Flagship Pioneering, a bioplatform company, entered agreements with Ampersand Biomedicines and Montai Therapeutics to identify targeted molecules that could be further developed as treatments for obesity and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These agreements represent the most recent collaborations initiated under Flagship’s strategic partnership with Pfizer for the discovery and development of new targeted therapies.
 
The agreements with Ampersand Biomedicines and Montai Therapeutics follow previously announced agreements with ProFound Therapeutics and Quotient Therapeutics, marking continued momentum for the partnership. Pioneering Medicines, Flagship’s in house drug discovery and development unit, is responsible for leading Flagship’s partnership with Pfizer, including driving the exploration process to rapidly surface potential drug discovery and research programs built on Flagship’s bioplatforms and modalities.
 
Ampersand is using its computationally-powered Address, Navigate, Determine (AND) Platform to program biologic medicines that work only where needed in the body and nowhere else. These AND-Body Therapeutics are designed to effectively target the site of disease without affecting healthy tissue or cells. As a part of the Flagship-Pfizer partnership, Ampersand will leverage its AND Platform to target tissue-selective metabolic pathways, offering a potent approach to potentially improve metabolic health.
 
Montai’s CONECTA platform integrates computational tools to decode links between hard-to-drug biological pathways and novel small molecule solutions from an untapped source of diverse human-qualified chemistry called Anthromolecules. Montai has a library of more than 100 million Anthromolecules and their derivatives, whose topologically rich chemical structures are largely distinct from areas mined for conventional drug discovery. These molecules from traditional medicines, foods, and their metabolites possess fundamental scaffolds evolved to offer far greater precision and selectivity to engage biological pathways that drive chronic disease with a broad range of molecular modalities. As part of the Flagship-Pfizer partnership, Montai will deploy its CONECTA platform against oncogenic mechanisms that drive cancer cell growth and survival to identify new small molecules with the potential to be further developed as therapies for lung cancer.