Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and grows first-in-category ventures to transform human health and sustainability. The company accelerates Flagship Pioneering’s advances in biology, engineering, medicine, energy, and beyond. The firm harnesses science and entrepreneurialism to envision alternative futures, beginning with seemingly unreasonable propositions and navigating to transformational outcomes through an evolutionary methodology. Flagship Pioneering combines innovative capacity, entrepreneurial leadership, and professional capital management in a single enterprise that systematically produces first-in-category companies.

Flagship Pioneering

PSP Investments is one of Canada’s largest pension investment managers, with $116.8 billion of assets under management as at March 31, 2016. We invest funds for the pension plans of the Public Service, the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Reserve Force.  Our skilled and dedicated team of more than 600 professionals manages a diversified global portfolio including stocks, bonds and other fixed-income securities, and investments in Private Equity, Real Estate, Infrastructure, Natural Resources and Private Debt.  Our business offices are in Montreal, New York, London and Luxembourg. Our head office is in Ottawa.

PSP Investments

Longevity Vision Fund is a $100M investment fund dedicated to making longevity affordable and accessible to all. The fund accelerates longevity breakthroughs by investing in companies that develop technologies, products, and services that extend healthy human lifespans and overcome the negative effects of aging Longevity Vision Fund provides Seed to Series C funding to biotech and life extension-focused companies that have demonstrated affordable longevity potential and vision of milestones driving up the value of the company and market validation.

Longevity Vision Fund

Invus recognizes that every company is unique and that extraordinary business performance cannot be achieved by following a formulaic approach. Due to their unique structure, they have a great deal of flexibility in the types of companies and situations where they can get involved. They know that real transformation takes time and that it is never a straight line. They fully align their incentives with their partners and have the wherewithal and long-term commitment to see through any bumps along the way. They have been successfully empowering owner-managers since 1985. They have been reinvesting the same pool of money from the same group of European families (through their Artal investment vehicle) since their founding. Today they manage over $4 billion in an evergreen fund and work out of offices in New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong.

Invus

As a venture capital company, HBM BioVentures is invested globally in some 40 mature emerging companies in the biotechnology/human medicine, diagnostics and medical technology sectors. The primary products of HBM BioVentures' portfolio companies are either at an advanced stage of development or already available on the market. The company focuses on unquoted emerging companies, with two-thirds are invested in private companies that offer high value creation potential. This has enabled HBM BioVentures to carve out a unique and distinctive market position. HBM BioVentures has a broad shareholder base and is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ticker: HBMN).

HBM Healthcare Investments

E Squared Capital Management is a multi-strategy fund that invests in public and private companies.  Founded in 2009, our flexible approach and team of seasoned professionals has particular expertise investing in companies that will provide for superior risk-adjusted returns with low correlation to overall markets in a wide array of industries.    We achieve this objective by strategically investing in equity securities.  Our proprietary analysis uncovers companies that are undervalued when compared to our internally generated price targets.  We often invest in special events including restructurings, spin-offs, IPOs, secondary offerings, block trades, and registered direct offerings.  E Squared will seek to capture the relative value inherent in equity issues, taking a number of fundamental and trading factors into consideration.

E Squared Capital Management

South Korean investment firm, headquartered in Seoul.

Mirae Asset Capital

Atinum Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in the growth stage startups in the IT, biotech, and healthcare sectors.

Atinum Partners

Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), founded in November 2017 with a transformational spirit, originates and invests in promising entrepreneurs and technologies across industries to improve Koch Industries' existing businesses and create new opportunities. Based in Wichita, Kansas, Koch Industries is one of the largest private companies in America with estimated annual revenues as high as $100 billion, according to Forbes. It owns a diverse group of companies involved in refining, chemicals, and biofuels; forest and consumer products; fertilizers; polymers and fibers; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; electronics; information systems; commodity trading; minerals; energy; glass; ranching; and investments. Since 2003, Koch Companies have invested more than $80 billion in acquisitions and other capital expenditures. With a presence in about 60 countries, Koch Companies employ more than 120,000 people worldwide, with about 70,000 of those in the United States. From January 2009 to the present, Koch Companies have earned more than 1,200 awards for safety, environmental excellence, community stewardship, innovation, and customer service.

