Flagship Pioneering Announces Appointment of Tuyen Ong as CEO-Partner

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Oct 14, 2020, 08:00 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Flagship Pioneering, a unique life sciences innovation enterprise, today expanded and strengthened its executive leadership team with the appointment of Tuyen Ong, M.D. as CEO-Partner. Dr. Ong will also serve as Chief Executive Officer at Ring Therapeutics, a Flagship Labs-founded company that promises to revolutionize gene therapy with its commensal virus platform.

Dr. Ong is an accomplished biotechnology and pharmaceutical executive with a wealth of experience in research and development. He most recently served as Senior Vice President, Head of the Ophthalmology Franchise at Biogen.

"We are very excited to add Tuyen to our team of talented and experienced executives at Flagship, and to be able to further expand our group of CEO-Partners, a hybrid role unique to Flagship that assures maximum alignment and value creation for our breakthrough ventures," says Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and founding Chairman of Ring Therapeutics. "Tuyen's extensive track record of building value for pharma and biotech, combined with his expertise in the development of gene therapies, will be tremendously beneficial to Ring and our other nucleic acid platform companies."

In his role as CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering, Dr. Ong joins the Flagship senior leadership team and will provide his knowledge and insights across the Flagship enterprise. He will also serve on the boards of directors of certain Flagship companies. Dr. Ong will also work as part of Flagship's team to plan, drive, and achieve the highest possible value creation for Flagship and its companies.

As CEO of Ring Therapeutics, Dr. Ong will lead the development of the company's groundbreaking nucleic acid therapy platform based on its large portfolio of commensal Anellovirus-based vectors.

"I'm delighted to join Flagship Pioneering's outstanding executive leadership team and look forward to co-creating the next generation of innovative life sciences companies founded by Flagship," says Dr. Ong. "I am also thrilled to be joining Ring Therapeutics' talented team of executives and scientists in its ambitious effort to develop transformational therapies using its multi-product platform by unlocking its unique knowledge of the human commensal virome and revolutionizing the nucleic acid medicine paradigm."

"I look forward to working closely with Tuyen to help realize the full potential of Ring," said Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D., Flagship Pioneering General Partner and Founding CEO of Ring Therapeutics. "Over the last two years, Ring has uncovered the largest collection of commensal, human viruses, and is leveraging these discoveries to develop the first potentially redosable and targetable gene therapy platform. We are very excited by the prospect of creating multiple breakthrough medicines from this platform."

About Tuyen Ong
Tuyen Ong is an experienced biotechnology and pharmaceutical executive with a passion for driving progress in medical sciences and bringing innovation to patients. Dr. Ong has deep expertise in R&D and gene therapy, having led the development of breakthrough treatments for retinopathies and rare diseases.

In his most recent role, Dr. Ong served as Senior Vice President, Head of the Ophthalmology Franchise at Biogen. Prior to the acquisition of Nightstar by Biogen in 2019, he served as Nightstar's Chief Development Officer, where he defined the clinical and regulatory strategy for the company's lead gene therapy programs. During his career, Dr. Ong has also held numerous senior leadership positions at PTC Therapeutics, Bausch and Lomb, and Pfizer, leading clinical development across multiple therapeutic disease areas of high-unmet need.

Dr. Ong holds an M.D. from University College London and an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business. He is a member of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists.

About Ring Therapeutics
Founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2017, Ring is driving a new paradigm in Gene Therapy and Nucleic Acid Medicines by harnessing the human commensal virome. The company has developed a unique combination of expertise across virology, genomic epidemiology, structural and cell biology. In just two years, Ring has already identified thousands of Anelloviruses, and has created Anellovectors – engineered vectors consisting of single-stranded DNA rings that, once administered, will remain as episomes in the nucleus. Ring is now pursuing a clinical development strategy for advancing several applications of Anellovectors to therapeutics programs.

About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has applied a unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $34 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship is backed by more than $4.4 billion of aggregate capital commitments, of which over $1.9 billion has been deployed toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $10 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 41 transformative companies, including Axcella Health (NASDAQ: AXLA), Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Foghorn Therapeutics, Indigo Ag, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Sana Biotechnology, Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), Sigilon Therapeutics, and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS).