{"entity":{"id":"moonlight-bio","kind":"company","name":"Moonlight Bio","aka":["Moonlight Bio, Inc"],"tldr":"Moonlight Bio makes CAR-T cell therapy for solid tumours, adding gene changes found naturally in human T cells to make the treated cells multiply and last longer. Its first product, ML261, targets DLL3 and is in an early trial for small cell lung cancer and related neuroendocrine cancers.","summary":"Moonlight Bio, at 1150 Eastlake Avenue East, Seattle, Washington, develops adoptive T cell therapies for solid tumours enhanced with naturally occurring T cell mutations. Its founders compiled a library of genetic events from T cell disease states and screened them for variants that increase T cell proliferation, persistence and function, work published in Nature in 2024 (Garcia, Daniels et al., Naturally occurring T cell mutations enhance engineered T cell therapies). The lead candidate ML261 is an autologous, potency-enhanced CAR-T against DLL3, tested in the SPECTRAL-1 phase 1 study in relapsed or refractory small cell lung cancer and selected neuroendocrine carcinomas, including extrapulmonary, gastroenteropancreatic and neuroendocrine prostate cancers. Partners announced on its news page include MaxCyte (platform licence, October 2025), Kincell Bio (manufacturing collaboration for the lead candidate, October 2025), Leveragen, Cytogen and ZenQMS. Its first registered cancer trial, NCT07488923, was posted on ClinicalTrials.gov in March 2026.","asOf":"2026-10-29","links":[{"label":"Official website","url":"https://moonlightbio.us/"},{"label":"Company science page","url":"https://moonlightbio.us/our-science"},{"label":"ClinicalTrials.gov: SPECTRAL-1 phase 1 trial of ML261 DLL3 CAR-T (NCT07488923)","url":"https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07488923"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["sclc","neuroendocrine","prostate-nepc"],"sections":["cell-therapy","immunotherapy"],"technologies":["car-t","armored-car"],"targets":["dll3"],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Founding year not stated on the company website.","No financing round was found on the company website; none is recorded.","Company website read on 29 October 2026; partner announcements were read only as headlines on the company news page."],"hq":"Seattle, WA","country":"US","companyType":"cell-therapy","website":"https://moonlightbio.us/","stage":"startup","investors":[],"funding":[]},"route":"/companies/moonlight-bio/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"prostate-nepc","kind":"cancer","name":"Neuroendocrine and small-cell prostate cancer","route":"/cancers/prostate-nepc/"},{"id":"neuroendocrine","kind":"cancer","name":"Neuroendocrine tumours","route":"/cancers/neuroendocrine/"},{"id":"sclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/sclc/"}],"section":[{"id":"cell-therapy","kind":"section","name":"Cell Therapy","route":"/fronts/cell-therapy/"},{"id":"immunotherapy","kind":"section","name":"Immunotherapy","route":"/fronts/immunotherapy/"}],"technology":[{"id":"armored-car","kind":"technology","name":"Armoured, logic-gated & next-gen CARs","route":"/technologies/armored-car/"},{"id":"car-t","kind":"technology","name":"CAR-T cell therapy","route":"/technologies/car-t/"}],"target":[{"id":"dll3","kind":"target","name":"DLL3","route":"/targets/dll3/"}],"company":[{"id":"moonlight-ai","kind":"company","name":"Moonlight AI","route":"/companies/moonlight-ai/"}]}}