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Flagship Pioneering is an American life sciences venture capital company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that invests in biotechnology, life sciences, health and sustainability companies. Portfolio companies include Moderna, Indigo Agriculture, Inari Agriculture and Novomer. 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. Several of the initial partners and executives had previously been with the venture capital firm Morgan Holland.

In late 2010, Flagship formed Moderna, which focuses on drug discovery, drug development, and vaccine technologies based exclusively on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, and which is famous for its COVID-19 vaccine.

In 2013, Flagship helped fund the creation of Editas Medicine 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, and David R. Liu. 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.

See also

• New Enterprise Associates
• Polaris Partners

References

1. Fry, Erika (May 19, 2020). "How the biotech investor behind Moderna is using the 'immigrant mindset' to take on COVID-19". Fortune.
2. ^ Stendahl, Max (December 15, 2016). "A new name and new fund will ensure Cambridge's Flagship 'feels like a startup'". Boston Business Journal.
3. Saltzman, Jonathan (April 2, 2020). "VC firm Flagship Pioneering raises $1.1b for biotech startups, despite reeling economy". Boston Globe.
4. National Research Council, Division on Earth and Life Studies, Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology, Committee on Challenges in Chemistry Graduate Education (2012). Challenges in Chemistry Graduate Education: A Workshop Summary. National Academies Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-309-25708-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
5. ^ Dunn, Andrew (May 23, 2020). "The untold story of Moderna as the biotech's coronavirus vaccine faces a test that could make it one of the most consequential startups of all time". Business Insider.
6. "Companies". Flagship Pioneering. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
7. DeAngelis, Allison (April 2, 2020). "With $1.1B in hand, life sciences investor Flagship rewrites its rulebook". Boston Business Journal.
8. History of Cambridge: Innovation: Venture Capital
9. Garde, Damian (November 10, 2020). "The story of mRNA: How a once-dismissed idea became a leading technology in the Covid vaccine race". Stat.
10. Isaacson, Walter (2021). The Code Breaker. Simon & Schuster. pp. 208–213. ISBN 978-1-9821-1585-2.

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)

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