Noubar Afeyan

Moderna success and his next big idea. But when you came up with the idea of Moderna, did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that it would change the world in the way that it has? Absolutely not um. What we had thought of was that we might well have the next generation of biotechnology, uh and something that had never been even dreamt before, which is the body's own ability to make its own drugs whatever it needed.

So the notion would be, we would introduce a molecule that would code for the drug that we want, and the body would in turn translate and make the drug that it needs. That was the basic idea, which was itself a fantasy at the beginning, in other words, an

act of imagination with relatively little proof. That platform would go on to create twenty different products that were being tested in the clinic when this pandemic hit was something we could envision, But the pandemic itself and the ability for this technology to be used overnight to fight against this very nasty virus that we could not we did not imagine. When you come up with an idea for a company like Moderna, do you then go get somebody to be the shet yo? Do you get somebody to

be on the board? How did it work when you start a company. So our process of starting companies, which is what my company, Flagshire Pioneering does institutionally professionally, if you will, we don't start with an idea for the company. We start with a range of things that we could pursue, of which we try to find which one actually gains advantage and goes forward. So Maderna followed the same exact process we have, which is we ask questions that start

with what if. So in this case, it was what if we could make a code molecule that, when introduced to the body, could make any medicine we wanted. With that question, the question is how do you do that? Is there a way to do that that's been tried? What gets in the way how how reliable is it? There's all these questions ahead, and so we don't start the company based on the question. We start an exploration, which is what we did. So in the summer of

two thousand ten, we began to explore these issues. Is it even possible? Sometimes I've likened it to kind of an archaeological dig, except of the future, not of the past. You kind of pick up pieces and you look, is their value here? Is their value there? So we were in the lab setting we started doing experiments. Now as we went forward, we started realizing that there was actually a path that we could at least point to forward to be able to make this MR and a molecule.

And once we get to a stage where it's becomes to be clear that there's some intellectual property there, that's when we actually say, okay, how are we going to actually create a team to lead it? And what's the leadership structure with a CEO. Now the company has a market value that's greater than marks. It's a market cap of about a hundred and ninety plus billion dollars. When you first invested, and how much money did you put into Maderna, Well, we capitalized the first couple of years

of the company's existence. So altogether, my firm deployed about eleven million dollars to stand up the company over a period of a couple of years, and that eleven million dollars has has a return of infinite amount practically no well north of a thousandfold. But this so when Maderna was moving forward and coming up with the idea of coming up with this vaccine that's helping in the pandemic. Um, what did the CEO say you did you say, I think I've got the way to really cure the pandemic,

or what did you say to him? Well, when the beginnings of this pandemic, we're beginning to show themselves. This was back January of two thousand and twenty. We had a discussion about the possibility of starting a program just to be in a position in case this's got serious. And and interestingly, the reason was not because it was

a pandemic. It was not a pandemic at the time that nobody was using that word, but because we thought we'd have an opportunity to also demonstrate one of the hidden advantages of our apply from which was just speed, speed of execution, speed of design, seeing the traditional biotech pharmaceutical world, speed is hardly ever an advantage because things take such a long time in being approved and regulated that going even faster often doesn't really result in much

of a game, whereas in a pandemic or epidemic we thought we would have. Speed becomes a life or death difference, and so that's what attracted us at first, And then of course the situation caused us to put a lot of our efforts into this right. But Moderna was a relatively small company. Very few people heard of it. You go to the government of the United States and say, guess what, Forget Merk, forget vis or, forget all these

other companies, give us somebody. Did they laugh at you at the time and they said we whoever heard of you? Or was it clear that they were so interested in anything that they gave you money that you needed? Um, it's more the second, but even more, we were well known in all the circles in the government from the beginning of this effort. We partnered with nih ni H was testing our vaccine in humans forty days after we actually started our process. So it wasn't that they left

at us. From a point of course, they were worried that how can a company that we don't know withstand this type of uh capital slash importance if you will, how can it scale up quickly? So a lot of unknowns good news for us. Starting with Stefan and the team he had assembled. There were all stars from all the major farming companies. So when it was hard to get um did people call you up all the time in the middle of the night, so I guess, why can you get me some of the molderner Did you

unlist your phone number or something. I did get calls that I never thought I would ever get before from many many country leaders. They got missed. The reality is I couldn't do anything. I was completely I mean, nobody could do anything legally. The entire vaccine supply was a possession of the US government, the ones we were making in the US. It had not been authorized for any other use than emergency use, so any supply kind of under the table, if you will, would be an illegal act.

