Louisa Helms

Louisa Helms joined Flagship Pioneering in 2022, where she conceives, originates, and builds first-in-class biological platform companies. She is deeply engaged across all dimensions of company creation – spanning scientific vision, organizational design, corporate strategy, and intellectual property development. Since joining Flagship, Louisa has co-founded Serif Biomedicines and continues to advance a pipeline of new ventures aimed at transforming human health.

Prior to Flagship, Louisa served as a Competitive Analyst at TwinStrand Biosciences, where she led competitive intelligence strategy across the next-generation sequencing landscape, and as a Senior Venture Analyst at the Washington Research Foundation, conducting scientific and financial due diligence on life science investments throughout Washington State.

Louisa earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington's Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease (M3D) program, training in Beno Freedman's laboratory. Her doctoral research centered on stem cell-derived kidney organoids as platforms for drug development in polycystic kidney disease (PKD), gene therapy for cystinosis, and modeling SARS-CoV-2 renal tropism, with work published in Science Translational Medicine, Nature Communications, and JCI Insight. Her research was recognized by an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral NRSA Fellowship and a WE-REACH Investment Award for therapeutic development in PKD organoids. Prior to graduate school, she conducted research on HIV-1 virus-host interactions in Michael Emerman's laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Louisa holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease from the University of Washington and a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University.