Koch Disruptive Technologies

Valo Health

Valo Health, Inc (Valo) is a technology company focused on utilizing large scale data and AI-driven computation to discover and develop therapeutics. Valo aims to fully integrate human-centric data across the entire drug development life cycle into a single unified architecture, thereby accelerating the discovery and development of life-changing drugs while simultaneously reducing costs, time, and failure rates. The company’s Opal Computational Platform™ is an end-to-end drug discovery and development platform with a unified architecture designed to transform data into valuable insights that may accelerate discoveries and enable Valo to advance a robust pipeline of programs, initially focused on cardiovascular metabolic renal, oncology, and neurodegenerative disease. Founded by Flagship Pioneering and headquartered in Boston, MA, Valo also has offices in Lexington, MA, and New York, NY. To learn more, visit valohealth.com.

<div>Valo Health leverages its AI-driven drug discovery platform Opal that is aimed at predicting molecules that can be used as drugs against new diseases. The platform uses a dataset of more than 125-million-patient-years (as of January 2021) combined from thousands of sources. It integrates machine learning, cloud computing, and data to create an entirely new drug discovery and development process.&nbsp; As of June 2021, Valo reported that Opal had built more than 30,000 predictive models and two billion predictions.&nbsp;</div>

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

Valo Health patents new PARP-1 inhibitors

<div>
 
 Valo Health leverages its AI-driven drug discovery platform Opal that is aimed at predicting molecules that can be used as drugs against new diseases. The platform uses a dataset of more than 125-million-patient-years (as of January 2021) combined from thousands of sources. It integrates machine learning, cloud computing, and data to create an entirely new drug discovery and development process.&nbsp; As of June 2021, Valo reported that Opal had built more than 30,000 predictive models and two billion predictions.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 As of June 2023, the company has 17 programs in its pipeline in a variety of areas including cardiovascular, cancer, and degenerative disorders. Two of the company&rsquo;s drug candidates are about to launch Phase 2 clinical trials (one by the end of 2021 and the other in the first half of 2022).&nbsp;
 
 
 Valo Health acquired Courier Therapeutics in July 2021 and expanded its focus from small molecules to biologics. It also acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9601">
 TARA Biosystem
 </a>
 s in April 2022 to develop an AI platform focused on cardiovascular diseases.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a multi-year strategic partnership with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7915">
 Charles River Laboratories
 </a>
 in April 2022 to launch Logica, an integrated AI-powered drug discovery solution. In September 2023,&nbsp; the company entered a partnership with pharmaceutical manufacturing company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22141">
 Novo Nordisk
 </a>
 to discover and develop new treatments for cardiometabolic diseases.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company raised USD 110 million in an extended 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valo-health-receives-110-million-in-funding-from-koch-disruptive-technologies-to-close-series-b-301243086.html">
 Series B
 </a>
 financing round in March 2021, bringing its total Series B funding to USD 300 million. It also announced a SPAC deal with Khosla Ventures in June 2021, which was later called off in 
 <a href="https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/valo-whacks-spac-merger-blaming-market-conditions-for-end-750m-khosla-deal">
 November 2021
 </a>
 citing unfavourable market conditions.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response. 

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>

 Charles River Laboratories and Lundbeck have entered into a partnership to use Logica, an AI-driven drug discovery platform, in their research on central nervous system disorders. Logica was introduced througha collaboration between Charles River Laboratories and Valo Health. 
 The aim of this partnership is to generate optimized small molecules for new therapies in neurological research using the AI-enhanced process of Logica, combined with Lundbeck's neurology expertise. Logica translates biological information into optimized preclinical candidates by combining Valo Health’s AI-powered Opal Computational Platform and Charles River’s drug discovery and preclinical development expertise.

</div>

Valo Health

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