25 November 2020 - - US-based clinical-stage company Vedanta Biosciences has appointed Troy Ignelzi as an independent member of its board of directors, the company said.

Ignelzi has more than 25 years of experience supporting life science companies in finance, business development and operations, and has helped oversee their evolutions from privately held, clinical-stage companies to publicly traded biopharmaceutical companies preparing for commercial launches.

Ignelzi has played a key role in seven IPOs, and currently serves as the chief financial officer of Karuna Therapeutics.

He joined Karuna in March 2019, coming from scPharmaceuticals, where he was also in the role of chief financial officer, overseeing its transformation to a company preparing for commercial launch.

Prior to scPharmaceuticals, Ignelzi was a senior executive at Juventas Therapeutics, Esperion Therapeutics and Insys Therapeutics, helping raise public and private capital, expand development pipelines through licensing and acquisition and advancing critical therapies, several of which are currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Ignelzi holds a B.A. in accounting from Ferris State University.

Vedanta Biosciences is leading the development of a potential new category of oral therapies based on rationally defined consortia of bacteria derived from the human microbiome.

The company's clinical-stage pipeline includes product candidates being evaluated for the treatment of high-risk C. difficile infection, inflammatory bowel diseases, advanced or metastatic cancers, and food allergy.

These investigational therapies are grounded in pioneering research published in leading journals including Science, Nature, and Cell to identify beneficial bacteria that live symbiotically within the healthy human gut, fight pathogens and induce a range of potent immune responses.