Flagship Pioneering Bolsters Executive Team with Appointment of Fabrice Chouraqui in Newly Created Dual Role of Flagship CEO-Partner and CEO of Cellarity

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May 28, 2020, 08:00 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Flagship Pioneering, a unique life sciences innovation enterprise, today announced that it has further strengthened its executive leadership team with the appointment of Fabrice Chouraqui to the newly created dual role as both CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering and Chief Executive Officer of Cellarity.

"The newly created role of CEO-Partner ensures that our CEOs are an integral part of the Flagship leadership team and enables them to work more seamlessly as part of Flagship," says Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and founding Chairman of Cellarity. "Fabrice's appointment illustrates our ongoing commitment to enhance Flagship's leadership team by attracting highly experienced industry executives with proven track records of driving long-term business performance. I am excited for the opportunity our broader ecosystem of companies will have to leverage his proven expertise in bringing disruptive technologies and innovations to patients and society."

Fabrice Chouraqui is a renowned global pharmaceutical executive with experience across the business spectrum, from research and development to commercial. He most recently served as President of Novartis Pharmaceuticals US, where he was credited with transforming the organization and turning around the business. Mr. Chouraqui held numerous senior leadership positions at Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squib and led the successful launches of blockbuster treatments in multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, immunology, neuroscience, and cardiovascular.

In a newly created role of CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering, Mr. Chouraqui joins the Flagship senior leadership team and will provide his knowledge and insights across the Flagship enterprise, including serving on the boards of directors of certain Flagship companies. In this role, he will work as part of Flagship's team to plan, drive, and achieve the highest possible value creation for Flagship and its companies. As CEO of Cellarity, Mr. Chouraqui will lead the development of the company's groundbreaking platform based on digital modeling of cell behaviors, and advance its portfolio of medicines.

"I am delighted to join Flagship Pioneering in this newly created role and look forward to working as part of the Flagship leadership team and as CEO of Cellarity to contribute to Flagship's impressive track record of driving cutting-edge innovation in life sciences," says Mr. Chouraqui. "There is no greater challenge facing the pharmaceutical industry than to design better medicines faster and to increase R&D productivity. Cellarity is harnessing digital technology to revolutionize the pharmaceutical R&D paradigm and develop cell behavior-targeted therapies that have greater clinical predictability. I am honored to partner with Cellarity's founders, its outstanding leadership team, and talented employees to help bring this vision to reality."

"I am thrilled at the integral role Fabrice will play alongside me in helping to deliver upon the company's vast promise," said Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D., Flagship Pioneering General Partner and Founding CEO of Cellarity. "Over the last two years, Cellarity has demonstrated that its cell behavior digitization and targeting platform is applicable across tissues and therapeutic areas, and we are now eager to translate these advances to creating breakthrough medicines."

About Cellarity
Founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2017, Cellarity is driving a new paradigm in drug discovery through digital modeling of cell behaviors. The company has developed a unique combination of expertise across biology, high resolution data, and machine learning to map cell behavior and design cellular behavior-targeted therapies.

In just two years, Cellarity has already identified and demonstrated in vivo proof of concept for drug candidates spanning multiple therapeutic areas, including obesity, thrombocytopenia, and immuno-oncology, and is now pursuing a clinical development strategy for advancing several of these programs.

About Fabrice Chouraqui
Fabrice Chouraqui is an experienced global pharmaceutical executive with a passion for driving the progress of medical sciences and bringing innovation to patients. Mr. Chouraqui has deep experience across the business spectrum, from R&D to commercial leadership, business development, and investor communications. He has led the launch of breakthrough treatments in a number of areas, including oncology, immunology, neuroscience, and cardiovascular.

In his most recent role, Mr. Chouraqui was President of the US pharmaceuticals business for Novartis, where he was credited with transforming the organization to adapt to a new market environment and turning around its performance. He notably achieved strong market position for Cosentyx and Entresto, initiated the landmark PIONEER trial in Heart Failure, and championed a number of Business Development initiatives. In this role, Mr. Chouraqui oversaw all business areas, including US Clinical Development and Medical Affairs and was a member of the Novartis Pharmaceutical Executive Committee. He also represented Novartis on the Board of BIO.

During his 10 years at Novartis, Mr. Chouraqui held several senior leadership positions across multiple countries and therapeutic areas, including serving as Global Business Franchise head where he drove the success of Gilenya and led the rejuvenation of Novartis neuroscience pipeline. Prior to Novartis, Mr. Chouraqui worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb in a number of senior international roles, including as Vice President, Commercial Operations, Asia-Pacific and General Manager, South East Asia. He began his career in R&D at Roussel Uclaf and Hoechst Marion Roussel, pharma companies that were predecessors to today's Sanofi.

Mr. Chouraqui earned his MBA from INSEAD and a doctorate in pharmacy, a post-graduate degree in quality management and a MSc. in biological and medicinal sciences from University of Paris.

About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has applied a unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $34 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship is backed by more than $4.4 billion of aggregate capital commitments, of which over $1.9 billion has been deployed toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $10 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 41 transformative companies, including Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA), Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics, Indigo Ag, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Sana Biotechnology, Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS).