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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | F e b r u a r y 2 0 2 2 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 9 EXECUTIVE FIAT | WALLINGFORD, CT VALENTI CHEVROLET | WALLINGFORD, CT PARTYKA MAZDA | HAMDEN, CT WALLINGFORD BUICK | WALLINGFORD, CT Driven By Your Success R e t a i l • I n d u s t r i a l • C o m m e r c i a l • I n s t i t u t i o n a l • E d u c a t i o n • H e a l t h c a r e • R e l i g i o u s Auto dealership construction is a specialty of ours. Over the years, PDS has had the great privilege of working closely and often with some of the area's most respected names. Having built over a dozen dealerships in our history, we work to build lasting relationships based on trust and communication. With in-house disciplines of engineering from civil to mechanical, PDS can design the right building to fit your budget and timeline. THINK • PLAN • BUILD 860.242.8586 | pdsec.com targets for therapeutics. Eventually I can see this fast-tracking right into clinical use. When will Quantum-Si be moving to New Haven? As fast as possible. We have officially signed the lease. We began renovations. We are going to be moving in over time. I would say by the midyear point, we will have pretty much moved out of the Guilford area and into the new highly- advanced New Haven site. What appealed about the Winchester Works site? First, it is downtown New Haven right next to Yale and the scientific innovation center. It is just an ideal location not only for current employees, who are super excited about being downtown, but the ability to recruit top talent. Second, the Winchester site (formerly the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. factory) is a historic icon in town. With the renovations that have been made, it is going to be an absolute world-class facility. We will basically be tripling our square footage, as well as renovating the center, to take advantage of having up to about 200 employees who go to work at that facility every single day. You also have a new location in San Diego. What will workers be focused on at that location versus here in New Haven? New Haven will represent our headquarters, the mothership. It will be the center of excellence for instrumentation development, as well as the home for executives. You will have all areas and disciplines existing at both sites. San Diego is another hotbed for biotech. ese are really two just tremendous locations for us to exist and to recruit talent. Do you anticipate additional expansion? Aer we take a breath. We are basically going from 20,000 square feet to close to 100,000 square feet (between New Haven and San Diego) in a matter of six months. We are witnessing massive expansion. We have gone from 70 employees before going public to about 200 employees. We are going to continue to expand. We see more of a global expansion, rather than just local. For the most part we will basically triple the employee base locally in Connecticut. We are committed to staying here for the long term. Why go public? e ability to raise over $500 million has equipped us to go through not only this massive expansion, but to really grow and expand and develop world-class products for the next five years. How has the talent recruitment process been going? We have probably about 15 different disciplines across our R&D organization, from more traditional biologists and chemists to computational biologists and biophysicists. To do something like this, not only do you have to go out and raise $500 million, but you have to attract world-class talent. It has been pretty amazing — our ability to recruit here locally, and garner this type of talent, especially from Yale. We have a lot of people coming from Boston, Cambridge and New York. What's the status of the company's commercial launch? In 2021, we actually started placing our first systems, so we have external customers as we speak. We are going through a period right now of just ensuring quality supply chain, product support, finalization of protocols. Right now, we are in the process of manufacturing 500 instruments. Where do you see the company in five years and in 10 years? Making an impact on general health. We are set for this explosion in discovery. We witnessed this in genomics. Proteins are set for the same expansion, except bigger. (Proteins) tell you exactly what is going on in a given patient: What stage of disease? Is that therapeutic having the benefit desired? When you look at a company like Pfizer, a large portion of their investment and drug development portfolio is focused on adjusting and harnessing our immune system to attack disease. at requires technologies like this to really identify what is going on and changing in (a patient's) immune system. We are going to be understanding biology that has never been looked at before. What types of ailments will this help target? Any disease. It will be about understanding our immune system, which covers all diseases, the trillions of cells that basically attack foreign invaders, viruses that come into us. It is going to have an impact across the board. I think the biggest impacts will be in neurological disease. What proteins really tell you is what is happening right now (in a patient). So it is going to become incredibly useful information to have immediate types of treatments. It also starts to detect the early onset of disease, which is the Holy Grail. People will say, "I am going to have my immune system monitored." n An exterior view of the Winchester Works site. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED