This week on No Priors, Sarah sits down with Noubar Afeyan, Co-founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the biotech firm behind groundbreaking companies like Moderna. They explore how Flagship creates the conditions for scientific breakthroughs, tackles regulatory uncertainty, and pushes the boundaries of discovery. Noubar shares insights on AI’s role in healthcare, the challenges of bringing new therapies to market, and lessons learned from past pandemics. He also discusses Flagship’s platform approach to biotech innovation and introduces the idea of polyintelligence.
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Show Notes:
0:00 Introduction
0:48 Founding Flagship
5:51 Fostering environments for emergence
11:17 Expanding into new frontiers
14:26 Developing technology amid regulatory uncertainty and risk
19:12 How Flagship has evolved
22:47 AI applications in healthcare
27:30 Bottlenecks in bringing new therapies to market
32:20 Lessons for the next pandemic
34:11 Building a platform
38:10 Polyintelligence