Join­ing Chang and Bellde­grun, Rafael Ama­do takes a lead­ing R&D post in the next big cell ther­a­py rev­o­lu­tion

Rafael Ama­do spent close to 5 years at Adap­ti­m­mune look­ing to break new ground in the TCR field of on­col­o­gy, go­ing in­side cells to find new tar­gets to com­bat can­cer. As of to­day, he’s mak­ing a switch to the cut­ting edge of one of the hottest fields in cell ther­a­pies, where he’ll be ex­pect­ed to take a lead role on a front-run­ning charge at an off-the-shelf ap­proach in CAR-T.

The Glax­o­SmithK­line vet­er­an — and for­mer head of their on­col­o­gy re­search group — of­fi­cial­ly left Adap­ti­m­mune last week. Now he’s com­ing up on the oth­er side of the week­end as the new head of R&D at Al­lo­gene, run by Kite vets David Chang and Arie Bellde­grun. He’ll start at the be­gin­ning of Sep­tem­ber.

This is the next gen­er­a­tion of en­gi­neered CAR-Ts, de­signed to un­leash a mas­sive im­mune sys­tem at­tack on can­cer that can be cu­ra­tive for many pa­tients. There’s a rapid as­sault at gain­ing the pi­o­neer­ing OK un­der­way. And Ama­do plans to be an im­por­tant part of it.

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