Flagship Pioneering, a life sciences venture capital company, and Pfizer have expanded their partnership by adding Quotient Therapeutics to their drug development collaboration.
Previously, Flagship Pioneering and Pfizer announced their partnership in July 2023 to develop ten single-asset programmes using the former’s ecosystem of over 40 human health companies and multiple biotechnology platforms.
Under the latest deal with Quotient Therapeutics, Flagship Pioneering has announced two research programmes for the development of therapies for cardiovascular and renal diseases.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Quotient Therapeutics was founded by Flagship in 2022. The firm specialises in somatic genetics, the study of genetic variation and evolution in cells.
Pioneering Medicines, Flagship’s in-house drug discovery and development unit, spearheads the strategic partnership with Pfizer.
This includes leading the exploration process to quickly identify promising drug development programmes using Flagship’s diverse bioplatforms and modalities.
Flagship Pioneering origination partner and Quotient Therapeutics co-founder and CEO Jacob Rubens said: “Quotient’s Somatic Genomics platform explores the extensive genetic diversity within the 30 trillion cells inside our body. This offers an incredibly rich and unchartered territory for drug discovery.
“These two research programmes will deploy our unique platform capabilities to identify novel links between genes and cardiovascular or renal disease, which are leading causes of mortality and morbidity around the world.”
In the 2023 deal, Flagship Pioneering and Pfizer agreed to invest $50m each to assess prospects for developing new therapy pipeline.
Pfizer will fund and have the option to acquire each chosen development programme.
The venture capital company and its bioplatform companies could earn up to $700m in milestones and royalties for each programme that is successfully commercialised.
In a similar deal, last month, GSK and Flagship Pioneering signed a collaboration deal worth up to $720m to discover and develop a portfolio of future transformational medicines and vaccines.
Pfizer internal medicine research unit chief scientific officer Bill Sessa said: “This strategic collaboration with Flagship provides an opportunity to explore early discovery work with Quotient’s proprietary platform to potentially unlock new targets for cardiovascular and renal disease.”
