Flagship Pioneering is an American life sciences venture capital company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that invests in biotechnology,

life sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, the ...

, health and sustainability companies. Portfolio companies include Moderna,

Indigo Agriculture Indigo Agriculture is a Boston, Massachusetts-based agricultural technology company that works with plant microbes, aiming to improve yields of cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice. The company also offers crop storage and other logistics pro ...

Inari Agriculture Inari may refer to: Shinto * Inari Ōkami, a Shinto spirit ** Mount Inari in Japan, site of Fushimi Inari-taisha, the main Shinto shrine to Inari ** Inari Shrine, shrines to the Shinto god Inari * Inari-zushi, a type of sushi Places * Inari, ...

and

Novomer Novomer is a venture-funded chemistry technology development company. Its core technology is a proprietary catalyst that enables carbon monoxide and ethylene oxide to be used as raw materials in the production of polymers and chemicals. Referen ...

. The firm both funds and incubates companies.

History

The company was founded in Cambridge in 1999 by Noubar Afeyan and Ed Kania under the name NewcoGen (short for "new company generation"), but later changed its name to Flagship Ventures, and again in 2016 to Flagship Pioneering. In late 2010, Flagship formed Moderna, which focuses on

drug discovery In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which new candidate medications are discovered. Historically, drugs were discovered by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by ...

, drug development, and vaccine technologies based exclusively on

messenger RNA In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein. mRNA is created during the p ...

(mRNA) technology, and which is famous for its

COVID-19 vaccine A COVID19 vaccine is a vaccine intended to provide acquired immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 ( COVID19). Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, an e ...

. In 2013, Flagship helped fund the creation of

Editas Medicine Editas Medicine, Inc., (formerly Gengine, Inc.), is a clinical-stage biotechnology company which is developing therapies for rare diseases based on CRISPR gene editing technology. Editas headquarters is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has ...

to use CRISPR gene editing for the development of pharmacological therapies, originally based on the genetic engineering protein Cas9. Editas was founded by Feng Zhang, Jennifer Doudna, George Church,

J. Keith Joung J. Keith Joung is an American pathologist and molecular biologist who holds the Robert B. Colvin Endowed Chair in Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He is a leading figure in the fie ...

, and

David R. Liu David Ruchien Liu (born 1973) is an American chemist and biologist. He is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvar ...

. Doudna would later win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for her work on CRISPR, but quit Editas in 2014 over legal differences over intellectual property.

References

External links

At Flagship Pioneering, the brazen venture capital firm that bankrolled Moderna, there’s a tolerance for failure but not for weakness
('' Stat'', February 2021) {{US-private-equity-company-stub Venture capital firms of the United States American companies established in 1999 Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts

History

See also

References

External links