Bordeaux, France / April 14th, 2022 – TreeFrog Therapeutics, a biotechnology company aimed at making safer, more efficient and more affordable cell therapies based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), today announced the appointment of new independent members to its board: Elsy Boglioli, former Chief Operating Officer at Cellectis, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of healthtech consulting practice Bio-Up, and Melissa Carpenter, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of the Regenerative Medicine business unit at ElevateBio, a technology-driven company focused on powering transformative cell and gene therapies. Elsy Boglioli will be the Chair of the Board.
“Following our Series B, we welcomed new investors to our board: Bpifrance Large Venture, Leonard Green & Partners, and Bristol Myers Squibb. I am delighted to reinforce our organization with our new independent board members to guide our strategy and serve our ambition. Elsy, with her profound knowledge of the biotech industry, will chair our board, bringing a new dynamic to our governance and scale-up efforts. Melissa, a world-renowned expert in iPSC-derived cell therapies, will reinforce our U.S. network and help us steer our programs toward clinical trials. Also, I would like to warmly thank our co-founder, Jean-Luc Treillou, for his work as a Chairman over the first years of the company.” Frédéric Desdouits, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, TreeFrog Therapeutics.
“I am thrilled to join TreeFrog as the company advances its unique platform and enters its next phase of growth. Together, we aim to solve major challenges facing the development of cell therapies and craft transformative, scalable, high quality treatments that can benefit large patient pools.” Melissa Carpenter, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, ElevateBio, Regenerative Medicine
Interview of Elsy Boglioli, Chair of the Board, TreeFrog Therapeutics
Elsy Boglioli, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bio-Up
Elsy Boglioli started her career in 2006 at the Boston Consulting Group, where she served as partner and managing director, leading the biotech business in Europe. In 2017, she joined the French cell therapy biotech company Cellectis as Executive Vice-President Strategy and Business Development and Chief Operating Officer, before founding the independent consulting practice Bio-Up. As part of her activities within Bio-Up, she was appointed to the boards of Gensight Biologics, OSE Immunotherapeutics, Metafora Biosystems, Inova, Kelindi and Womed. Graduate from the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school in Paris, France, Elsy Boglioli holds a master’s degree in Economy and Management from the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain, and was trained in immuno-oncology at the Gustave Roussy Institute of Oncology, Paris, France.
Melissa Carpenter, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, ElevateBio, Regenerative Medicine
Author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles and inventor of 34 issued patents, Melissa Carpenter has been pioneering the field of stem cell-derived cell therapies for the past 25 years. She started her career at CytoTherapeutics (became StemCells, Inc), where she derived human neural stem cells and successfully developed the media formulation used for scale-up of these cells. Carpenter then joined Californian cell therapy biotech Geron in 1998, as Director of Stem Cell Biology, managing research and preclinical programs in regenerative medicine, before taking an academic position as Principal Investigator at the Robarts Research Institute in Canada.
In 2004, she joined Novocell (now Viacyte Inc.) as Vice-President of Research and Development, advancing a novel cell therapy program in diabetes, based on encapsulated human pluripotent stem cells. She then established her own consulting practice – Carpenter Group Consulting -, providing strategic, scientific and manufacturing guidance for the development of over 75 cell and gene therapies. In 2019, she was appointed Chief Scientific Officer of the Regenerative Medicine business unit of ElevateBio, a technology-driven company with integrated technology platforms, including gene editing, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and protein, vector and cellular engineering, focused on the discovery, development and manufacturing of transformative cell and gene therapies.
Initially trained in psychology, Melissa Carpenter completed a PhD in the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology of the University of California, Irvine, in 1989.
TreeFrog Therapeutics is a French-based biotech company aiming to unlock access to cell therapies for millions of patients. TreeFrog Therapeutics is developing a pipeline of therapeutic candidates using proprietary C-StemTM technology, allowing for the mass production of induced pluripotent stem cells and their differentiation into ready-to-transplant microtissues with unprecedented scalability and cell quality. Bringing together over 80 biophysicists, cell biologists and bioproduction engineers, TreeFrog Therapeutics raised $82M over the past 3 years to advance its pipeline of stem cell-based therapies in the field of neurodegeneration, cardio-metabolic disorders and immuno-oncology. The company is currently opening technological hubs in Boston, USA, and Kobe, Japan, to drive the adoption of C-StemTM and initiate co-development partnerships with leading academic, biotech and industry players in the field of cell therapy.
TreeFrog Therapeutics
Pierre-Emmanuel Gaultier – +33 645 774 258 – pierre@treefrog.fr