I in fact told many people that I would more readily get an assault rifle here than I could a vaccine because it was completely illegal to do anything with it. So I I just it was very difficult for me to understand because they've viewed it as as an innovation. Surely you must have some lying around and people don't

realize just how carefully governed this whole thing was. And in a way it made it a bit easier for us to be honest with you, because had we been able to do this, the demand was in the hundreds of thousands of demands not want to do so. The applicacy is around ninety three and a half percent or something like that, which means that if you get it, you have a pretty good chance of not getting the virus. Right. That's right, But now the delta variant has come along,

and presume it they're gonna be other variants. Is uh, the moderna vaccine going to be working against Saturday? You have something just for the delta variant. We are as technology developers preparing for any eventuality, including looking at what our baseline of vaccine after two doses does, which so far six months data we have available is very, very robust. We haven't seen any real deterioration of our protection. That's first,

against the delta virus. We have very strong protection and we expect that will continue for a period of time. The problem is we don't know for how long, because do you find out when your guard is down after your guard is down. So in order to prepare for that eventuality, we have begun to make variant vaccines, vaccines that have different sequences that, if needed, we could accelerate

so that we can actually use that. So I think we're gonna work very closely with regulators f d A, C, d C here and the Europeans to figure out from an arsenal of the beauty about the MR and A technology is that we can actually do this type of rapid response versus conventional about technology that takes years and years to do the same thing. To get to the heart of the problem my own personal situation, so I got to moderner shots. Do I need a booster shot?

I think that the best advice so far is that people after a certain age, and I cannot tell you right now what that age cut off will because that would be set by the government are most likely going to need a booster to be well protected against the variant. And over time, again public health are gonna to decide if everybody should get a bits a shot. My guess is that given enough time, we may well end up in a situation where we have yearly, let's say, at

a minimum, yearly vaccinations, just like the flu. So Tony Falci has said that we should use this example of what happened with the coronavirus to prepare for other potential viruses down the road, and that hopes companies like yours will do that. Are you working on that kind of

thing and now already are absolutely? Absolutely? A very big part of my Darn future will be in being the leading vaccine developer, but also with mrn A technology, but also additional new technologies that we're considering to augment our capility. But I should also say that within the broader flagship pioneering context, which is where I operate, we have multiple projects as well looking to expand the security net for

future pandemics. As we talk today, we're in Boston, and it's probably not a surprise that many people would say that people from m I. T. Or Harvard were involved in MODERNA. But your background is different than many people are in M I. T. And Harvard. You did not grow up in this country, is not correct, That's right. So I was born in Lebanon, Lebanon of Armenian parents lived there till the Civil War in nineties and ended up escaping the Civil War and growing up in Montreal, Canada.

So you were a teenager when you went to h Canada. Was a teenager and I was extremely fortunate my family was that they took us with basically as political refugees. We escaped Lebanon and she went to McGill University. And what did you major? In chemical engineering? Which was an interesting field at the time because that's the field that first got drawn into biotechnology when that industry started. Okay, so after you graduated, you and then went to m I T. Yes, I was the first graduate from the

by what was called the Bioprocess Engineering Center. It was the first time engineers were being trained to really do kind of advanced work in biology. And the notion was this new industry was being born, and so you needed engineers to come up with how tom make the products. That's how I got in from where there are a lot of Armenians in this MT program. I don't think that I mean them t for many many years had

been some, but no, it was not. I was not surrounded by familiar faces when you got your PhD. Where you're gonna go teach, which is what sometimes people do with PhD s and that, or did you want to go into the industry and what do you decide to do? Well. It was an interesting time. I've reflected on it quite a bit because, uh, because this was a new field, and I've since realized that's how kind of advanced education systems work. The most prestigious things would have been for

me to go teach. And here was a field and which didn't exist biochemical engineering, and so I could go teach anywhere. I mean, this was that they needed people who came, you know, who were proficient in this UM. I did not really seriously think about that personality wise, kind of what I saw a lot of the professors doing.

