The deal with Vesalius Therapeutics is the latest pharma validation for Flagship, which has in recent years allied with Pfizer and Novo Nordisk.
Flagship Pioneering start-up Vesalius Therapeutics has signed a deal with GSK, for the British pharma to use its technology to find medicines for neurodegenerative disorders.
Under the terms of the deal, GSK will hand Vesalius $80 million in upfront and equity payments. Vesalius will lead the drug discovery process to identify drugs for Parkinson’s disease and a second, unnamed neurodegenerative condition. The agreement also gives GSK development and commercialisation rights to a pre-clinical small molecule drug for Parkinson’s, as well as an option to advance other programmes.
If successful, Vesalius could stand to gain up to $570 million more for hitting development and commercial milestones.
The deal with GSK represents an upturn in fortune for Vesalius, which laid off 40% of its workforce in September 2022. Launched in 2019, the start-up was co-founded by Christopher Austin, the former director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, and Doug Cole, a managing partner at Flagship.
“We have been focused on advancing our platform to generate breakthrough treatments for common diseases,” said Olivia Offner, a spokesperson for Vesalius and Flagship. “This announcement with GSK further validates our platform and its potential for impact.”
In early 2022, Vesalius raised $75 million from Flagship. At the time, Vesalius described its technology as a way to treat “genetically and biologically distinct diseases,” but did not specify which. Now, it says it’s looking at potential medicines spanning autoimmune disorders, diabetes and neurologic diseases.
“Using the Vesalius platform to understand underlying drivers of such neurodegenerative diseases and select optimal therapeutic interventions underscores our focus on leveraging advanced technology to identify and target the root causes of disease,” Kaivan Khavandi, senior vice president and global head of respiratory/immunology R&D at GSK, said in a statement.
Over this past summer, GSK had announced an alliance with Flagship to find new medicines and vaccines, promising up to $150 million for up to 10 new programmes.
The GSK collaboration was the latest partnership between Flagship and larger drugmakers, following deals with Pfizer and Novo Nordisk.
