South San Francisco biotech Switch Therapeutics unwrapped Tuesday morning with $52 million to finance conditionally activated siRNA molecules.

As its name suggests, the startup said it can switch on the molecules only in selected cells so they’re more precise than other RNAi approaches and can potentially be effective for longer periods. The biotech will start in the central nervous system and consider expanding its use in other disease areas through the help of potential pharma collaborators, CEO Dee Datta told Endpoints News.

Bankrolling the work is UCB Ventures, Insight Partners, Eli Lilly, BOLD Capital Partners, Ono Venture Investment, Wilson Hill and a plethora of VC firms with names ending in Ventures: Upfront, Digitalis, Dolby Family, Freeflow, PhiFund and others.

The biotech stems from the work of multiple Caltech, Harvard and City of Hope leaders. The foundation was laid by decades-long Caltech professor Bill Goddard; City of Hope molecular and cellular biology leader John Rossi; Switch chief technology officer Si-Ping Han and discovery biology director Lisa Scherer. The four have filed multiple patents together over the past decade. Harvard medical professor Saumya Das is also an academic co-founder of Switch, as well as Thryv Therapeutics (formerly LQT Therapeutics).

“It took us about 10 years to make the technology work where you can reliably switch the drug activity in mammalian cells,” Han said in an interview.

The company combines single and double-stranded RNAs into a molecule to make it cell-selective, Switch said. The molecules dock to a sensor, developed by Switch, that helps signal when the siRNA switches on.

Datta was previously business chief of XOMA, and prior to that, the VP of corporate development at Forty Seven from 2016 to 2017, before Gilead acquired it for a few billion dollars.

She and Goddard previously founded Allozyne, a multiple sclerosis biotech that was set to reverse merge with Poniard Pharmaceuticals, but that deal was axed in late 2011 and eventually sold off patents and technologies to AstraZeneca’s MedImmune and another company. A longtime chemistry, materials science and applied physics professor who advised Datta and Han during their time at Caltech, Goddard has also planted the seed for companies like drug discoverer Schrödinger and Seattle biotech GPC-Rx.

Going forward, the approximately 20-employee Switch will add to its leadership team, Datta said. Asked whether the startup has any funds with SVB in light of the recent bank failure, Datta said: “Like many companies, we did have some exposure to SVB, but not all.” She said the biotech was focused this past weekend on its official unveiling.

The executive declined to disclose timing of clinical entry and what specific areas of CNS they’re exploring for Switch’s lead program.