Flagship’s ProFound Signs Up To $35 Million Gates Foundation Pact For Preeclampsia Targets

ProFound Therapeutics has added the Gates Foundation to its list of partners in a preeclampsia discovery deal worth up to $35 million, giving the Flagship Pioneering company another external backer for its proteomics-driven search for hard-to-find biology.

Under the agreement, ProFound will receive an initial $20 million, with a further $15 million available if certain experimental milestones are met. The company will use placental tissue to look for biomarkers and drug targets tied to preeclampsia by comparing samples from women with and without the condition.

The strategic appeal for both sides is straightforward: preeclampsia is a serious maternal-fetal health problem with substantial unmet need, yet the biology remains poorly understood. ProFound is trying to turn that knowledge gap into a discovery opportunity by applying a platform built to detect proteins from the “dark proteome” that traditional methods cannot find.

How the collaboration is structured

According to CEO John Lepore, the company plans to use its proteomics data to identify candidate targets in placental tissue, then apply an agentic AI tool to infer what those targets do. Those AI-based predictions would then be tested in laboratory experiments rather than treated as final answers.

That division of labor is the important signal in the deal. The AI component is being used to accelerate functional interpretation and prioritize experiments, not to replace the experimental work needed to validate whether a target is real or therapeutically useful. In a field where pathogenesis is still not well defined, that can matter more than a broad claim about AI itself.

Lepore told Fierce that the collaboration grew out of a conversation with Herbert Virgin about a year ago, when both sides concluded that ProFound’s platform and the foundation’s AI approach fit together well. He said preeclampsia quickly emerged as the focus because of the unmet need and the availability of biological tissue for study.

Why preeclampsia stands out

Preeclampsia is a disease of high blood pressure during pregnancy that can ultimately be fatal for mother or child if not addressed. Lepore said it is a very significant cause of maternal and fetal death, particularly in the developing world, where acute care opportunities are limited.

Virgin, who leads the Gates Foundation’s AI-Enabled Cures Frontier Accelerator, framed the partnership against a broader funding gap. In an Aug. 27 release, he said only about 1% of global healthcare R&D is directed toward female-specific conditions beyond cancer, helping explain why promising treatments can take over a decade to reach patients.

That makes the deal more than a small discovery grant. It is also a targeted capital allocation decision into women’s health, with AI and proteomics positioned as tools to make early target discovery more productive in an underfunded category.

Where it fits for ProFound

Since launching in 2022, ProFound has assembled partners including Novartis, Pfizer and GSK. Lepore said the company still has room for more partners while continuing to develop internal programs, which he described as tightly under wraps.

He also said oncology remains a key internal focus, where ProFound has found novel proteins that he called unique to cancer and targetable. The Gates Foundation agreement shows the platform can be pointed beyond oncology when the biology is poorly mapped and tissue-based discovery may offer a cleaner route to finding tractable targets.