Prologue Medicines, a Flagship Pioneering company focused on creating new medicines by unlocking the therapeutic potential of viral proteins, today announced it has been selected as an initial awardee under Flagship Pioneering's first-of-its-kind ONTARGET contract with the Department of War.

The US Government funding will support the use of the DELVE™ platform, which applies advanced AI approaches to mine millions of viral proteins and identify evolutionarily optimized functions that can regulate and enhance human immune responses. This project seeks to leverage DELVE to strengthen immune resilience and enable rapid, adaptable countermeasures that can be deployed across a broad range of emerging and engineered threats.  

"Viruses have spent millions of years evolving proteins that modulate the immune system with remarkable precision. DELVE lets us read that evolutionary record and put it to work for human health," said Lovisa Afzelius, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Prologue Medicines. "This collaboration with the Department of War allows us to apply that capability at the scale and speed biothreat preparedness demands, translating nature's own solutions into new options for protecting service members and civilians alike."

The award, up to $47 million to Flagship Pioneering, will be executed over five years. Prologue has been selected as one of two initial awardees.

The selection highlights DELVE's potential to accelerate the development of novel countermeasures, reduce response timelines, and strengthen biological threat readiness against evolving and engineered threats. Read the full press release from Flagship Pioneering here.