Germany's CureVac has launched a subsidiary in the biotech hotbed of Cambridge, MA, hoping to accelerate the development of its messenger RNA therapies on the heels of a major investment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The company has appointed former Novartis ($NVS) vaccines executive Karen Slobod to lead the Cambridge division, cozying up to the area's leading research institutions and biotech innovators as it moves forward with its mRNA platform. CureVac's therapies are designed to spur the production of human proteins within patient cells, potentially treating disease from inside the body. The company got a jolt earlier this year when the Gates Foundation invested $52 million, its largest equity bet, to support CureVac's work, with longtime backer backer dievini Hopp BioTech kicking in an additional $24 million. Now the company is pressing on with a stable mRNA therapies for cancer and infectious disease. More (PDF)