Respiratory disease and immunology are the initial focus areas of GSK’s new drug discovery partnership with Flagship Pioneering. A similar Flagship alliance with Pfizer recently announced it is pursuing novel obesity treatments.

By Frank VinluanGSK already has a strong presence in respiratory disease and immunology, two of its core therapeutic areas. The pharmaceutical giant is now teaming up with Flagship Pioneering in an alliance intended to discover novel medicines to bolster its pipelines in both disease categories.
The deal announced Monday calls for the partners to fund up to $150 million up front for an exploration phase intended to identify concepts that can leverage the technologies of Flagship’s portfolio companies. Flagship forms and incubates startups, each one based on a platform technology that focuses on some aspect of biology. The research stemming from these platforms informs the discovery and development of novel medicines. The best known of these “bioplatform” companies might be Moderna, which commercialized a Covid-19 messenger RNA vaccine and is continuing to leverage its platform technology to develop new mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer.
GSK and Flagship aim to identify and pursue up to 10 novel medicines and vaccines, initially focusing on respiratory and immunology indications. The partnership gives GSK the exclusive option to advance these programs through clinical development. Under the agreement, Flagship and its companies could receive up to $720 million in milestone payments for each program that GSK acquires from the partnered research, plus royalties from sales of any commercialized products.
“Together with Flagship, we will use science and technology to deliver best-in-class innovation at pace,” GSK Chief Scientific Officer Tony Wood said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to partnering with the talented team at Flagship, and their ecosystem of bioplatform companies, to further accelerate our pipeline and discover practice-changing medicines and vaccines for patients.”
The partnership comes a little more than a year after Pfizer and Flagship began an alliance. Like the GSK pact, Pfizer’s collaboration is tapping into the platform technologies of Flagship portfolio companies. Pfizer has the option to acquire programs stemming from this research in order to advance their development. When the deal was announced, specific therapeutic areas were undisclosed. Last month, Flagship announced that one of its companies, the proteomics startup ProFound Therapeutics, will work with Pfizer to discover novel proteins with potential applications for treating obesity.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Flagship has founded more than 40 bioplatform companies. Earlier this month, the firm unveiled its eighth fund totaling $2.6 billion. Additional side funds bring another $1 billion from strategic partnerships. Flagship plans to use its new capital to create and develop about 25 startups in the areas of human health, sustainability, and artificial intelligence. With the close of its latest fund, Flagship says it now has about $14 billion in assets under management.
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