Flagship Pioneering Launches Pioneering Intelligence

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Nov 01, 2023, 10:30 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Flagship Pioneering today launched Pioneering Intelligence, an initiative of Flagship Pioneering harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate innovation in the life sciences and beyond. Flagship marked the official launch of Pioneering Intelligence with an AI Summit that drew tech and life sciences leaders from around the globe for a day long series of talks. Initiated in 2021, Pioneering Intelligence will augment the capabilities of Flagship companies, drive AI and machine learning (ML) innovation, and originate new platform companies built on AI advances.

"Pioneering Intelligence is an increasingly important initiative of Flagship charged with accelerating innovation across our enterprise," said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, at Flagship's AI Summit. "By institutionalizing AI/ML knowledge across the ecosystem while leveraging best-in-class ML capabilities, Pioneering Intelligence not only brings value to our companies and origination teams, but also positions Flagship as a leader and key source for expertise and information exchange in the AI/ML community."

Augmenting ecosystem companies

Across the Flagship ecosystem, dozens of companies are building out AI-enabled platforms to transform drug discovery, speed up the drug development process, and gain new insights into human health and sustainability. Pioneering Intelligence is building unique AI/ML know-how that will enhance and complement the capabilities of AI-enabled platforms of Flagship companies.

"Flagship companies have been leveraging AI for many years, and by centralizing our know-how and infrastructure through Pioneering Intelligence, we can address unique challenges faced by our companies as they develop solutions for patients and the planet, as well as to solve foundational problems in biology, computation, and beyond," said Armen Mkrtchyan, Ph.D., Head of the Pioneering Intelligence Initiative at Flagship Pioneering.

Driving breakthroughs

Flagship's unique emergent discovery process produces first-of-their-kind platform companies that change the world. By driving AI/ML innovation, Pioneering Intelligence will amplify the process of creating breakthroughs and enhance Flagship's origination process. The initiative has built AI-driven tools to allow Flagship scientists and entrepreneurs to uncover emergent insights from large-scale scientific literature datasets. The team has also developed innovative ML models to tackle foundational problems in biology and chemistry, such as designing novel molecules and uncovering cellular and disease insights.

"With these newest AI tools, we can reimagine what it means to be an entrepreneur," said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Ph.D., General Partner at Flagship Pioneering. "There are many limitations in human cognition and intelligence that don't apply to machines, and by using AI as a true co-pilot during our exploration process we can surpass these limits and more efficiently and effectively search for white space where new platforms can make the biggest impact."

Building leading AI companies

As a leader in AI/ML innovation, Pioneering Intelligence will also become a source for industry-leading AI-driven companies. The initiative will focus on harnessing advances in computation integrated with a wide range of scientific domains to originate new companies. To date, Pioneering Intelligence has launched one new platform company still in stealth.

"Over the last decade we have witnessed the evolution of AI/ML and its impact across many areas in the life sciences and beyond," said Mkrtchyan. "We have built Pioneering Intelligence and its dedicated team of computational scientists and engineers to position ourselves at the forefront of this progress and to broaden scope of company origination."

About Pioneering Intelligence
Pioneering Intelligence is an initiative of Flagship Pioneering harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate innovation in the life sciences and beyond. Pioneering Intelligence is building unique AI and machine learning know-how to augment the capabilities of Flagship companies and enable bigger leaps in human health and sustainability, amplify the process of creating breakthrough innovations, and originate new platform companies that build on innovations in machine learning. For more information, visit www.flagshippioneering.com/pioneering-intelligence or follow us on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering is a biotechnology company that invents and builds platform 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 $90 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $3.4 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $26 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 43 companies, including Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Generate:Biomedicines, Inari, Indigo Agriculture, Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB) and Tessera Therapeutics.