Pictured: Sign at Pfizer headquarters in New York/iStock, JHVEPhoto
Pfizer is looking to enrich its pipeline with up to 10 new innovative medicines by partnering with startup creator Flagship Pioneering, the companies announced Tuesday.
Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer and Flagship will each contribute an upfront investment of $50 million. The collaboration will leverage Flagship’s rich ecosystem of biotechnology platforms and more than 40 human health companies.
Pfizer and Flagship will explore up to 10 single-asset programs, which Pfizer will fund and have the option to acquire. Flagship and its companies will be eligible to receive up to $700 million in milestones and royalties for each program that hits the market, giving Tuesday’s deal a maximum potential value of $7 billion.
This partnership will bring together expertise from Pfizer and Flagship “to maximize discovery and development potential from inception to impact,” Paul Biondi, executive partner at Flagship and president of Pioneering Medicines, said in a statement.
Pioneering Medicines is Flagship’s strategic initiative dedicated to conceptualizing and developing novel treatments. As per Tuesday’s agreement, Pioneering Medicines will lead the exploration process alongside Pfizer’s R&D team to come up with a potential portfolio. The partners will focus on filling in crucial unmet needs in Pfizer’s six core therapeutic areas: vaccines, rare diseases, inflammation and immunology, oncology, internal medicine and hospital medicines.
In coming up with the programs to partner on, Biondi’s Pioneering Medicines will tap into Flagship’s deep bench of more than 40 companies, each with their own platforms and technologies. The Flagship ecosystem includes Foghorn Therapeutics, which targets genetic mutations in the chromatin regulatory system, and Axcella Therapeutics, which is looking into endogenous modulators to reprogram the body’s metabolism.
Moderna, which shot into the top tiers of the industry due to its COVID-19 vaccine, is also a Flagship company. However, in an interview with Fierce Biotech, Biondi said that this Pfizer partnership would mostly involve biotechs in earlier stages of development.
Tuesday’s deal with Flagship is the latest development in Pfizer’s ongoing quest to deepen its pipeline. In March 2023, the pharma powerhouse dropped $43 billion to acquire cancer-focused Seagen, gaining access to its library of antibody-drug conjugates. This deal came less than a year after Pfizer shelled out $11.6 billion to acquire migraine leader Biohaven.
Pfizer has also made more modest investments in smaller companies, including a $25 million equity investment into gene editing firm Caribou Biosciences in July 2023 and $125 million in private placements into Nimbus Therapeutics’ computational drug discovery engine.
Tristan Manalac is an independent science writer based in metro Manila, Philippines. He can be reached at tristan@tristanmanalac.com or tristan.manalac@biospace.com.
