Flagship Pioneering Names Stephen Hoge 2023 Pioneering Leader of the Year

Annual Entrepreneurial Leadership Award Recognizes Innovations at Flagship-founded Moderna

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 21, 2023 -- Flagship Pioneering, the bioplatform innovation company, today announced the recipient of its annual Pioneering Leader Award: Stephen Hoge, M.D., President and Head of Research & Development for Moderna. Dr. Hoge accepted the award at Flagship Pioneering's 2023 Annual Meeting, held last week in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Hoge was chosen for the pivotal role he has played during his successful tenure on Moderna’s leadership team, as the company continues to unlock value from its multi-product mRNA platform. As President and head of R&D, Dr. Hoge is spearheading the company’s robust pipeline, with 43 programs in development across therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases and autoimmune diseases. This includes Moderna’s investigational individualized neoantigen therapy (INT) as well as its respiratory vaccine franchise and rare disease program. 

Founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2010, Moderna has transformed from a research-stage company advancing programs in the field of messenger RNA (mRNA), to an enterprise with a diverse clinical portfolio of vaccines and therapeutics across seven modalities, a broad intellectual property portfolio and integrated manufacturing facilities that allow for rapid clinical and commercial production at scale.

“Stephen’s pioneering leadership at Moderna and delivery on the promise of mRNA science has yielded bigger leaps towards the future of programmable medicines, saving millions of lives,” said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Co-Founder and Chairman of Moderna. "Moderna has great momentum as its pipeline continues to advance dozens of therapeutic candidates, fulfilling the company’s promise to deliver the greatest possible impact to people through mRNA medicines. Stephen is a driving force for Moderna and the industry at large thanks to his continued commitment to accelerating the power of the platform, and Flagship is pleased to recognize Stephen with our highest entrepreneurial honor, the annual Pioneering Leader Award.”

Previous recipients of Flagship's annual entrepreneurial leadership award include Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna (2014), Ryan Watts, CEO of Denali Therapeutics (2018), Nancy Simonian, M.D., CEO of Syros Pharmaceuticals, (2019), Eric Shaff, President and CEO of Seres Therapeutics (2020), Ron Hovsepian, President and CEO of Indigo Agriculture (2022), and Robert Berendes, Chairman of the Board of Indigo Agriculture (2022).

About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering is a biotechnology company that invents and builds platform companies, each with the potential for multiple products that transform human health or sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has originated and fostered more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $90 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $3.4 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $26 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 41 companies, including Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Generate:Biomedicines, Inari, Indigo Agriculture, Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB) and Tessera Therapeutics.