Greater Cincinnati’s top venture-backed startup has a new face in its C-suite.
Evendale-based Enable Injections, a medical device maker, has promoted David Kroekel to chief operating officer, effective immediately. The role has been vacant since November 2022, a spokeswoman told me, and Kroekel has been fulfilling most of those duties while serving as the company’s senior vice president of product development and operations.
As COO, he will lead ongoing engineering, manufacturing and supply efforts for the EnFuse, Enable’s flagship technology, a first-of-its-kind, hands-free, wearable drug delivery device. The move comes on the heels of the company’s first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval received late last year.
Enable continues to ink collaborations with both new and existing pharma partners, it said in a news release, which will continue to boost product demand.
"In the past year, Enable has poised itself for long-term commercial success," Mike Hooven, chairman and CEO of Enable Injections, said in the release. "David's leadership has played a pivotal role in our company's success to date, and we are excited to have him in this new position as COO as we continue driving innovation for EnFuse."
Kroekel has more than 35 years of experience in medical device, combination product operations and product development with companies like Flowonix Medical, Teleflex Medical and Arrow International.
Prior to joining Enable in mid-2020, he served as the biomedical global head of operations at DSM Biomedical, a Pennsylvania-based medical product development firm, where he was responsible for global leadership of biologics and medical materials manufacturing. He also previously served as the company’s senior director of innovation, where he led new product development and innovation.
Kroekel earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University, located in College Park, and a master of science in manufacturing systems engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.
Kroekel succeeds Donald Kirkpatrick, who served as Enable’s COO for nearly three years.
"EnFuse is a breakthrough in meeting patient needs with new and innovative solutions,” Kroekel said in the release. “I look forward to leading and advancing how our manufacturing and product development teams increase the capabilities and efficiencies in delivering our wearable technology to more patients.”
Enable appears poised for yet another big year in 2024.
The company’s EnFuse, a wearable, palm-sized circular disk, is able to deliver a drug more quickly than traditional IV administration, and a patient can complete the treatment at home, versus at a clinic, and at much lower cost, improving the overall patient experience.
Partnerships are considered critical to the company's success – the EnFuse is designed to deliver large volumes of medication via subcutaneous administration (through the skin) and can be used for a wide range of therapies and diseases, but it must be used in combination with a drug therapy.
Enable has been publicly linked to mega drugmaker Sanofi, a collaboration that’s backed by famed investment group Blackstone; Pennsylvania-based biopharmaceutical company CSL Behring; Genentech/Roche Group; and Viridian Therapeutics, which is advancing multiple candidates for the treatment of thyroid eye disease.
The FDA in October approved the use of the Empaveli injector, developed based on the EnFuse technology, for use with Empaveli, or pegcetacoplan, a drug being commercialized in the states by Waltham, Mass.-based Apellis Pharmaceuticals. Empaveli is a treatment for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, a rare blood disease.
It anticipates more FDA approvals.
Enable Injections, founded in 2010, currently ranks as Cincinnati’s best-funded startup. To date, it has raised more than $311 million in capital for the EnFuse, including a $215 million Series C in January 2022 – a record-high raise for the region.
Enable currently has around 200 employees and is looking to more than double its headcount locally by calendar year 2027.
