GSK and Flagship Pioneering have entered into a partnership worth up to $7bn to discover and develop novel medicines and vaccines for a range of conditions.
Bringing together GSK’s expertise in disease and development capability via Flagship’s ecosystem of bioplatform companies, the collaboration aims to develop a portfolio of up to ten future medicines and vaccines, beginning in respiratory and immunology, which will each be subject to an exclusive option by GSK for further clinical development.
As part of the deal, both companies will initially fund up to $150m upfront to support an exploration phase to identify the most promising concepts for further research and development utilising Flagship’s bioplatform companies, which will be eligible to receive up to $720m in upfront, development and commercial milestones from GSK, as well as preclinical funding for each acquired programme plus tiered royalties.
Commenting on the collaboration, GSK’s chief scientific officer, Tony Wood, said: “We look forward to partnering with… Flagship and [its] ecosystem of bioplatform companies to further accelerate our pipeline and discover practice-changing medicines and vaccines for patients.”
Paul Biondi, general partner, Flagship and president, Pioneering Medicines, commented: “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… to create a sustainable source of treatments for patients with the greatest unmet needs.”
In July 2023, Pfizer
signed
a deal worth up to $7bn with Flagship, using its large portfolio of biopharma companies, to develop a new pipeline of drug candidates in up to ten programmes for areas including internal medicine, oncology, infectious diseases and immunology.
Since then, the companies have initiated their first agreement under the strategic partnership, with Flagship and Profound Therapeutics
announcing
an agreement to identify potential first-in-class therapies to treat obesity, allowing Pfizer to have the option to advance selected research programmes after validation.
Most recently, GSK
entered
into a new licensing agreement worth over €1.4bn with CureVac to restructure their current collaboration to develop mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases, to allow both companies to prioritise investment and focus on their respective mRNA development activities.