The investors behind Moderna raised a $3.4 billion biotechnology-focused fund

Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital firm behind Moderna, has raised the largest funding to build the next generation of biotech companies.

This $3.4 billion fund is one of the largest in the pharmaceutical industry, and it’s time to invest Influx into the industry, Driven by many early companies Racing car Manufacture treatments and vaccines to deal with Covid-19.

Flagship’s founder Noubar Afeyan said: “The expanded capital base will enable us… to carry out groundbreaking science, company creation and development under one roof.”

Flagship Fund VII includes USD 2.2 billion raised from investors this year and USD 1.2 billion raised in 2020. The company plans to deploy cash in the next three years.

The Massachusetts-based group did not look for existing early-stage biotechnology to finance, but invested in the development of technology and the establishment of companies within its four walls. The team is built around a specific area of ​​interest, with the goal of splitting and forming an independent company as the research develops.

“This is not an investment fund in the traditional sense… Everything we do comes from outside,” Afeyan, who founded Flagship in 2000, told the Financial Times. “It is committed to advancing every biological platform invented within us.”

The most famous company of the flagship company is Moderna, which was established in 2010 to develop mRNA therapies and its chairman is Afeyan.Vaccine manufacturer sold Covid jab worth $1.7 billion In the first three months of this year, its share price has soared by more than 1,000% since the beginning of 2020.

Afeyan described Flagship’s strategy as “exploration” and “infinite attempts to create a combination of scientific progress and product progress.” He said that when Moderna is developing a vaccine, the first thing to ask is “Can we use a cryptographic molecule or a certain molecule to guide the human body to make any drug we want”.

Flagship manages $14.1 billion in assets and has spent $4.8 billion on its company in the past four quarters. Last week, Valo Health, its drug discovery business, announced that it would go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

Afeyan said that the life science company does not focus on creating biotechnology that can solve specific diseases, but hopes to build a platform that can be used to treat a range of diseases. Moderna is currently conducting Phase 1 trials of its mRNA technology for HIV and influenza.

Afeyan said that Flagship scientists are particularly interested in advancing machine learning tools that can understand the human body at a more complex and refined level than humans, as well as the field of pre-emptive medicine.

He said: “The underlying health conditions make this pandemic destructive, because all these underlying health complications make the situation worse.” “We think we will see in the future we will be able to precede the emergence of the disease. The world of intervention.”

Flagship recently expanded its scale, opened an office in London, and hired Lord Ara Darzi, the former British Minister of Health, to lead its pre-emptive drug work.