Moderna Co-Founder Dr Noubar Afeyan Talks Raising $3.6 Billion For Ventures In Health, Sustainability And AI

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是的。

Yes.

其他新闻机构也有类似的产品，但它们通常只是反复播放当天的广播新闻。

There are other products like this from a variety of news organizations, but they usually rerun their radio newscasts throughout the day.

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如今，生物科技公司 Flagship Pioneering 已为健康、可持续发展和人工智能领域的项目筹集了36亿美元。

Now biotech company Flagship Pioneering has raised $3,600,000,000 for ventures in health, sustainability, and AI.

这家公司管理的资产高达140亿美元，是全球顶尖的生物科技投资机构之一。

With $14,000,000,000 of assets under management, it ranks amongst the top biotech investors globally.

目前，该公司已孵化并投资了数十家企业，包括莫德纳。

Now the firm has launched and invested in dozens of companies including Moderna.

很高兴像往常一样邀请到诺巴·阿菲扬，他是Flagship的首席执行官兼创始人，同时也是Moderna的联合创始人。

Well, I'm delighted to be joined as always by Noubar Afeyan, the Flagship Chief Executive and Founder who's also, of course, Co Founder of Moderna.

诺巴，非常感谢你今天抽出时间来参加。

Noubar, thank you so much for joining us today.

恭喜你们完成了这笔巨额融资！

Congratulations on this big round of fundraising.

作为一家主流的生物技术风投，你觉得AI在药物研发和整个医疗健康领域会带来怎样的改变？你希望在这其中扮演什么角色？

As a mainstream biotech VC, how do you see AI actually impacting drug discovery but also development in healthcare in general of which you want to be part of?

弗朗辛，首先谢谢你今天早上邀请我。

Well Francine, first thanks for having me this morning.

这确实是个重要的里程碑，因为我们这种模式是不断孵化新公司、帮它们成长，每一次结束其实都是新的开始。

It is indeed an important milestone because in our type of business where we're creating new companies and helping them grow, kind of every ending is a beginning.

所以这次融资标志着新一轮创新的开启，有望为医疗和可持续发展带来深远影响。

So this is a beginning of a new wave of innovation and potential to impact health care and sustainability.

事实上，过去25年Flagship一直在运作，我们从未见过像AI这样能如此有效降低药物研发不确定性技术。

And in fact, we are living in a time where, you know, over the past twenty five years the flagships operated, we've never seen a technology such as AI that is so suitable for kind of reducing the uncertainty involved in drug discovery and drug development.

我们面对的是复杂的生物系统。

Here we're dealing with complex biological systems.

过去，我们根本搞不清楚疾病到底哪里出了问题，机制是什么，又该怎么精准干预来帮助病人康复或改善状态。

Historically, we've not really understood the details and the mechanisms of what actually goes wrong in disease and how we can actually make some specific changes to be able to help heal or improve the state of a patient.

现在我们开始能测量、处理数据，建立模型来指导我们前进。

And we're beginning to measure, handle the data, and create models that will help guide us.

我们看到，药物早期候选分子的筛选速度在加快，而且还能帮我们更准地锁定临床试验的目标患者。

And we're seeing acceleration in the time it takes to come up with early candidates as drugs and then very much so helping us identify the patients to be able to target in trials.

不管你看哪里，这项技术都有用武之地，而且我觉得它才刚起步。

So this everywhere you look, this technology has applications and and we think it's very early in its development.

所以，Noubar，你觉得在药物研发里，最可能被颠覆的是什么？

So, Noubar, what do think will be, you know, disrupted the most in this drug discovery?

有没有哪种医疗资产会比其他更快地受益？

Is it, you know, I guess, an asset of medicine that can benefit more quickly than others?

我觉得，如果你看药物通常是怎么起作用的，它们的目标都是精准、安全地改变某个细胞或特定靶蛋白的状态。

I look, I think that if you look at what medicines generally do, they're intended to very precisely and safely alter the state of a particular cell or a particular target protein.

要做到这一点，你得对这个系统有足够的了解才行。

And to do that, you need to be able to know enough about the system to be able to do that.

过去我们主要靠大量试错和实验，成功率低得可怜。

And historically, we've relied heavily on lots of trial and error, lots of experimentation, very low probabilities of success.

但这个行业居然就在这样的条件下闯出了名堂。

And this industry has succeeded despite those odds.

现在，这些成功的概率正在稳步提升。

Those odds are increasing steadily.

