After two years of developing its platform, Vesalius Therapeutics Inc. now has $75 million in its pocket from Flagship Pioneering to understand and treat the diseases that account for 90% of the world’s illnesses. To resolve this massive amount of biological and industry complexity, Doug Cole, Vesalius’ chairman and co-founder and Flagship’s managing partner, noted the distinction between illness and disease. “Illness is what bothers you, it’s the experience of being sick and what the doctor might find when you’re examined,” Cole told BioWorld. “Disease is the mechanistic problem with the biology underlying the illness.”