Flagship Pioneering is boosting the clinical research capabilities of its biotech fleet with a new IQVIA collaboration. The CRO giant will provide Flagship’s companies with its artificial intelligence and clinical trial technologies to improve their drug development and early commercial viability.
The partnership will focus on drug development strategy and analytics, clinical development and asset valuation, according to an Aug. 28 release. A monetary value for the team-up was not disclosed.
“By using IQVIA’s robust data infrastructure and analytics capabilities alongside Flagship’s pioneering bioplatforms, this collaboration is poised to positively impact the ability of our companies to accelerate their platform capabilities and drive value creation for life sciences,” David Khougazian, executive partner at Flagship, said in the release. “This collaboration brings enormous value to our platform companies by providing them the potential to greatly expand their reach and impact.”
Flagship’s portfolio includes a suite of more than 30 platform-focused biotechs. That includes recent additions to the Flagship family like Etiome, which recently debuted with $50 million and a goal to preempt disease, and Lila Sciences, which aims to harness $200 million to build a “scientific superintelligence” that runs fully autonomous research labs.
Several of Flagship’s companies are on the cusp of the clinic, such as ProFound Therapeutics, which has mined the so-called “dark genome” for hidden proteins that could play a role in disease. ProFound recently inked a four-year deal with Novartis to develop new therapeutics for cardiovascular disease in which the pharma is offering up to $750 million per target.
Flagship also pledged in April to find autoimmune targets with Pfizer using the venture firm’s 2019 AI company Valo Health.
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IQVIA is “excited to be a partner to the type of brave and bold thinking at Flagship Pioneering,” the CRO’s president of real-world solutions Rob Kotchie said in the release.
While Flagship’s penchant for betting big on bold ideas can produce big rewards, it also can lead to growing pains down the line. Flagship companies like Alltrna, Sail Biomedicines and Apriori Bio have all laid off staff this year. And, in February, Flagship-founded Omega Therapeutics revealed it was potentially heading for bankruptcy, despite striking an obesity deal with Novo Nordisk the year prior.
IQVIA’s commitment to assist Flagship’s army of biotechs comes after IQVIA settled a long-running feud with rival Veeva Systems. Just last week, the two former adversaries agreed to end a legal spat that stretched back to 2017 and instead forge a long-term partnership.
