Flagship Pioneering Announces Agreement Between Pioneering Medicines and Pfizer to Discover Potential Novel, Selective Inhibitors for Autoimmune Disease

CAM­BRIDGE, Mass., April 1, 2025 – Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing, the bio­plat­form inno­va­tion com­pa­ny, today announced an agree­ment between Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines, Flagship’s in-house drug dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment unit and Pfiz­er, to dis­cov­er com­pounds which may lead to the devel­op­ment of next-gen­er­a­tion ther­a­peu­tics for autoim­mune dis­eases. The focus of the col­lab­o­ra­tion is on ther­a­peu­tics that could poten­tial­ly tar­get the patho­phys­i­o­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms of these dis­eases, ide­al­ly offer­ing long-term remis­sion and fun­da­men­tal­ly alter­ing dis­ease tra­jec­to­ry with­out severe side effects.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will engage Charles Riv­er to uti­lize Log­i­ca®, a unique plat­form offer­ing from Valo Health, a Flag­ship-found­ed com­pa­ny, to iden­ti­fy advance­able small mol­e­cule leads. Log­i­ca trans­lates bio­log­i­cal insights into opti­mized pre­clin­i­cal assets by lever­ag­ing Valo Health’s AI-pow­ered Opal Com­pu­ta­tion­al Plat­form™ and Charles River’s lead­ing drug dis­cov­ery exper­tise.

“Autoim­mune dis­eases impose a sub­stan­tial health bur­den on patients, and ongo­ing unmet need in the man­age­ment of these con­di­tions is dri­ving a strong demand for more effec­tive, safer, and more per­son­al­ized treat­ment options,” said Paul Bion­di, Pres­i­dent, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines, and Man­ag­ing Part­ner, Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing. ​“Through the pow­er of our unique part­ner­ship mod­el with Pfiz­er, we will lever­age Log­i­ca to help address this gap with a promis­ing nov­el approach to iden­ti­fy­ing dis­ease-mod­i­fy­ing can­di­date mol­e­cules that could pos­i­tive­ly impact the cur­rent treat­ment land­scape for these com­plex and diverse conditions.”

This agree­ment rep­re­sents the sixth col­lab­o­ra­tion signed under the broad­er strate­gic part­ner­ship between Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and Pfiz­er to cre­ate a new pipeline of inno­v­a­tive assets, fol­low­ing pro­grams announced with Flag­ship com­pa­nies Pro­Found Ther­a­peu­tics, Quo­tient Ther­a­peu­tics, Mon­tai Ther­a­peu­tics, and Amper­sand Bio­med­i­cines.

“We are excit­ed to bring the pow­er of the Log­i­ca plat­form – pow­ered by Valo and Charles Riv­er – to dis­cov­er poten­tial inves­ti­ga­tion­al ther­a­pies for patients suf­fer­ing from autoim­mune dis­eases,” said Pro­fes­sor Julie Frear­son, Ph.D., Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer, Charles Riv­er. ​“Logica’s pro­pri­etary AI small mol­e­cule drug dis­cov­ery plat­form is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing the drug dis­cov­ery process, and we look for­ward to work­ing with the joint team at Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines and Pfiz­er to accel­er­ate under­stand­ing of the mol­e­c­u­lar path­ways involved in these dis­eases to devel­op more tar­get­ed and effec­tive ther­a­pies for patients.”

About Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing and Pio­neer­ing Medicines

Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing invents and builds bio­plat­form com­pa­nies, each with the poten­tial for mul­ti­ple prod­ucts that trans­form human health or sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Since its launch in 2000, Flag­ship has orig­i­nat­ed and fos­tered more than 100 sci­en­tif­ic ven­tures, result­ing in more than $60 bil­lion in aggre­gate val­ue. Flag­ship is oper­at­ing with $14 bil­lion of assets under man­age­ment as of its lat­est cap­i­tal raise, announced in July 2024. The cur­rent Flag­ship ecosys­tem com­pris­es over 40 com­pa­nies, includ­ing Foghorn Ther­a­peu­tics (NAS­DAQ: FHTX), Mod­er­na (NAS­DAQ: MRNA), Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy (NAS­DAQ: SANA), Gen­er­ate Bio­med­i­cines, Inari, Indi­go Agri­cul­ture, and Tessera Ther­a­peu­tics.

Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines, Flag­ship Pioneering’s in house drug devel­op­ment unit, is ded­i­cat­ed to con­ceiv­ing and devel­op­ing a broad port­fo­lio of life-chang­ing treat­ments for patients built from Flagship’s inno­v­a­tive plat­forms. Har­ness­ing the drug devel­op­ment exper­tise of its team togeth­er with the pow­er of Flag­ship’s mul­ti­ple sci­en­tif­ic plat­forms, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines explores and iden­ti­fies new prod­uct con­cepts which are then advanced joint­ly with Flagship’s bio­plat­form com­pa­nies. With­in Flagship’s Inno­va­tion Sup­ply Chain part­ner­ships, Pio­neer­ing Med­i­cines works with exter­nal col­lab­o­ra­tors to apply its unique approach to part­ners’ R&D pri­or­i­ties. These part­ner­ships are high­ly co-cre­ative strate­gic alliances that accel­er­ate ther­a­peu­tic inno­va­tion by bring­ing togeth­er part­ners span­ning the full spec­trum of drug dis­cov­ery, devel­op­ment, and production.

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