比如你看莫德纳，我们十多年前开发的mRNA技术，如今已经应用到了五十多个临床项目中。

If you look, for example, at Moderna, that technology, the mRNA technology that we developed now over a decade ago, now it's it's being applied to over 50 different clinical programs.

为什么能这样？

Why?

因为我们现在能像编程一样，精准地递送针对特定目标的药物。

Because we're able to program programmably deliver a medicine for a particular purpose.

以前，制药行业根本做不到这一点。

Historically, we've not been able to do that in the pharmaceutical industry.

我们觉得，这种模式不会只停留在单一案例上，而会扩展到无数种不同的方法，带来的好处是研发周期更短、成功率更高、成本更低——不仅在早期研发阶段，在临床试验阶段也会有明显改善。

We think that's going to spread beyond just one instance to many, many different approaches, and and the benefit will be shorter times, higher predictability, reduction in cost of development, we expect, but also in the clinical development stage where you're actually testing this.

如果你在成千上万人里做测试，那跟你能精准锁定真正可能受益的人群，从而开发出更精准的药物，完全是两码事。

If you have some testings in thousands of people, it's a very different activity than if you can identify those who are likely gonna benefit so you can actually make a more precise medicine.

所以，努巴尔，你为这些新项目筹了36亿美元。

So, Noubar, you've raised $3,600,000,000 for these new ventures.

当然，你不仅投资生物技术初创公司，还会自己孵化点子，从零开始打造项目。

Of course, what you do is bankroll some of the biotech startups, but you also generate in house ideas and build them from the ground up.

那你打算怎么花这36亿美元呢？

Do you know how you'll deploy those 3,600,000,000?

这已经是三年内我们第二次筹集差不多这么大一笔钱了。

Well, this is this is the second time in about three years that we've raised roughly a similar sum of money.

虽然底层技术一直在变，但总的来说，我们——弗朗辛，我是弗朗辛——三年内通过实验室大概会创立25家公司。

Of course, the underlying technologies shift, but generally, we, Francine, are Francine, are creating about 25 companies in the span of three years through our labs.

这背后是我们尝试了大约一百种不同的科研路径才换来的。

That's after roughly about a 100 attempts that we do around different approaches to science.

这些资金大概四分之三会投向广泛的治疗领域，剩下四分之一用于可持续发展。

And these will be roughly three quarters in the broad therapeutic arena, and about a quarter is sustainability.

包括农业、碳捕获、再生农业，还有那些把生命科学用在地球本身上的领域——不只是关注人类健康。

That includes agriculture, carbon capture, food regenerative agriculture, and areas that use life science in the planet itself, not just human health.

在人类健康方面，越来越多的疾病正在变得更容易被更有效的疗法攻克。

Within human health, there's a number of diseases which are more and more lending themselves to more effective therapeutics.

比如疫苗，我们已经看到了显著进展。

We've seen about vaccines.

癌症领域也出现了重大突破。

We're seeing in cancer some major breakthroughs.

还有神经退行性疾病。

Also, neurodegenerative diseases.

肥胖症现在也打开了新局面。

Obesity has opened up.

要是三年前聊这个，根本不会是重点方向。

If we were talking three years ago, it would not be a big area of focus.

现在我们和其他机构已经推出了几十种不同的方法来攻克这些问题。

Now we and others have dozens of approaches going after that.

所以，我们会优先选择那些看起来最有希望产生重大影响的领域。

So, you know, we'll go where it looks like there are more clear opportunities to have impact.

当然，我们也会考虑药物的成本效益，不只是盯着那些小众市场能卖多少药。

And and, of course, we keep in mind the cost effectiveness of the drugs that we can develop through the innovations, not just the fact that we can find small niche markets to be able to fulfill.

这就是生物科技行业当前所处的态势，我们很幸运，拥有足够的资源、人才、科研实力和资金，能持续推动这项工作。

So this is the dynamic that the biotechnology industry finds itself in, and and and we feel privileged to be able to have the resources, the human capital, scientific capital, and financial capital to be able to continue our work.

但Noubar，这主要是为了开发单个药物，还是像你在Moderna做mRNA新冠疫苗那样，想彻底改变整个行业的一部分？

But, Noubar, is this mainly also to develop individual drugs, or is it, you know, to revolutionize a part of the industry like you did with the mRNA COVID vaccine at Moderna?

这是个非常好的问题。

Well, that's an excellent question.

