The investor behind Modern has secured a $ 3.4 billion biotechnology-based fund

Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital firm behind Modern, has raised the largest fund to build the next generation of biotechnology companies.

The $ 3.4 billion fund is one of the largest in the pharmaceutical industry and comes at a time when investment is in full swing. floods in the sector, driven by numerous start-up companies races For Covid-19 treatments and vaccines.

Noubar Afeyan, the founder of Flagship, said: “The vast base of capital will allow us… To carry out pioneering science, the creation and growth of companies on the same roof.”

Flagship Fund VII raises $ 2.2 billion from investors this year and $ 1.2 billion by 2020. The company plans to raise money over the next three years.

Rather than looking for biotechnologies in the early stages, the Massachusetts-based team invests in developing the technology and establishing the company within its four walls. The groups are formed around specific areas of interest, with the aim of rotating them to form individual companies as the research develops.

“It’s not an investment fund in the traditional sense of the word. . . nothing we do comes from outside, “Afeyan, who founded Flagship in 2000, told the Financial Times.” It’s dedicated to advancing all the bio-platforms we invent at home. “

The most famous flagship company is Moderna, which was founded in 2010 with the aim of developing therapeutic mRNA, and has its chair at Afeyan. The vaccine was sold by the creator Covid blows $ 1.7 million in the first three months of the year and its share price has fallen by more than 1,000 percent since the start of 2020.

Afeyan described Flagship’s strategy as “exploratory” and “an unlimited attempt to create scientific advances along with product advances.” He said that modern vaccines have begun to develop “whether we could use a molecular code or a molecule that we could prescribe to the body to make a medication.”

Flagship has $ 14.1 million in assets under management and has spent $ 4.8 million on its businesses over the past four quarters. Last week the Valo Health drug discovery business announced that it would be made public by joining a company to purchase a special purpose.

Afeyan said the life sciences company is not focused on creating biotechnologies that will fight specific diseases, but is building platforms to use technologies in different diseases. Moderna is conducting phase 1 testing of its mRNA technology against HIV and influenza.

Flagship scientists were particularly interested in advancing machine learning tools that are able to be understood on a more complex and grainy level than humans, as well as the field of preventive medicine, Afeyan said.

“The underlying health conditions caused such a catastrophe that all of these underlying health comorbidities worsened this pandemic,” he said. “We believe that in the future we will see a world in which we will be able to intervene before diseases appear.”

The flagship has recently opened an office in London and has hired former UK health minister Lord Ara Darzi to direct the work of preventive medicines.