Marie Yurkovich

Marie Yurkovich joined Flagship Pioneering in 2022 where she works as part of a team of entrepreneurial scientists to conceive, create, and launch the next generation of Flagship’s biotechnology platform companies. Marie helps establish the scientific vision, research and development goals, corporate strategy, and intellectual property for these new ventures.

Marie has broad experience in biotechnology company creation, investment, strategic planning, and operations. Most recently she was Head of Strategy and Operations at Oak Hill Bio, a clinical-stage neonatology and rare disease company spun out of Takeda that develops medicines for extremely preterm infants. She was previously a Senior Investment Director at Cambrian Biopharma - a multi-asset distributed drug development company focused on building preventative medicines. At Cambrian, Marie was responsible for sourcing and evaluating new opportunities and helped drive the company formation, investment, and operations for three subsidiary companies; each built upon a different biological driver of aging. Marie started her post-graduate career as a management consultant at ZS Associates where she worked with pharmaceutical clients on projects across the drug development and commercialization life cycle.

Marie received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. She studied under Professor Peter Leadlay where she used genome mining and genetic engineering to characterize natural product biosynthetic pathways and engineer new chemistry. Her work resulted in several first-author publications. Marie also holds an M.Phil in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge and a B.Sc. from the University of Alberta in Biological Sciences.