Flagship Pioneering Merges Laronde and Senda Biosciences to Launch Sail Biomedicines, Aiming to Forge 'Moderna 2.0'

On October 19, 2023 (U.S. local time), renowned biopharmaceutical media outlet BioPharma Dive reported that startups Laronde and Senda Biosciences are merging to form a new biotechnology company named Sail Biomedicines. Sail Biomedicines will combine Laronde’s expertise in the field of eRNA with Senda’s research on programmable nanoparticles and artificial intelligence tools to develop novel therapeutics.

Industry insiders are likely familiar with these two companies, as both are star enterprises incubated by the renowned venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering. Laronde, which focuses on the field of circular RNA, launched with the strong backing of Flagship and expertise in RNA technologies, earning it the moniker “Moderna 2.0.” Senda Biosciences is the first company to conduct integrated research on inter-system biology, holding promise for delivering novel solutions in areas such as new drug development and drug delivery.

As one of the companies featured in this disclosure, Laronde was the subject of an investigative report published by STAT and The Boston Globe this June, which highlighted issues with key preclinical data from its flagship program. In the wake of the significant turmoil initially caused, how will Laronde chart a new course for development?

Taking the media’s formal review and exposure of preclinical data issues at Laronde as a focal point, we trace back the company’s development history.

In 2017, Laronde was co-founded by Dr. Avak Kahvejian and Dr. Noubar Afeyan, established by Flagship Labs, the innovation foundry under Flagship Pioneering.

Dr. Avak Kahvejian, the founder, previously led the Flagship Labs team in developing eRNA technology, which was operated internally at Flagship Labs as its 50th life sciences platform development project. Prior to joining Flagship, he developed and commercialized the world’s first single-molecule DNA sequencer at the genomic analysis company Helicos BioSciences. In 2011, Dr. Kahvejian joined Flagship Pioneering as a partner, where he subsequently guided Seres Therapeutics and Rubius Therapeutics through their NASDAQ listings, and spearheaded the incubation and creation of Codiak BioSciences, Cygnal Therapeutics, Ring Therapeutics, Cellarity, Laronde, and Generate Biomedicines.

As one of Flagship Pioneering’s incubated ventures, Laronde counts among its co-founders Dr. Noubar Afeyan, who also founded Flagship Pioneering in 2000. Throughout his career, Dr. Afeyan has helped establish more than 50 life sciences companies and fostered the growth of over 100 science-driven enterprises. He holds thousands of patents and patent applications, has more than 50 drugs in clinical development, and has received numerous honors too extensive to list here.

Backed by its halo effect and innovative technologies, Laronde completed two rounds of financing in 2021, raising $50 million and $440 million, respectively. Investors included several prominent institutions such as Flagship Pioneering, T. Rowe Price, Invus, Fidelity Investments, CPP Investments Board, Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds, and BlackRock.

However, in February 2022, Diego Miralles, then CEO of Laronde, convened employees to deliver some unsettling news:Issues have been identified in some of Laronde’s key preclinical data. Consequently, the company’s two most advanced programs, including the GLP-1 therapy that underpinned its successful $440 million fundraising, have been put on hold.

From May to September 2022, Laronde experienced turmoil in its senior management, with dozens of employees departing, including preclinical research scientist Catherine Cifuentes-Rojas, CEO Miralles, and CTO Vadim Dudkin, among several other executives then serving at the company.

Last fall, Laronde appointed industry veteran Pablo Cagnoni as its new Chief Executive Officer. According to two individuals familiar with the matter, the company also began negotiations with Pfizer on a potential partnership for vaccine development. However, Laronde’s data performance has been mediocre, failing to demonstrate significant advantages of its eRNA platform over other types of vaccines, causing the negotiations to stall.

The luster of this star company, which focuses on the field of circular RNA, seems to be gradually fading.

It was not until October 19 this year that the turmoil at Laronde seemed to take a turn for the better.

BioPharma Dive reports that the newly merged Sail has ended Laronde’s difficult period.

John Mendlein, a former Moderna executive who will serve as Executive Chairman of Sail, stated, “Laronde indeed faced numerous challenges in the recent past. However, these challenges have long been resolved, and building on its robust scientific foundation, we have ushered in a new chapter for Laronde.”

In fact, the merger between Laronde and Senda Biosciences was initiated as early as three years ago,and thus secured $266 million in private financing.

Upon completion of the merger, Sail will possess both Laronde’s modular Endless RNA™ (eRNA™) technology platform and Senda Biosciences’ inter-system biology discovery platform.

Laronde’s eRNA technology platform is already well known. eRNA™ is specifically designed to translate programmed genetic codes and guide protein expression, leveraging modular coding regions of eRNA to achieve diverse functions, while utilizing non-coding regions to control expression stability, targeting, and other properties. The “protein-coding cassette” of eRNA™ can instruct the body to synthesize a wide variety of proteins, including peptides, enzymes, antibodies, receptor channels, and more. This encoding potential is virtually limitless, supporting the endogenous expression of any disease-curative protein within patients, which will replace or enhance nearly all current therapeutic modalities.

This entirely new class of programmable drugs theoretically enables Laronde to develop best-in-class therapeutics across any therapeutic area. Laronde has also publicly articulated its ambitious goal: to create 100 new drugs by 2031.

Senda Biosciences’ inter-system biological discovery platform is an exploratory framework built on new technologies in machine learning and computational biology. By extensively sampling human tissue cells, it clearly maps the trillions of inter-molecular connections within the human body, thereby providing more solutions for novel drug development and drug delivery.

Particularly, drug delivery remains one of the major challenges facing the development and industrialization of RNA-based therapeutics and vaccines.

Senda’s platform can identify, quantify, and localize molecular conjugations. Leveraging the powerful recognition capabilities of its platform, Senda will be able to deliver large biomolecules—such as nucleic acids, proteins, and peptides—to targeted areas within the body in the future, enabling precise drug delivery. This capability holds significant promise for advancing infectious disease vaccines, cancer vaccines, RNA therapeutics, and oral biologics.

Through this merger, Senda Biosciences will also empower Laronde to develop drugs rapidly and effectively.

As the excessive hype in the field subsides, the next Moderna may not emerge quickly, but we believe it undoubtedly lies in the future.