Legal team size:   6 

Major legal advisers/ external counsel:  Goodwin Procter, LLP; McDermott, Will & Emery; Cravath, Swaine, and Moore; Wilmer Hale 

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in? 

We are a private, clinical stage, six-year-old biotechnology company with approximately 325 employees, using innovative technology centered on artificial intelligence and machine learning models to build novel proteins and other large molecule drug therapies across a wide range of therapeutic areas. We are part of the Flagship Pioneering innovation ecosystem, and we have raised approximately $700MM in capital date from key investors like Flagship, Nvidia, Amgen, and other institutional investors, including a $273MM Series C investment round last year (the largest Series C in biotech in 2023). Recently, we have been focused on negotiating collaborations with a variety of partners: working on CAR-T therapies for cancer patients with Roswell Park Cancer Center; working on new cancer treatments with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; working on new targeted drugs with Swiss-based Novartis. We are also focused on protecting our innovative intellectual property, including obtaining multiple patents for our clinical stage drug programs and having one of our AI models, Chroma, published in a seminal scholarly article in Nature. We have been busy securing key MSA contracts with various contract research organisations and contract development and manufacturing organisations in sites around the world. We have been actively building an in-house law department from scratch, establishing our contract management system (over 2500 contracts to date) using AI technology, and assisting our clients explore the exciting possibilities of AI-driven therapeutic engineering. 

Which recent political, economic or regulatory changes have impacted your work the most in the past year? 

There are numerous regulatory activities worldwide focused on the AI/ML space, ranging from White House executive orders and the EU AI Act to AI-related patent and trademark initiatives by the US and EPO, as well as new state and international AI regulations emerging almost weekly. All these developments could impact our business, thus we monitor them closely and participate where appropriate. Additionally, we are closely watching the federal BIOSECURE Act, which aims to restrict interactions with certain Chinese biotech support companies involved in various roles with US drug development companies.

How does your legal team collaborate with other departments within the company? 

As part of a fast-growing private company with ambitious goals to deliver novel therapies to patients affected by a wide range of illnesses, we are actively engaged in at least 17 drug development programs simultaneously, both independently and in collaboration with partners. We are committed to seamless coordination across all teams, including scientific, clinical, financial, IT, HR, corporate affairs, strategy, business development, and other G&A departments. This commitment often involves providing round-the-clock guidance in critical meetings, reviewing materials, and bringing creative, “outside-the-box” thinking to unexplored and unexpected areas.