Noubar Afeyan (Western Armenian: ; born in 1962) is an American-Canadian entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist. Perhaps a second question for all of us in and beyond biotech to take into 2022 is: What Now? Speaking with KTLA about the latest developments at Moderna, Afeyan highlighted how his journey as an immigrant has impacted his work. MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) has received a three-year gift from the Afeyan Family Foundation to support student and faculty collaborations between MIT and Armenia. Even though it was the governments policy of carrying this out, the actual officers were revolted by seeing train loads of people being taken to their deaths.. [1][2] He is best known for co-founding the biotechnology company Moderna, through his venture capital firm, Flagship Pioneering, and for co-founding humanitarian projects such as Aurora Prize and The Future Armenian. [1], Afeyan sits on the boards of the MIT Corporation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra,[21][22][15] and the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). Reflects change since 5 pm ET of prior trading day. [20] Afeyan serves on multiple charitable and corporate boards, including those of Codiak Biosciences, Evelo Biosciences, Joule Unlimited and Axcella. The regulatory framework, responsible for assuring safety and efficacy before products come to market. Noubar Afeyan launched 70 companies by pushing researchers to ask what if their craziest ideas were true. on track to return investors money 15-fold. Noubar Afeyan, Moderna's Chairman (worth $1.9 billion) Juan Lopez-Belmonte, Chairman of ROVI, a company with a deal to manufacture and package the Moderna vaccine (worth $1.8 billion) In biotech and VC, people were saying, the era of biotech is over, the era of the platform is over. Noubar Afeyan fully understood those risks when he co-founded Moderna in 2010. [2] In total, he co-founded or helped build over 50 life science and technology startups. In fact, I am among the millions who contracted the Omicron variant going into the holiday season. What Now? . He points to his immigrant background and mentality as the driving forces of his philanthropic, scientific, and business work. They have four children. If you do something in parallel, you are forced to get to the essence of it, he says. [8][9] He became a U.S. citizen in 2008. day. To alert special friends and family please email the link to this article. We also knew from the years of work we had done at Moderna that we could encode the protein sequence of virtually any antigen from programmed mRNA and elicit an immune response against that protein. Indigo Agriculture was founded in 2013 to use microbes to make seeds more productive. Instead of making protein medicines in factories very far away, what we are trying to do is to inject you with messenger RNA so that your own body will make the protein, said Stphane Bancel in a 2015 interview with CNBC. In March 2010[8] and in March 2011,[9] Joule was named by Technology Review as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, and of Armenian heritage, Dr. Afeyan and his family fled the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and settled in Montreal as political refugees. In 2000, Afeyan founded Flagship Pioneering to create and fund early-stage start-ups addressing unmet needs in healthcare and sustainability. Ill leave you with a few ideas. After. Moderna chairman Noubar Afeyan, whose estimated net worth is $3.7 billion, is . [1] The underlying cause of most autoimmune diseases is related to T-cell misbehavior, Cox explains. . As the firms researchers explore ideas, theyll change their approachor even what theyre working onwith little regard for how the outside world might view such seeming flip-flops. [15], Since 2000, Afeyan has been teaching courses on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Sloan School of Management. While scientists had talked about the microbiome for years, when Afeyan first broached the idea in 2008 of exploring its role in disease, including autoimmune diseases and cancer, it was pretty far out on the fringe. After attending college, Afeyan came to the United States and earned a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). If you're an immigrant, then you're used to being out of your comfort zone. Noubars genius was not trying to force the issue in my brain, but to make me think that it could change the world and that it was worth the risk, he says. The list of its authors can be seen in its historicaland/or the page Edithistory:Noubar Afeyan. One aspect of this powerful convergence that particularly excites me is the ability to harness machine learning to computationally generate new scientific hypotheses that can then be explored and tested. Each began life as little more than an idea in a lab. