Our Company
Moonlight Therapeutics is a pre-clinical stage biotech company founded to develop a transformational treatment for patients with food allergies.
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The company is focused on developing its first therapy, MOON101, for the treatment of peanut allergy using its proprietary skin stamp. Moonlight's founders are experts in drug delivery, specifically in designing systems to get across the body's barriers so drugs can be delivered effectively to its intended target. This way the drug has a better chance of successfully treating the disease. Moonlight has developed a platform to break through the skin barrier to deliver antigen to the skin's immune cells in order to protect patients from deadly anaphylactic reactions.
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The company has received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health to develop this platform and the first treatment, MOON101. We are working tirelessly to begin our first clinical trial using MOON101 in peanut allergic adults and children.
Team
Our team’s collective experience, which includes research, early stage drug and device development, and prior leadership roles at innovative biotechnology companies, positions us to advance MOON101, Moonlight's peanut allergy treatment.
President and CEO
Samir Patel, PhD
Samir is an engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit. Previously, Samir was a co-founder and leader of Clearside Biomedical (NASDAQ: CLSD). Clearside is an ophthalmic pharmaceutical company developing targeted therapies for ocular diseases. He invented the suprachoroidal drug delivery technology that lead to the creation of Clearside Biomedical and its first FDA approved therapy. Samir obtained a dual B.S. degree in Chemical and Material Science Engineering from University of California at Berkeley and has a doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Between degrees Samir worked at ALZA Corp, a J&J subsidiary.
COO
Vladimir Zarnitsyn, PhD
As a co-founder of Clearside Biomedical (NASDAQ: CLSD), Dr. Zarnitsyn led the creation of innovative devices from concept to clinical applications and played a pivotal role in shaping the company's success. With a B.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in biophysics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dr. Zarnitsyn has numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals and holds over 20 US and international patents for his groundbreaking work in drug and gene delivery technologies. In his current work, he is actively researching and developing the use of microneedles for treating peanut allergy, aiming to provide safer and more effective treatment option for patients. He is committed to improving healthcare outcomes for all patients using his expertise.
Scientific Founder
Harvinder Gill, PhD
Harvinder is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University with research expertise in ‘Immunoengineering and Micro-NanoMedicine’. He is credited with performing seminal research on coated microneedles and has now pioneered their use for treatment of allergies. He has received numerous awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. For his patents and inventions, in 2023, he was inducted as a ‘senior-member’ into the National Academy of Inventors.