Mirai Bio launches with plan to help genetic med developers

Flagship Pioneering's latest biotech launch, Mirai Bio, aims to help genetic medicine developers find the best way to get their drugs to patients.

The new Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company – which was set up in 2021, but makes its official launch today with $50 million in funding from Flagship – applies artificial intelligence to solve the various obstacles that can block the progress of new medicines.

Its algorithms are used to design nucleic acid-based medicines and target them to the right tissues and cells in the body, overcome drug delivery challenges, and ensure efficient manufacturing.

The company hopes to attract partners who will tap into its 'open platform' capabilities to co-create new drugs, which will be taken forward by the other party, saying it aims to "enhance and accelerate genetic medicine development across a wide range of therapeutic areas and modalities."

Mirai's founding chief executive is Geoffrey von Maltzahn, general partner at Flagship, while the company's president is Hari Pujar, operating partner at the venture capital firm, and the executive chairman is Flagship's growth partner Travis Wilson.

"We are in the age of information molecules, yet, enormous technological challenges in the delivery, cargo design, and manufacturing of these molecules have hindered the speedy and full realisation of their potential," commented Pujar.

"By applying machine intelligence to the design of every atom within the medicine and opening this platform to the entire industry, we will have vast collective data points rolling through our optimisation loops, allowing a greater innovation advantage to benefit each partner on the Mirai platform," he added.

Wilson said that the company wants to solve the challenges that "every new company with a payload idea faces" when confronted with the need to set up delivery, design, and manufacturing capabilities in-house. In effect, these can now be outsourced and partners can focus on the discovery and development of new genetic medicines.

"Through aggressive investment in our own capabilities and expertise, and by creating long-term partnerships with biotech and pharma leaders in the space, Mirai’s hope is to become the partner of choice and help bring more medicines into the world than we would ever achieve alone," he added.

In July, Flagship raised $3.6 billion in new capital that it said would be used to support the creation and development of around 25 new life science start-ups over the next three to five years. It has a heritage in investing in AI-focused enterprises and one of those companies – Generate:Biomedicines – just signed a discovery deal with Novartis worth up to $1 billion.