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. [12][13], Afeyan has authored numerous scientific papers. ( 25, 1962 [1], , ), , Flagship Ventures [2] . That mindset of parallel entrepreneurship to me was a provocation., In 1989, Afeyan founded PerSeptive Biosystems, a Framingham, Mass.-based maker of instrumentation used by biotech companies. In 2000, Afeyan founded Flagship Pioneering to create and fund early-stage start-ups addressing unmet needs in healthcare and sustainability. Just four or five years ago, a typical Series B raised $50 million. He is also co-founder and Board Chairman of Moderna. Moderna Inc. was founded over four decades later, in 2010 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ( here), by Derrick Rossi, Robert Langer, Kenneth R Chien, and venture capitalist Noubar Afeyan ( here, here . Far superior ways to engage, involve and empower citizens to improve their own health will be central to a preemptive medicine paradigm precisely because the absence of symptoms means that participation is a choice, rather than a compulsion to alleviate pain or discomfort. your family name and home country credentials don't mean much when . As my colleagues Stephen Berenson and Andy Oh explain: Bioplatforms have several advantages. This page was last edited on 10 August 2020, at 04:14. It is also building out a new division focused on preemptive medicine, a more personalized, predictive type of preventive health care, as well as health security to better prepare for future threats from infectious diseases. Stphane Bancel, the current CEO, was appointed as CEO in 2011. So far, side effects are mild, flu-like symptoms. Noubar is a member of the Corporation of MIT (the Institute's Linkedin Noubar Afeyan is founder, Senior Managing Partner and CEO of Flagship Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm. Dr. Noubar Afeyan is founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a company that conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life science platform companies to transform human health and sustainability. They said, How can anyone give you money? The vaccine was developed two days after [publication of the coronaviruss genomic] sequence. [29], With Vardanyan and Vartan Gregorian, Afeyan co-founded the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in 2015. As of November 2021, his net worth is estimated at $3.3 billion. [7][1][3] He was the first PhD graduate from MITs Center for Bioprocess Engineering, at the time the only institution with that degree program. He starts with those what-if questions. If you play parallel chess, you have got to get to the essence. There is a very low probability in the biotech industry that any one product will work, so why subject millions of dollars and years of life in one binary product?, he says. Unfortunately, we are not yet in the pandemics wake: We remain in its grasp. Flagship is a venture capital firm with a total of $17 billion in assets that operates more like an incubator. Today, the company has approximately 820 full-time employees and a market capitalization of about $28 billion. Afeyan views immigrants and entrepreneurs as natural complements. Afeyan says his goal is simply to help people, and he credited his drive and passion for philanthropy to his immigrant mentality. As the ballast for all else we might seek to accomplish, we can dream big, and leap boldly and imagine without the constraints of reason. Turning biological problems into digital problems holds tremendous promise, as Flagship companies Valo, Repertoire and others powerfully demonstrate. Since Flagships launch, Afeyan has helped start some 70 companies. He's also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, known for its Covid-19. He earned a master of engineering degree from cole Centrale Paris (ECP), and came to the United States as an international student, receiving a master of science in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. [26], In 2008 Afeyan, Vardanyan and others co-founded the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia, a private-public partnership dedicated to promoting economic development in the country. The genetic code of the virus is taken and administered into the body. The National Read Across America Day takes place every year on March 2, Geisels birthday. His family moved to Montreal, Canada in 1976. In 2016, Stphane Bancel said, Advancing to the clinic certainly was the most gratifying milestone. Noubar Afeyan, Founder and CEO, Flagship Pioneering speaks with Bloomberg's Shery Ahn at the Qatar Economic Forum, powered by Bloomberg. He calls his model parallel entrepreneurship, meaning he wants to found multiple companies at a time, not just one or two, but six or eight. Starting one successful company is a fine achievement. With the new capital, Flagship is ramping up its investments in therapeutics, agriculture and nutrition. