Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing has a fresh com­pa­ny out this week, one that aims to lay the ground­work for a whole new dis­ci­pline.

Sen­da Bio­sciences launched Wednes­day with $88 mil­lion in Flag­ship cash. The goal? Gain in­sights in­to the mol­e­c­u­lar con­nec­tions be­tween peo­ple and co­e­volved non­hu­man species like plants and bac­te­ria, paving the way for “In­ter­sys­tems Bi­ol­o­gy.”

Guil­laume Pfe­fer

Guil­laume Pfe­fer has been tapped to run the show, a 25-year biotech vet­er­an who comes from GSK af­ter lead­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s shin­gles vac­cine.

“For Sen­da, we are zoom­ing in­to what’s go­ing on at hu­man lev­els, and we rec­og­nize that these in­ter­ac­tions are the prod­uct of evo­lu­tion since the dawn of time,” Pfe­fer told End­points News. “We know which species are in­volved in our bod­ies and where.”

A cen­ter­piece of Sen­da’s pro­pri­etary tech in­volves ma­chine learn­ing to cre­ate what the com­pa­ny hopes is an en­tire­ly new class of drugs. By fo­cus­ing in part on the bac­te­ria that re­side in hu­mans, Sen­da is look­ing at po­ten­tial­ly de­vel­op­ing large mol­e­cule med­i­cines like pep­tides and nu­cle­ic acids us­ing oral ad­min­is­tra­tion, which the com­pa­ny says is a first.

In­ter­sys­tems Bi­ol­o­gy has been in the works at Flag­ship for some time. The firm says the dis­ci­pline is based on a decade of re­search in oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing mi­cro­bio­me sci­ence and com­pu­ta­tion­al bi­ol­o­gy, and the cel­lu­lar in­ter­ac­tions Sen­da is an­a­lyz­ing can be found in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent places with­in the body.

“Through the ex­plo­rations con­duct­ed by Flag­ship Labs over the last sev­er­al years we have dis­cov­ered that these in­ter­con­nec­tions have pro­found im­pli­ca­tions on hu­man health,” Flag­ship founder Noubar Afe­fan told End­points News in an email.

One prime ex­am­ple is the neu­ro­trans­mit­ter sero­tonin, most of which is not found in the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem but the gut. As much as 90% of sero­tonin is pro­duced in re­sponse to bac­te­ria break­ing down com­pounds with­in the di­ges­tive tract, Sen­da says, and if this reg­u­la­tion falls out of whack, it can lead to health prob­lems with both low and high blood sug­ar.

“With this ap­proach, you re­al­ize that we have a phar­ma­cy with­in us,” Pfe­fer said. “The key point is we have evolved with the bac­te­ria, and now with Sen­da are able to look with high res­o­lu­tion in­to how the species with­in us com­mu­ni­cate and par­tic­i­pate in dis­ease and health.”

David Berry

Sen­da cur­rent­ly has six on­go­ing pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams un­der its belt across mul­ti­ple ar­eas, with INDs ex­pect­ed for each by the end of 2022. In neu­rol­o­gy, Sen­da has can­di­dates in mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. For on­col­o­gy, they’re look­ing at im­muno-on­col­o­gy and col­orec­tal can­cer. And in chron­ic and meta­bol­ic dis­ease, the first tar­gets are chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease and obe­si­ty.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Pfe­fer men­tioned that Sen­da is look­ing at a bac­te­ria that in­ter­feres with L-dopa in the treat­ment of Parkin­son’s and at­tempt­ing to dis­rupt that process, thus mak­ing ther­a­pies more ef­fec­tive.

As Sen­da moves its six pre­clin­i­cal pro­grams for­ward, Pfe­fer’s goal is to con­tin­ue to de­ploy its dis­cov­ery en­gine in­to fur­ther in­di­ca­tions, set­ting up the com­pa­ny for more pro­grams once the proof of mech­a­nism has been es­tab­lished at the end of 2022.

“We are touch­ing on some­thing very fun­da­men­tal here and very pro­found,” Pfe­fer said.

The com­pa­ny was co-found­ed by sev­er­al mem­bers of Flag­ship’s team, in­clud­ing part­ners David Berry and Igna­cio Mar­tinez. Sen­da’s board will be chaired by Flag­ship’s ex­ec­u­tive part­ner John Mendlein.

Steve Holtzman was awoken by a 1 a.m. call from a doctor at Duke University asking if he could put some pigs on a plane and fly them from Ohio to North Carolina that day. A motorcyclist had gotten into a horrific crash, the doctor explained. He believed the pigs’ livers, sutured onto the patient’s skin like an external filter, might be able to tide the young man over until a donor liver became available.