Allen Horhota, PhD Senior Director, Head of Delivery

Al is the Senior Director, Head of Delivery Sciences, where he leads our efforts to bring oRNA™ to new, therapeutically meaningful tissues and cell types. Al’s unique background as a classically trained nucleic acid chemist and enzymologist, coupled with over 10 years in industry focused on nanoparticle development, brings a unique perspective, leadership, and creativity to Orna.

On Al’s first birthday, he split his head open and claims he has never been the same. As a nucleic acid chemist, we still think he’s pretty smart! Al has contributed to multiple clinical and commercial nanoparticle programs at Moderna and BIND therapeutics throughout his career. As an Associate Director and founding member of Moderna’s Delivery Innovation group, Al focused on novel materials and processes for effective mRNA delivery across the polymer and lipid nanoparticle spaces. These efforts contributed to techniques and IP critical for the rapid development of COVID-19 mRNA/LNP vaccines. Before Moderna, Al held various scientific and leadership roles at BIND Therapeutics, where he focused on novel approaches to active nanoparticle targeting and nanoparticle processing techniques to enable small molecule and nucleic acid payloads.

Al earned his PhD in Chemistry at Boston College, specializing in simplified nucleic acid backbones, their chemical synthesis, and enzymatic processing and is an author on multiple papers and patents spanning the nucleic acid, nanoparticle targeting, polymeric, and lipid nanoparticle delivery of RNA fields.