Founder Profile: Audrey Greenberg

WAFFA
3 min readNov 30, 2021

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An inside look at Discovery Labs & Center for Breakthrough Medicine

Audrey Greenberg is Co-founder, Executive Managing Director and Board Member of the Discovery Labs Center for Breakthrough Medicines. Discovery Labs is a three million square foot integrated life science innovation hub located in the heart of Philadelphia’s “Cellicon Valley.” CBM is a contract development and manufacturing organization enabling the rapid development and commercialization of advanced therapies.
Coming from a family of doctors, Audrey always had an appreciation for scientific ingenuity and as an MBA student at Wharton, became drawn to starting a business that contributed to the greater social good. She learned about the challenges researchers face — while they do groundbreaking work in the lab, they may struggle to scale the manufacturing process required to obtain FDA approvals. Discovery Labs offers an end-to-end solution through the Center for Breakthrough Medicines — helping to streamline the path to approval by supporting manufacturing, funding, equipment, processes, and people. Companies can utilize their capital for innovation rather than the infrastructure and manufacturing, and ultimately that leads to more affordable treatments for patients.
Audrey serves as a subject matter expert in building regional bioinnovation hubs — she’s spoken at over 50 global conferences and is quoted in over 100 articles in the past two years.

Audrey Greenberg, Founder of Discovery Labs & Center for Breakthrough Medicine

Discovery Labs:

Tell us a bit about your company

Discovery Labs is a 3 million life science real estate portfolio located in the heart of Cellicon Valley — Philadelphia

What inspired you to start your business / what opportunity in the market are you seeking to address?

There is a dramatic unmet need in terms of labs space and services required to get lifesaving cures to market

What are one or two of the biggest wins or most encouraging experiences you’ve had so far?

1. Tenants/Leasing 2. Acquisitions

What about your personal background, experience, or perspective fuels your passion for this venture?

I love the idea of creating something that industry needs to get cures to patients

What has been one or two of the biggest learnings so far?

1) follow your gut 2) grab a seat at the table

Follow Discovery Labs here!

Center for Breakthrough Medicines:

Tell us a bit about your company

Center for Breakthrough Medicines is an innovative cell and gene therapy focused contract development and manufacturing organization located in the heart of “Cellicon Valley.” CBM’s integrated and comprehensive service offering provides a one-source solution to accelerate speed to market for advanced therapies. A client-driven approach coupled with a patient-centric culture delivers high quality and reliable process and analytical development, viral vector manufacturing, GMP testing, cell therapy bioprocessing, plasmid production, and cell banking services for a full product’s life cycle.

What inspired you to start your business / what opportunity in the market are you seeking to address?

I was inspired by the ability to cure rather than treat disease coupled with the knowledge of the complete market-wide capacity constraints cell and gene therapy developers face.

What are one or two of the biggest wins or most encouraging experiences you’ve had so far?

1) Capital Raise 2) Management Team 3) Upenn Deal

What about your personal background, experience, or perspective fuels your passion for this venture?

Triple bottom line investing — investing for monumental good

What has been one or two of the biggest learnings so far?

1) aim higher than you can imagine; 2) be patient

Follow Center for Breakthrough Medicine here!

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