Off-the-shelf cell ther­a­py has be­come a red-hot field of in­vest­ment in re­cent years as the first rounds of hu­man da­ta start rolling out. Now, cell ther­a­py start­up In­dap­ta Ther­a­peu­tics is bring­ing in the big guns to dri­ve its pipeline for­ward — in­clud­ing one of the field’s most es­teemed names.

Guy DiP­ier­ro

San Fran­cis­co-based In­dap­ta has ap­point­ed Mark Frohlich, who pre­vi­ous­ly ran port­fo­lio strat­e­gy at Juno and be­fore that the clin­ic shop at Den­dreon, as its newest CEO, re­plac­ing found­ing helms­man Guy DiP­ier­ro, who will step in­to the role of chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer.

Frohlich brings with him a star-stud­ded ré­sumé, with his hands hav­ing touched both Breyanzi, the Juno-orig­i­nat­ed CAR-T that even­tu­al­ly found its way in­to Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s hands, as well as Provenge, which his clin­ic team ush­ered through at Den­dreon.

With In­dap­ta, Frohlich will be charged with a plat­form based on off-the-shelf “G-NK” cells, an even rar­er form of the adap­tive im­mune cells the com­pa­ny ar­gues is more po­tent than your run-of-the-mill NK cells. Off-the-shelf, or al­lo­gene­ic, cell ther­a­pies plat­forms like this have earned an im­mense amount of in­ter­est in re­cent years as an an­ti­dote to the la­bo­ri­ous and cost-in­ten­sive process of craft­ing ther­a­pies from a pa­tient’s own cells.

In­dap­ta’s case is no dif­fer­ent. In con­cert with Frohlich’s ap­point­ment, In­dap­ta an­nounced Thurs­day a $50 mil­lion Se­ries A round to tur­bocharge its pre­clin­i­cal work with a who’s who of in­vestors on board: RA Cap­i­tal, Ver­tex Ven­tures, Leaps by Bay­er, the Myelo­ma In­vest­ment Fund and Lon­za.

Ronald Martell

Those big-name back­ers will al­so add their ex­per­tise to In­dap­ta’s board with RA prin­ci­pal Lau­ra Stop­pel, Ver­tex Ven­tures man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Lori Hu and Fabio Puc­ci, se­nior di­rec­tor of ven­ture in­vest­ments health at Leaps by Bay­er, all join­ing.

“Mark is per­fect­ly suit­ed to lead In­dap­ta as we move our unique G-NK cell ther­a­py clos­er to clin­i­cal tri­als in pa­tients with mul­ti­ple myelo­ma and lym­phoma,” In­dap­ta co-founder Ronald Martell said in a state­ment. “His bio­phar­ma man­age­ment pedi­gree, suc­cess­ful drug de­vel­op­ment track record and sci­en­tif­ic acu­men, to­geth­er with our Se­ries A fi­nanc­ing from such an ex­pe­ri­enced syn­di­cate of in­vestors, will ac­cel­er­ate our abil­i­ty to bring this in­no­v­a­tive ther­a­py to pa­tients.”

Frohlich, for his part, had this to say about his ap­point­ment:

I joined In­dap­ta be­cause I be­lieve its NK cell plat­form is tru­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed and its pre­clin­i­cal da­ta is par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pelling. I’m ex­cit­ed to bring this off-the-shelf cell ther­a­py to the clin­ic, where we have the po­ten­tial to demon­strate it can ben­e­fit pa­tients with­out the tox­i­c­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with cur­rent­ly ap­proved cell ther­a­pies. I look for­ward to ap­ply­ing every­thing I’ve learned over the past two decades to de­vel­op this nov­el ther­a­py.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.