Team Metabolic Health
Pfizer will work with the Flagship-funded Quotient Therapeutics to conduct research that will inform drug development for cardiovascular and renal diseases.
More than a year after Pfizer and venture capital company Flagship Pioneering struck a partnership investing in 10 life sciences programs, the two unveiled a collaboration with Quotient Therapeutics.
The Flagship-funded Quotient, which specializes in somatic genetics — or the study of mutations in somatic cells — will work with Pfizer to conduct research that can inform drug development for cardiovascular and renal diseases. Quotient was founded by Flagship in 2022. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Flagship’s drug discovery and development unit Pioneering Medicines will be responsible for spearheading the partnership with Pfizer, the company said in a press release. Quotient CEO Jacob Rubens the company’s Somatic Genomics platform as having the potential to investigate the “extensive genetic diversity” among 30 trillion cells in the body. He added that Pfizer’s involvement in these dual programs will allow for the research to scale.
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“This offers an incredibly rich and uncharted territory for drug discovery,” Rubens said in a statement. “These two research programs will deploy our unique platform capabilities to identify novel links between genes and cardiovascular or renal disease, which are leading causes of mortality and morbidity around the world.”
The collaboration is the latest update in the Pfizer and Flagship alliance, which was struck in July 2023 to develop a 10-program pipeline of innovative medicines to address unmet needs.
The pact, which involved both companies investing a total of $100 million upfront initially, allows Pfizer to choose from Flagship’s large ecosystem of 40 biotech companies to explore potential therapies.
In June, Pfizer and Flagship announced their first choice — a partnership with ProFound Therapeutics to investigate new weight loss drugs.
That collaboration entails ProFound using its proprietary ProFoundry Platform in combination with Pioneering Medicine’s drug development expertise to explore novel proteins as potential obesity therapies.
At the time, Charlotte Allerton, head of discovery and early development at Pfizer, noted that the partnership was designed to push the “boundaries of science to potentially unlock new protein therapeutics for obesity.”
The announcement also comes a day after Pfizer unveiled its direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform, PfizerForAll, following in the footsteps of Eli Lilly and Company in launching telehealth services.
The goal is for consumers to access a one-stop-shop directly from the big pharma company to book in-person or telehealth appointments, receive home delivery for prescription drugs or schedule vaccinations.
Pfizer launched the platform a little less than a year after Lilly debuted its own DTC platform, LillyDirect.
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