Flagship Pioneering Strengthens Leadership With Appointment of Paul Biondi as Executive Partner

Industry veteran to enhance Flagship Pioneering executive team and help lead a new drug development initiative: Pioneering Medicines

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Flagship Pioneering, a unique life sciences innovation enterprise, today announced the appointment of Paul Biondi to the post of Executive Partner. Mr. Biondi most recently served as Senior Vice President, Head of Strategy and Business Development at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He brings a wealth of experience in pharmaceutical R&D, strategy, and business development.

In his role at Flagship Pioneering, Mr. Biondi will work with Flagship growth company CEOs and their teams to achieve the best attainable value for each company. He will serve on the boards of selected Flagship companies, and as a member of Flagship's senior leadership, Mr. Biondi will be involved in strategic and operational aspects of Flagship, including leading Pioneering Medicines.

Pioneering Medicines is a newly formed initiative dedicated to conceiving and developing an innovative pipeline of first-in-category therapeutic products that will leverage Flagship's platform companies and extend beyond the programs the companies develop on their own. Furthermore, Pioneering Medicines plans to forge one or more strategic partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies with the aim of extending the partners' access to multiple novel scientific platforms unique to the Flagship ecosystem of companies.

"We continue to focus on strengthening Flagship's leadership team with deeply experienced executive talent," says Noubar Afeyan, PhD, founder and CEO of Flagship. "Paul brings years of experience in pharma R&D, coupled with strategy and business development. He will help us continue to drive significant value creation for our growth-stage companies and, through Pioneering Medicines, play a leadership role in extending our in-house capabilities in new drug development complementing our unique Flagship Labs platform creation capabilities."

"I am excited to join the leadership of Flagship Pioneering and contribute to its unique process of launching and growing breakthrough platform companies," says Mr. Biondi. "In particular, I am looking forward to building Pioneering Medicines as an important new initiative to extend the potential impact of Flagship's scientific platforms on the lives of more patients than we might otherwise reach."

About Paul Biondi
Mr. Biondi joins Flagship Pioneering following a 17-year tenure at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Since 2015, Paul was the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development and had enterprise-wide responsibility for establishing and evolving BMS's strategy and for pursuing strategic transactions to access external innovation, enhance BMS's capabilities, and strengthen the company's portfolio. From 2002 to 2015, Paul held a series of leadership roles within BMS's R&D organization overseeing strategy, portfolio and project management, and clinical and business operations.

Prior to his time at BMS, Mr. Biondi spent nine years at Mercer Management Consulting. Mr. Biondi holds a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied a unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $30 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship is backed by more than $3.3 billion of aggregate capital commitments, of which over $1.7 billion has been deployed toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $10 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 37 transformative companies, including Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA), Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics, Indigo Agriculture, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS). To learn more about Flagship Pioneering, please visit our website: www.FlagshipPioneering.com.