CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Flagship Pioneering, the bioplatform innovation company, today unveiled ProFound™ Therapeutics, a company that has identified a universe of previously undiscovered human proteins, enabling a multitude of new therapeutic targets and medicines. Founded at Flagship Labs in 2020, the company’s revolutionary ProFoundry Platform has uncovered tens of thousands of novel proteins, remapping the landscape of the human genome and vastly expanding the number of potential therapeutic targets. Flagship has initially committed $75M to advance the ProFoundry Platform and generate an initial pipeline of novel therapeutics.
“Two decades ago, the Human Genome Project reached the consensus that there were just 20,000 protein-coding genes, based on a well-defined boundary of what we call a protein,” said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO, Flagship Pioneering and Co-Founder and Chairman of ProFound Therapeutics. “We asked ourselves, ‘What if we are overly constrained by these rules, and the proteome is actually much larger than previously understood?’”
Afeyan continued, “It turns out that by focusing on proteins in the process of translation, together with the innovative application of technology and new biological insights, we have found tens of thousands of undiscovered human proteins that could provide countless new intervention points across diseases. This discovery redefines what we know about human biology and marks the beginning of a new era in biomedicine, with unlimited potential for patient impact.”
ProFound Therapeutics has developed tools to reveal the translatome, the full compendium of sequences translated into proteins. Building on the foundational insights from the translatome, the company has constructed The ProFoundry Atlas, an ever-expanding database cataloging tens of thousands of novel proteins and their functionality, connectivity, and roles in health and disease. This Atlas is at the core of the ProFoundry Platform, which uses a proprietary combination of state-of-the-art protein detection technologies, targeted high-throughput functional validation, and advanced computational tools to unearth a rich source of protein factors and targets, illuminating biology to generate new medicines.
“ProFound is systematically decoding this expanded proteome to understand how these proteins govern biology and enable the development of novel therapeutics across the spectrum of human diseases,” said Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D., Flagship Pioneering General Partner and Co-Founder and CEO of ProFound Therapeutics. “Through the ProFoundry Platform, we have already uncovered many new mechanisms of disease that present untapped therapeutic avenues, including new genetic disease targets, circulating factors, and immune system modulators, among others. This new biology opens a vast frontier, which we believe could unleash multiples of the biotechnology industry.”
The ProFound™ Therapeutics Team
In addition to Afeyan and Kahvejian, ProFound’s founding team includes Flagship Origination Partners Kala Subramanian, Ph.D., who serves as President, and Yann Echelard, Ph.D., as well as Flagship Principal Erica Weinstein, Ph.D., and Flagship Pioneering Senior Associate Vini Mani, Ph.D.
About ProFound™ Therapeutics
ProFound Therapeutics is pioneering the discovery of a vastly expanded human proteome and using its newfound insights to unlock a universe of potential new medicines. The company’s ProFoundry Platform uses state-of-the-art protein detection technologies to systematically identify and validate proteins and dissect their therapeutic potential. The result is an ever-expanding database of tens of thousands of novel proteins, including their connectivity, functionality, and roles in health and disease. ProFound Therapeutics was founded in 2020 at Flagship Labs, a unit of Flagship Pioneering.
About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $100 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $2.9 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $19 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 41 transformative companies, including Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), and Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB).