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one. The answer, to me, is the big scientific breakthroughs that come from bold scientific leaps. But Afeyan wondered if he could create a structure to start multiple companies at one time, always having multiple early-stage ideas and potential startups percolating in the labs. On the one hand, 2021 was an extraordinary year for life science investment, with several chart-topping raises by early-stage companies. Whats outside that is where people think it is reckless to work, he says. Why wouldnt you think you can actually change the world in the particular area you are working on?. (Read full essay here). Many people believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovations is. The virus continues to evolve the mutations from the Wuhan strain have now taken us more than halfway through the Greek alphabet with Omicrons relentless wave of transmission delivering a powerful reminder of the need to improve detection, response, and variant-proof protection. Part of it is an innate comfort with discomfort and with not thinking that everything has to be just so.. Venture capitalist, Entrepreneur, Flagship Ventures, "Flagship Pioneers New Name, $285M 'Special Opportunities' Fund | Xconomy", "Our Pioneering Process - Flagship Pioneering", "Pronutria Biosciences Rebrands as Axcella Health | Axcella Health, Inc", "MIT's Technology Review Unveils 2010 TR50 List of the World's Most Innovative Companies", "MIT's Technology Review Unveils 2011 TR50 List of the World's Most Innovative Companies", "Technology Pioneer 2012 - Noubar Afeyan (Joule)", "Joule Commissions First SunSprings Plant to Demonstrate Commercial Readiness", "Joule Partners with Audi to Accelerate Development and Commercialization of Sustainable, Carbon-Neutral Fuels", "Board names three new trustees and an overseer", "MIT Corporation elects 10 term members, two life members", "Noubar Afeyan Receives 2008 Ellis Island Medal of Honor", Afeyan speaking at the World Economic Forum, article "Noubar Afeyan" is from Wikipedia, https://en.everybodywiki.com/index.php?title=Noubar_Afeyan&oldid=939478. The waxing and waning of infections, hospitalizations, and mounting deaths leaves us grieving, whiplashed, and exhausted: none more so than health care workers and other first responders on the front lines. The prospect that I wouldve been throwing away a brand-new Ph.D. going into an area that wouldve failedthat thought never occurred to me.. [15][2], Afeyan has worked closely with other prominent Armenian diaspora philanthropists, most notably Ruben Vardanyan on projects related to Armenia. Noubar Afeyan, an Armenian immigrant from Lebanon and grandson of a genocide survivor, is leading some of the breakthrough U.S. COVID-19 vaccine efforts as co-founder and chairman of Moderna Inc. Moderna was the first to invent the field of mRNA for therapeutics, even before the pandemic hit. As I write this, the world has just entered its third year in which the primary topic governing the news, and arguably governing our lives, is the presence and persistence of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The building blocks of these biological modalities can be arranged rationally to achieve the desired effects in the human body. life sciences innovation firm Flagship Pioneering. Its a technology that could potentially give us a vaccine within a year from now., The new approach Im most excited about is known as an RNA vaccine, wrote Bill Gates in theWashington Post. Even after its recent pullback, Moderna stock is up eight-fold since March 2020. [18], Afeyan is Chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies[19] of the World Economic Forum. Thats where we stand, were very excited.. Will Feuer. June 21st, 2021, 12:21 PM PDT. If I had thought about it a lot, I am very sure I would not have started a company. Born in Lebanon, Afeyans family left in 1975 during the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Canada, where he grew up. However, the rise of communism prompted the family to leave. 2 arrested for over $460,000 in stolen merch in O.C. File: Noubar Afeyan at Global Innovation Forum 2022, Yerevan, Armenia by Xelgen.jpg From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository Jump to navigation Jump to search And so within days, we had designed a new vaccine and started testing it, Afeyan said, adding that its rapid but accurate. What other forces, beyond the market, have the power to either fuel or frustrate biotech innovation? By 2020, Flagship had more than doubled the pace to average of five startups a year. Similarly, we have now directly experienced the devastating collision of the fast pandemic of COVID-19 with the slow pandemics of chronic disease. For its rankings, Forbes estimated the fortune of Afeyan, the Moderna chairman, to be nearly $5 billion. 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