Flagship-backed start-up aims to make oral biologics

Flagship Pioneering, the venture firm behind Moderna and a slew of other biotech start-ups, is making a foray into synthetic biology. The new firm's name, Abiologics, is a play on "not biologics"—or, more accurately, "not biologics, exactly," as cofounder and CEO Avak Kahvejian describes the company's drug candidates. "Protein-based drugs are exceptionally valuable . . . but we also know that they have certain drawbacks," Kahvejian says. "They're not orally bioavailable. They have to be injected or infused. They may be immunogenic if you use them at too high a concentration or too frequently. They don't get in certain nooks and crannies in the body." Some of those limitations have been overcome with the use of nonstandard amino acids, such as those that are chemically modified after they've been incorporated into a protein. Kahvejian and his team have developed generative artificial intelligence software that designs proteins using D-amino acids, which