Earlier this month, Flagship Pioneering hinted that another Big Pharma may soon join its growing fleet of collaborators. Now, GSK has sailed into view.
The British drugmaker and the venture creation firm will put a combined $150 million upfront towards a respiratory and immunology-focused research project, which will involve Flagship’s portfolio of over 40 biopharma companies. The goal is to identity up to 10 novel medicines and vaccines, for which GSK will have an exclusive option to take forward for further clinical development.
For each program that GSK picks up, Flagship and its companies will be eligible to receive up to $720 million in upfront, development and commercial milestones from GSK, as well as preclinical funding and tiered royalties on sales. That means there is potentially over $7 billion in biobucks for Flagship’s companies to pick up down the line.
The initial phase will involve identifying and accelerating promising scientific concepts for further research. According to the release, the collaboration will “start” in respiratory and immunology, implying that the partnership could evolve to have a wider therapeutic reach.
“Together with Flagship, we will use science and technology to deliver best-in-class innovation at pace,” GSK Chief Scientific Officer Tony Wood, Ph.D., said in a July 29 release. “We look forward to partnering with the talented team at Flagship, and their ecosystem of bioplatform companies, to further accelerate our pipeline and discover practice-changing medicines and vaccines for patients.”
Flagship and its biotechs have been on a roll when it comes to signing up major players in the pharma and medtech arenas. Last year, Pfizer and Flagship each put down $50 million to build a new pipeline of 10 programs, with the first target being unveiled last month in the red-hot R&D space of obesity.
Obesity was also at the heart of a $600 million biobucks pact signed by Novo Nordisk and Flagship-founded Metaphore Biotechnologies in May.
“Flagship and GSK have a shared focus on delivering breakthrough medicines for patients,” Paul Biondi, general partner, Flagship Pioneering and president, Pioneering Medicines, said in this morning's release.
“This collaboration is the latest example of Flagship's Innovation Supply Chain Partnership model, which is designed to generate transformational medicines together with our pharma partners by leveraging our ecosystem of first-in-category bioplatforms to create a sustainable source of treatments for patients with the greatest unmet needs,” Biondi added.
Earlier this month, Flagship announced a fresh $2.6 billion for its eighth venture fund, with a further $1 billion coming from an array of side funds. At the time, the firm pointed to partnerships with the likes of Pfizer, Thermo Fisher and Samsung as being “core to Flagship's strategy for maximizing value creation and the impact of our companies.”
In that same release, Flagship alluded to “other [partnerships] under development.”