我们传统上打造的都是所谓的平台型公司。

So we create traditionally what we call platform companies.

这些平台都基于重大突破，能支撑一个公司开发出多种药物。

These all involve major advances that could lead to many drugs per company.

为了推动这些药物研发，我们会跟很多大型制药公司建立合作。

To be able to advance those drugs, we forge partnerships with many, many large pharmaceutical companies.

所以我们这种公司创建模式，核心就是打造能产出多个产品的平台。

So our style of company creation is very much about platforms that lead to many products.

我们自己也有能力在内部研发产品，尤其是在Flagship，这种能力越来越强了。

We have the ability to develop products in house ourselves and increasingly at Flagship.

我们还专门有个团队叫‘Pioneering Medicines’，就在做这件事。

We have a team called Pioneering Medicines doing that as well.

所以最终会是平衡状态：既有平台带动旗下公司出产品，也会有选择地推进几个独立项目。

So it'll be a balance between platforms that lead to products in our companies, but also selectively a few products that will develop as well.

就是两种方式结合吧。

It'll be a mix.

那你们这笔资金主要投在哪些地区？

And and where are you deploying regionally that capital?

你知道吗，IRA法案对你们在美国的投资决策到底有多大影响？

Is you know, how is the IRA actually impacting your investment decision in The US?

现在我们得仔细看看《通胀削减法案》是怎么实际影响我们的。

Look at this point we look carefully at the IRA and how it manifests.

当然，我们一开始会优先考虑更成熟的药物，但它确实影响了我们对疾病领域以及小分子和大分子药物研发策略的思考，创新时得特别留心。

Of course going after more mature drugs in the first instance but it does affect how we think about disease areas and approaches small molecules versus large ones that we need to be thoughtful of as we innovate.

从地理位置上说，我们的核心运营都在剑桥、波士顿，马萨诸塞州。

But, in terms of geography, our the essence of our operations are in Cambridge, Boston, Massachusetts.

但过去几年，我们开始在伦敦和新加坡设立了分支机构，专门服务亚太地区。

But over the last few years, we've begun to set up satellite operations, one in London, one in Singapore to serve the APAC region.

在那里，我们想搭建桥梁，把我们实验室孵化出来的约48家公司，跟当地的创新生态连接起来，推动科学合作、临床试验，还有生产制造和金融方面的伙伴关系。

And there, what we're trying to do is to create linkages between our ecosystem of roughly 48 distinct companies that have come out of our labs and those regional ecosystems trying to forge alliances in science, in clinical trials, in partnerships with manufacturing, financial partnerships.

所以我们正在把自家孵化的初创公司网络，跟这些关键市场的全球生态打通，让技术也能在那里生根发芽。

So we're beginning to create linkages between our proprietary ecosystem of startups with a global presence in these key markets whereby technologies also flourish.

我的意思是，你们有什么具体案例吗？

I mean, do do you have something?

我知道你们对用的那些技术、可能出来的药物特别在行。

Because I know you're you're very knowledgeable in some of the technologies that you're using, some of, you know, the medicine that could come up.

你觉得有什么东西马上就要取得重大突破了吗？

Is there something that you think could be on the cusp of of really being a breakthrough?

这么说吧。

Look.

我先提两个，当然我们还有很多别的。

There's two things that I'll just mention, but of course, we have a lot.

我一提这些，别的就显得不那么重要了，其实都不是。

So anytime I mention too, all the rest kind of feel like they're and that that not not as important.

但确实都很重要。

And in fact, they are.

简单说一下，我提两家公司。

But just very briefly to mention, there's two companies I mentioned.

一家叫Generate Biomedicines，他们真正实现了用计算方式设计抗体和单克隆抗体。

One called Generate Biomedicines that's truly cracked the ability to be able to computationally generate antibodies, monoclonal antibodies.

过去几十年生物技术的主力药物就是这些，现在我们能用计算手段快速精准地针对任何靶点生成它们。

These are the mainstay drugs over the last few decades of biotechnology, but we can computationally now generate them to go after any target very, very specifically and very quickly.

这意味着我们现在有几十个项目正在加速推进。

That means that we have dozens and dozens of programs now accelerating.

这背后用的是生成式AI。

This is using generative AI.

这个项目已经搞了六年，规模不小，目前有大约十几个项目在向前走。

It's a six year old effort, quite large, about a dozen programs advancing.

