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Avak Kahvejian, PhD, leads a team that invents and launches new therapeutic platforms as a general partner at Flagship Pioneering, the venture/accelerator giant. Speaking on GEN’s “Close to the Edge” video interview series, Kahvejian recounted his career from life sciences executive to a life sciences inventor, entrepreneur, and CEO, who has founded more than 10 companies.
  After earning his BSc and PhD degrees from McGill University, Kahvejian held positions at Helicos BioSciences—a next-generation sequencing pioneer where he developed and commercialized the world’s first single-molecule DNA sequencer—before joining Flagship in 2011. Based in Cambridge, MA, Flagship has built a primary portfolio of companies focused on life sciences or “human health” and sustainability, as well as on AI. The firm’s best-known companies that have grown from startups include Moderna, the mRNA vaccine giant that has brought several COVID-19 vaccines to approval, and Generate:Biomedicines, a developer of therapeutics based on de novo protein generation. Generate was among multiple high-value public and private companies created by Kahvejian and his team. Other companies include:
  • Seres Therapeutics, developer of the first microbiome therapy platform
  • Ring Therapeutics, a developer of gene therapies based on its commensal virome platform
  • Cellarity, which aims to design medicines targeting the full cellular and molecular complexity of disease as opposed to a single molecular target
  • Abiologics, a developer of programmable medicines combining generative artificial intelligence and high throughput chemical protein synthesis (it emerged from stealth mode in July)
  • Cygnal Therapeutics, now part of Sonata Therapeutics, whose Network Medicines™ reprogram diseased cells to become “coordinators of cure” by releasing a defined array of signals designed to precisely coordinate multicellular networks to drive disease resolution
Kahvejian also discussed the lessons to be learned from Laronde, the circular RNA therapy developer where he served as a board member and founding CEO months before it announced an eye-popping $440 million Series B financing in 2021. Laronde merged with Senda Biosciences last year to form Sail Biosciences, following conflicts over the reliability of data from historic GLP-1 experiments for the company’s therapeutic peptide. In a wide-ranging conversation, Kahvejian also offered insights into Flagship’s fundamental strategy for selecting companies, how early in the business cycle Flagship invests in a startup, and how long Flagship likes to stay invested in a company. Kahvejian discussed the rise of AI and weighed in on its potential risk of hype and potential benefit of delivering the hope of finally addressing longtime challenges, such as the cost and time it takes to develop new drugs.

Avak Kahvejian, PhD, Recounts His Journey from Sequencing Pioneer to Flagship General Partner on “Close to the Edge”

At the conclusion of the ASGCT meeting, Julianna LeMieux, PhD, GEN’s deputy editor in chief, and Corinna Singleman, PhD, GEN’s managing editor, chat about how they spent their time at the conference and their unique takeaways from the research and news presented through the week.
They discussed general insights on how diverse the topics have been. Julianna discussed David Liu’s, PhD, keynote on Wednesday and Corinna shared about an interview she had with Frederic Revah, PhD, Genethon.

Bye, Bye, Baltimore: GEN’s Takeaways from ASGCT

What’s Tipping the Scale for Bioprocessing?

On TODAY's episode of GEN Live, we will discuss where bioprocessing is now and how the field plans to overcome its big challenges, with a pair of industry experts: Dr. Susan Abu-Absi and Dr. Stephen Sofen.
GEN September 2024 cover

Even though biomanufacturing experiences ups and downs in demand, it recognizes what is constant—the need to adapt. For example, as the CEO of a leading CDMO quoted in this issue of GEN observes, biotech and biopharma clients appear to be tightening their budgets and pruning their pipelines. And yet long-term trends look promising, especially given the growing importance of therapeutic modalities. In this issue, both near-term challenges and long-term opportunities are discussed in our A-List of Top 10 CDMOs. But what should biomanufacturers do when demand surges? That’s covered in this issue, too. And, as always, GEN addresses developments of various kinds. Besides offering biomanufacturing coverage, this issue presents articles on gene therapy, digital twins, phage therapy, and biomarker development.