I just felt that this was not my temperament. Basically, by the way, I've since because I've taught m idea in our business school course courses, I've since realized that education itself, higher education has changed so much that you can be an entrepreneur and be a faculty member at the same time. Back in the eighties five eighty three, that was not the case. So that that's that was

not something I pursued. The choices then were joined a large pharmaceutical company was just beginning to hire people who were engineers in this field. UH. And then what I ended up doing, by a chance encounter I had with somebody's actually the start a company, which was extremely rare back in the mid to late eighties, let alone for a twenty four year old immigrant with zero experiences. Your

family say, get a real job Downstarrow company. Absolutely absolutely, I mean even though my father was an entrepreneur in the more trade, you know, import expert type of entrepreneur. But but it was definitely the risk was throwing away the education and the brand. All right, So you start a company when you were twenty four years old, and

how did that company do? Company failed to fail, and therefore it succeeded eventually in becoming the largest instrument company in UH in the bad field at the time, which was the late seven time frame. We invented a number of new technologies that could be used to study and make proteins, and we grew to about a hundred and

ten million revenues, about nine hundred people. Was a public company for a number of years, lots of ups and downs, lots of learnings, but it was for the for the period ultimately a successful adventure, So you sort of a Perkin Elmer. Eventually, yes, and so you cashed out. You got a lot of money for a young person. Uh, did you say I'm gonna retire now or just go teach or just relax? What did you decide just how

to do? It was a little more complicated because I had, along the way in the last few years, started a co started, co founded a number of other companies. So between ninety seven I've been involved as a co founder of four other companies. Each of them went public, three of them got sold. And so actually, in a way, it was worse than just doing one thing and then kind of calling it a day, because I had not also exampled doing multiple things and and instead actually so

I did not consider retiring. But one thing I did realize is that doing yet another company wasn't gonna accomplish much just because you know, I was not drawn into this notion of being a serial entrepreneur. And so that's kind of when I started thinking about ideas that have led me to do what I do now, which is in the mid nineties, I got enamored with this notion of parallel entrepreneurship uh. And at the time there was

not even a thing. Even now probably it isn't. But the notion of parallel entrepreneurship was why can't you simultaneously think about deeply about major new innovations and organizing companies all at the same time. I was doing it individually by partnering with different folks, and that led to institutional version. Norm would be serial entrepreneur, where you start a company, you finish it and go on next one. You're doing several at the same time. Yes, not unlike what Elon

Musk is doing. He has SpaceX and he's also Tessay years later. Yes, So when did you start raising funds where people could give you money to invest and you would then invest in various biotech ventures. Why did you

start doing that? So since two thousand we have operated a series of funds, some of which has been my capital, increasingly so even in the larger ones now and and and the reason we did it that way, it was very interesting, was that our idea was to deploy the funds exclusively to companies that we conceive create the science of which we generate, so as opposed to the typical investment deal flow diligence, select the winners, etcetera. We don't

have any of that. Whatever projects make it through our system get capital and they get advanced. If I had been lucky enough to know you in two thousand when you raised your first fund and I put a million dollars in, how much would I have made by now? I don't I don't have a simple answer to that, but I'd say it's safe to say that over the last fifteen years we've we've operated north of that are

are across everything we've done. Okay, So recently you went out and raised a new fund three point four billion dollars and that money came from individuals all over the world, institutions who who beg you to come in And did you turn people away? We did have to turn some folks away, but we were very, very pleased with the interest we got. Much of the capital came from investors we've had for well over a decade, but upon some of it was also new. These are endowments, UH, large,

large pension funds in this country. I'm happy to say we probably represent the best the best investment multiple states have made. It's up to them to say so. But I know there I know the results, and it makes me proud to look as an immigrant. It does make me proud to have a state in some place actually feel good about what we've been able to generate for their own people. A lot of companies in Silicon Valley, and I guess in the Boston area as well, Boston

Cambridge are started by immigrants. Maybe they are harder working where they're trying to prove something. Have you observed that money companies are immigrants founded. Well, factually they are the majority in by different counts, certainly in the in the Silicon Valley area. And I've been involved in various discussions, certainly over a few years ago when the political environment

was quite against immigration, even of talent. But but indeed it is the case that, um, there's a lot of immigrants who tend to get to the cutting edge of frontiers of things, whether it's because there's things to prove or by nature they're taking very little for granted, and and and therefore they're comfortable with the discomfort you know when if you change countries, let alone forcibly, it's you really don't have much time to say what's owed to me?

And and how come I got disadvantaged. I mean, these are all privileges of rooted people. If you're unrooted or uprooted, you don't actually you need roots to feel like you're entitled. That there is a completely connected concept. Now, Sometimes when you have a great success in life in whatever area might be, it's hard to do it a second time because it's rare that somebody has a second great achievement.

