Moonwalk Biosciences launched earlier this year, crashing the epigenome editing bash. So it is not surprising that the companys name is not inspired by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrins adventures on the moon but rather by a 1980s dance move popularized and associated with Michael Jackson—who did not invent the gliding backslide.
“The relation to science is that when you think about the epigenome, we think about changes over time and with disease,” said Alex Aravanis, MD, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Moonwalk Biosciences. “The epigenome of a healthier, younger cell often tells us how we want to modify it. The concept of the dance is that sometimes to move forward, you have to move backward. Thats the analogy to the epigenome—that you actually have to go back in time towards a genome that’s in a healthier and younger state.”