TrialSpark Rebrands as Formation Bio, Continuing Its Commitment to Advancing Drug Development Innovation

NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- TrialSpark, a tech-driven drug developer with its own portfolio of clinical stage drug assets, is rebranding to Formation Bio. The new name is a reflection of the company's evolution and its progress toward building a pharma company designed to achieve their founding mission: to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.

Ben Liu, Formation Bio's co-founder and CEO shared more about the change, "Our decision to rebrand as Formation Bio is a significant milestone in our journey to redefine the way new treatments are developed and delivered to patients. Over the past few years, we have operated as a clinical stage pharmaceutical company, growing our drug pipeline and advancing our in-house drug development capabilities. Now, our brand reflects that identity. We are seeing a strong appetite among large pharma and biotech companies alike to partner with us to advance promising therapies, especially as they discover more drugs than they have the resources to advance themselves."

Despite sweeping advancements in biotechnology, bringing a new drug to market remains a decade-long, billion-dollar endeavor. While AI is making drug discovery more efficient than ever, the biopharma industry can't develop all the drugs it discovers. Many promising drugs that could help patients don't get developed, as the high costs of clinical trials limit the number of pipeline assets companies can advance.

Formation Bio in-licenses or acquires promising clinical stage drug assets from biotech and pharma companies that can't develop the assets themselves for financial or strategic reasons. The company leverages its proprietary tech-driven development engine to progress its pipeline faster and more efficiently than industry norms, ultimately striving to create value for its partners and increase the throughput for patients. Their model, which brings together technical depth and pharma acumen, is laying the foundation for the pharma company of the future which will be characterized by speed, operational excellence, and first principles thinking.

The new name - Formation Bio - embodies a number of relevant motifs. "We formulate new treatments. We form new types of teams, technology, and operational processes," explained Lily Mintz, Formation Bio's Director of Brand Strategy and Communications. "The name will anchor us as we grow, staying the course through every stage of innovation as we form the pharma company of the future."

TrialSpark was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating this generation's tech-driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient clinical trials. Before acquiring its own pipeline, the company spent its early years focused on sparking innovation within all aspects of clinical trials and drug development, building clinical trial technology tools for drug developers, including software and platforms for digital patient recruitment and site management. With this rebrand, Formation Bio marks the next phase of its journey to create this generation's pharma company, by building upon its early success in acquiring and developing a portfolio of assets across numerous therapeutic areas.

"Our proprietary technology platforms, and our culture of innovation, have enabled us to optimize all aspects of clinical stage drug development, leading to more efficient development strategy design, faster decision making, and expedited clinical program completion," said Formation Bio's Chief Development Officer, Gavin Corcoran, MD. "At several companies in my career, I've seen how an in-licensing first approach can lead to the development of breakthrough medicines for patients, and I'm excited about combining that pipeline strategy with our differentiated tech-driven R&D engine to ultimately shorten the path to drug approvals."

"Change has always taken an eternity in the pharma business, but now with the advent of a new generation of technologies and the grit and tenacity of TrialSpark's team, this will accelerate beneath the umbrella of activities housed within the newly formed, Formation Bio." — Michael Moritz, Formation Bio board member and investor.

For more information about Formation Bio, please visit www.formation.bio.

About Formation Bio

Formation Bio is a tech-driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development. Founded in 2016 as TrialSpark Inc., Formation Bio has built a technology platform that optimizes critical aspects of clinical drug development, enabling more efficient trial design, faster trial completion, and higher quality trial data. The company acquires clinical-stage drugs from pharmaceutical and biotech companies with the goal to develop them faster in order to accelerate access to new treatments for patients, and to unlock greater value per program. By developing their drug assets faster than industry norms, Formation Bio can take more shots on goal, increasing the overall likelihood of success, and ultimately increasing the number of new treatments available to healthcare professionals and their patients. Formation Bio is backed by a range of technology and biosciences investors, including Sam Altman, Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Section 32, John Doerr, Spark Capital, Lachy Groom, and others.

"Formation Bio" and "TrialSpark" are trademarks of TrialSpark Inc..

Contact
For Press inquiries, please contact [email protected].
For Business Development inquiries, please contact [email protected].

SOURCE TrialSpark