Partnership between Flagship and Pfizer Leads to Two Additional Startup Agreements

Partnership between Flagship and Pfizer Leads to Two Additional Startup Agreements

Partnership between Flagship and Pfizer Leads to Two Additional Startup Agreements

Dive Brief:

  • Pfizer is joining forces with two additional startups under the auspices of Flagship Pioneering, as announced on Wednesday. Montai Therapeutics and Ampersand Biomedicines will be searching for potential drug candidates through an ongoing collaboration with Pfizer.
  • Montai seeks to identify novel small molecule therapies for lung cancer, while Ampersand’s focus will be on developing biologics aimed at addressing obesity. While the financial specifics of these agreements remain undisclosed, a spokesperson noted that Pfizer will finance the R&D efforts and may license a program.
  • These collaborations stem from a partnership formed between Pfizer and Flagship in 2023, under the “Pioneering Medicines” initiative. This alliance is designed to assist Pfizer in the identification of up to 10 new drug candidates and has already resulted in agreements with two other Flagship startups, ProFound Therapeutics and Quotient Therapeutics.

Dive Insight:

In recent years, biotechnology startups utilizing expansive drug development platforms have found it increasingly challenging to secure venture funding, as investors gravitate towards perceived safer options. Many startups, even those from Flagship’s portfolio, have had to implement staff layoffs and reduce research expenditures to maintain financial stability.

To endure this challenging environment, one strategy for platform startups is to forge drug partnerships. Collaborations with larger corporations can provide essential funding that supports a startup’s research during tough periods and help achieve milestone goals that may attract additional investment.

Flagship’s Pioneering Medicines initiative offers a pathway for its startups to secure such agreements. Since 2023, it has successfully facilitated expansive partnerships with various companies, including Pfizer, Novo Nordisk, GSK, and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The objective across these partnerships is to assist larger firms in identifying drugs relevant to their focus areas while allowing startups to acquire financial resources and incentives they may not have been able to secure independently.

Montai, using artificial intelligence for small molecule discovery, directed its initial investments towards immune drug research, with this work revealing opportunities to target cancer—a field characterized by immense potential, according to co-founder and CEO Margo Georgiadis. With support from Pfizer, Montai is now advancing this initial research further.

In a similar vein, Ampersand employs computational technologies to design new therapeutic agents. Emerging from stealth mode last year with million in funding, the company is focused on creating biologics that selectively act at disease sites. Ampersand plans to collaborate with Pfizer to target “tissue-selective” metabolic pathways with the goal of producing therapies with an improved therapeutic index, as explained by CEO Jason Gardner.

Pfizer is actively partnering with ProFound for potential obesity treatments and collaborating with Quotient to explore therapies for heart and kidney diseases.

Meanwhile, Novo has made strides this year by collaborating with Flagship entities Omega Therapeutics, Cellarity, and Metaphore Biotechnologies in search of innovative cardiometabolic therapies. GSK is leveraging Flagship’s portfolio to identify new vaccines and medicines, focusing initially on respiratory and immunology treatments.

In another development, GSK entered into a partnership last week with Flagship startup Vesalius Therapeutics to explore potential treatments for Parkinson’s disease.