecules for protein targets and will be going after a wide range of therapeutic efforts, but no exact disease targets were given to Endpoints. “We are also planning to develop virtual screening technologies and predictive ADME (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion) algorithms along with platforms for automated synthesis, compound purification, and biological screening,” he said. Foley also mentioned that the lab will be adding to its headcount but did not give a hard number. “We think this has the potential to be a very important contribution to healthcare and we are excited by this journey in modernizing drug discovery here in New York State,” Foley said.
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