You've had a great achievement with moderna which really did incredible things to help save the world from the pandemic in many ways. Do you think you can do anything as great as that in the future, So so, David. What matters more to me even then, one instance is to actually create, And that's what Flagships all about. Is that we're an experiment in whether you could institutionally make breakthrough innovations with huge impact, regardless of what field we're in,

and to create companies that can realize that impact. If we could do that systematically, over and over and over again, that is such a defiant thought to conventional wisdom that says rare things only happen rarely. Well, we're saying we can generate an engine that can produce companies that might be a Maderna or ten times a Maderna, or a tenth of a Maderna. Maderna itself was not kind of what our design goal. Maderna was the result of a

process that we had already operated multiple. Maderna was called l S eighteen when it was born. It was the eighteenth set project we've done. We're now on number eighty eight. And in terms of projects that are born exactly the

same way. Sometimes people say, well, I don't like to see people to be too successful, and therefore, can you make people feel better by saying and you fail that something any of your company has not worked out, and you just said this is not going to work, and I just write it off, or that ever happened, many many of them, many many of them, and and in our case quite a bit differently than it's an investment. So before I write it off and I move on, I can't write it off. We own the entire entity,

so we can't wash ourselves from a particular company. Look, maybe I'll step back and say very quickly what we're about the reason we use the word pioneering is we leap into things that are not yet known to be viable, and we try to make them real. So this leaping inevitably you leap to places where there's no value. Now, let's suppose, um we're going forward leave vaccines out for

a moment. What are the one or two or three things that you're most interested in trying to do in biotech that's gonna make my life better, other people's life better, anything that makes me live longer, live healthier, avoid cancer, is anything like that. One major theme that we that inspires us and that we're doing a number of things in is broadly what we call preemptive medicine or health security.

And what we mean by that is that we observe that what we call today healthcare is really a euphemism for sick care. And the way you know that is because you gotta get sick to get any of it. But and other than that, there's fitness and living a good life. But in between, we now know scientifically that the beginnings of disease go way before we know we have a disease, and if we could intervene at that time and delay or completely deterred the disease, then we

have a very different healthcare cost challenge. Let alone a lifestyle. Currently there's no way of developing products for that for that field because the FDA doesn't regulate it. They don't they won't let you do it, the insurance won't reimburse it. They need a good disease, let alone a really advanced one to do their thing. We have to change that mindset. So how how can Flagship contribute to this? And we're doing this. We started five different platform companies that attack that.

Whether it's through that better early detection tests, or whether it's creating new types of vaccines that protect even before there's a threat. All of those things are all trying to create an environment where government and other corporations start doing that. Now today, the average person, i'd say life span is maybe in the mid eighties or something like that. Do you think it's possible, through things that you might develop, to live to a hundred or hundred and ten or

twenty or is that a good or bad thing? I think it's possible. I'm not so sure it's a good thing, let alone in a planet that's dying. Uh. And So I think that we have to think of our existence not as individuals anymore than our our Hipathesytes in our liver don't think of whether they're going to live. They think of whether your whole body is going to live.

If we don't start thinking of whether our society is going to live in our planet is going to live, then it's a mood point as to whether we as individuals live to a hundred and ten or a hundred. So I think there's gonna be this reckoning that we've got to create an environment within which it's worth living. Did your parents live this year success? My parents saw a success back in my I lost my parents in

the late nineties early two thousands. They saw a far greater success than they would have ever imagined or wanted. They didn't see the most recent few years, let alone the last of months, but I know that they felt that the decisions they made on behalf of their children, particularly moving us to North America and giving us the kind of opportunity this country gave us as as having been more than validated. So what keeps you motivated? You're

obviously wealthy by any normal human standard. You could retire tomorrow and be famous for what you did with modern among other things. What keeps you motivated to work so hard and keep doing all these things and not spending your money on lavish kind of toys that often preach people like to buy. I really do think that we've seen the beginnings of a startup industry in this country

that has revolutionized the world. I think the next few decades that industry will become professionalized, institution institutionalized, and will do in the creativity world what institutional investors did in the financial world. And I'm drawn to being one of the pioneers of that if I can show one way of doing it organizationally, kind of just methodologically and leads

to companies that do this for a living. That interests me as as a lasting impact, of course, the fact that every single thing we work on has societal impact. You know, people told us, what's your social impact strategy? Everything we work on, either through health or agriculture, has societal impact, and so that keeps me into what draws me and what keeps me instude at two different things.

It's an an incredible story. I always like to see somebody from Baltimore who's made good, and you obviously have. So Thanks very much for being with us today, Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.