David Apelian to steer TCR play at Pitt spin­out; Third Rock scoops Il­lu­mi­na ex­ec as CEO of can­cer de­tec­tion up­start

→ Weeks af­ter re­veal­ing that he’s leav­ing Eiger Bio­Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to join a pri­vate biotech, David Apelian has fi­nal­ly sur­faced as CEO of Blue­Sphere Bio. Seed­ed by UPMC En­ter­pris­es to ad­vance per­son­al­ized treat­ments de­vel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh, the com­pa­ny is “des­tined to be a leader in the ex­cit­ing field of T-cell ther­a­py for can­cer.” Co-founders Mark and War­ren Shlom­chik — Pitt pro­fes­sors who hap­pen to be broth­ers — pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion­al TCX­press plat­form, the lat­est in a wave of new tech promis­ing to har­ness pa­tients’ own T cells tar­get­ing neoanti­gens. With $10 mil­lion in Se­ries A mon­ey, the com­pa­ny ex­pects to en­ter the clin­ic in about two years, Apelian told Bio­Cen­tu­ry.

→ Ax­on Neu­ro­science, the Alzheimer’s biotech fo­cused on tau, has pro­mot­ed gen­er­al coun­sel Michal Fress­er to CEO. As the head of both the di­ag­nos­tic and im­munother­a­py di­vi­sions, Fress­er will lead the com­pa­ny in seiz­ing a mo­ment where the dom­i­nance of the amy­loid the­o­ry seems to have sub­sided af­ter nu­mer­ous fail­ures and al­ter­na­tive tar­gets such as tau are com­ing un­der the spot­light. He takes over from Ro­man Sivak, who will re­tain the ti­tle of man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and ded­i­cate his time to clin­i­cal tri­als and R&D. The com­pa­ny, which is based in Cyprus and Slo­va­kia, is fi­nal­iz­ing a Phase II study for its vac­cine.

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