这是一种突破性的方法，会彻底改变蛋白质的研发方式。

So that's one breakthrough approach that will that will be a systemic change in the way proteins are developed.

另一个是基因书写技术，我们公司Test Run Therapeutics率先开发的。

The other is a technology called gene writing that our company, Test Run Therapeutics, has pioneered.

这不是简单地编辑基因、做点微调，而是直接插入正确的基因，能一次性解决某种罕见病或癌症的所有变异类型，效果非常显著。

And here, instead of editing and making very tiny changes to a genome, we're able to insert the correct gene that can take care of any and all variants of a particular rare disease or in cancer have some very meaningful, interventions.

所以我们现在重点关注基因书写技术。

So we're we're looking at gene writing.

我们正在关注这些方向。

We're looking at these things.

这两个平台都已经有四五年甚至六年了，投入了数亿美元来打下科学基础，现在终于开始看到成果了。

And these are both platforms that are four, five, six years old with hundreds of millions that have gone into establishing the science and now really beginning to see the fruits.

是的。

Yeah.

诺巴，你怎么看中国和《生物安全法案》？

Noubar, what do you make of China and the BioSecures Act?

比如，你会考虑投资中国生物科技公司吗？

Would you, for example, consider investing in Chinese biotechs?

弗朗辛，我们主要聚焦在自家的科研上，所以并不直接投资其他机构的科研成果，而是资助我们自己创立的公司。

Well, Francine, we because our focus is so much on our own internal science, we're not investing per se in science that's generated elsewhere, but we're rather financing the companies that we create.

不过这些公司过去偶尔也会和中国企业有合作，比如做合同研发、生产制造，甚至有些还探索过商业合作。

But those companies in turn have historically had occasionally ties with Chinese companies, whether it was to do contract research, to do manufacturing, even in some cases, explored commercial relationships.

但最近的环境变化，已经影响到了这些合作。

And those have been affected by the recent climate that's been created.

所以我们和其他人一样，正在仔细评估：在哪些方面会遇到阻力，又有哪些合作必须继续维持，毕竟健康问题是全球性的挑战。

And so we, like others, are carefully assessing where we might find headwinds when it comes to those types of partnerships and where we must continue to be involved because health is a global challenge.

这可不是地区性的问题。

It's not a regional challenge.

如果我们的技术能解决中国面临的健康挑战，我们就得想办法真正走进去发挥作用。

And if our technologies can address health challenges in China, we need to find ways by which we can actually apply ourselves there.

不过我们是通过合作来做的，有时候是跟区域性的伙伴合作。

But we're doing so through partnerships, sometimes through regional partnerships.

比如在新加坡，我们就有一些对话，这些互动说不定能帮我们更好地在中国开展合作。

For example, in Singapore, we have some discussions which may in turn make us a better partners to be present in China.

这些都是一些细节上的调整，但我们和其他人都在关注，心里有数。

These are the things that are more refinements, but we and others are looking at this and saying, okay.

这事儿将来会往哪儿走？

Where is this going?

我们怎么才能继续把我们的科研用到那些关键问题上去？

And how can we continue to bring our science to bear on important problems there?

诺巴·阿菲扬，Moderna的联合创始人，也是Flagship Pioneering的首席执行官，刚为新创企业筹集了36亿美元。

Noubar Afeyan, the cofounder of Moderna and, of course, chief executive of Flagship Pioneering Pioneering after, fundraising some 3,600,000,000 for new ventures.

我是弗朗辛·拉库阿，得过奖的记者，最近推出了一个新播客，叫《弗朗辛·拉库阿的领袖对话》，由彭博播客出品。

I'm Francine Lacqua, an award winning journalist, and I've got a new podcast, Leaders with Francine Lacqua from Bloomberg Podcasts.

我采访过从国家元首到时尚偶像的各种人，聊当下最热门的新闻，但我一直很好奇，这些人在领导岗位上到底是怎么想的。

I've interviewed everyone from heads of state to fashion icons about the news of the moment, but I've always been curious who are these people as leaders.

我觉得当领导没有唯一正确的做法。

I don't think there's one right way to be a leader.

该做决定就做决定。

Make decisions.

哪怕是个糟糕的决定，也比不作决定强。

A poor decision is always better than no decision.

每两周的星期一，记得收听新一期节目。

Listen to new episodes every other Monday.

在你常用的播客平台搜索并关注《弗朗辛·拉库阿的领袖对话》。

Follow leaders with Francine Lacqua wherever you get your podcasts.