Andrey Samsonov, PhD, co-founder, Chief Scientific Officer


      I have more than 20 years of rich experience in academia and in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Why have I decided to found a pharmaceutical start-up company? The reason is simple: during the last 10 years (since 2011), I was a member of the InnoCentive community of Solvers. Since the start, I have solved 21 challenges (complete list) and was InnoCentive Top Solver for five years (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2020). Currently I have world rank # 12 among InnoCentive Top Solvers for All Time (select All Time). Recently I started to solve challenges in other crowdsourcing platforms such as IdeaConnection and HeroX.

The competition is enormously strong there, and Solvers with good solutions are submitting their ideas from all across the globe. The winning of award money was never paramount for my participation in InnoCentive crowdsourcing and open innovation platform. The most attractive part is the feeling of knowing that you won a competition with the world's greatest minds (especially when you were the only Solver that was awarded by the Seeker. My favorite challenge was "Early Detection of Inflammatory Bowel Disease" from the Cleveland Clinic. They asked to design a system or algorithm to provide clinicians with a way to detect IBD before development of overt clinical manifestations, when the disease is already chronic. The challenge was in the area of my expertise which is biology, biotechnology, biophysics, chemistry, biomedical problems etc. I was a sole winner in this challenge and got the full award from the Seeker. However, it was not the reason that this challenge became my favorite one. During intensive research of looking at the challenge details to generate more information for analysis, I suddenly realized that even if my solution really worked for early detection of IBD in individuals at risk, there was still no cure for this disease. Medicines are mostly palliative and can reduce inflammation and increase the number and length of periods of remission. As a result, IBD patients will only have periods of remission when the disease is not active. Therefore, I got another challenge for myself – since I already have all available information about IBD etiology, I can try to propose a method or medication that will cure this terrible disease. The challenge was awarded in 2014, but only recently I got some good ideas about how to cure or at least to alleviate IBD.

        Sometimes I knew who were the Seekers who bought my ideas/solutions; sometimes they were anonymous. When you sold your idea, you never knew if it was realized or not, i.e. became new methods or products. It is really a sad situation for any inventor - you know that your idea was good, in many cases the Seeker awarded only your idea with the full award, but since you sold your idea you will never be notified whether it was realized in practice or not. Moreover, even if it becomes a great product or method some other name(s) will be on the IP/patent. At some point, I decided enough with that approach, and we founded start-up Samdolite Pharmaceuticals. Since that moment, I can try not only to generate new ideas but also to realize them.

John Fetter, PhD, co-founder, Chief Executive Officer


I have over 25 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical and Biotech industry. My undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral experience was in the field of biochemistry. I then moved into drug discovery R&D in industry where I worked in the areas of inflammation and oncology, developing biochemical and cell-based assays for screening. This led to an enriching experience for 15 years at Sigma-Aldrich which later became MilliporeSigma through an acquisition. For the first eight years, I worked in R&D developing drug screening assays as products for customers. Then I moved into product management for seven years to have more influence over the introduction of new products. As a Product Manager, I searched for and developed innovative products and technologies across the chemistry and biology space within the chemical synthesis portfolio. I developed products in the crosslinker space, probes for measuring biological activity, and most recently DNA-encoded libraries for drug discovery screening. This also gave me more experience in considering the financial aspects of making and selling products. During my time at MilliporeSigma, I enjoyed the creative aspects of research and received eight company awards for innovation. I now would like to use my experience to help Samdolite become an innovative drug discovery company.

Vladimir Razinkov, PhD, co-founder, Chief Development Officer


I have over 25 years of experience in analytical, drug product and formulation development of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical products. An innovator with 70+ peer-reviewed publications.

Liza Tarakanova, BS, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer

I have over 8 years of experience with startups, including starting and developing a product, and over 3 years of corporate experience in financial analytics, competitive analysis and market research.

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Our Focusk here.

We are developing a novel treatment for skin inflammatory diseases that aims to provide a safe and effective therapy for millions of patients. Our first treatment is focused on acne vulgaris that is the most common skin condition in the United States, affecting up to 50 million Americans.


How it all started


Dr. John Fetter and Dr. Andrey Samsonov were co-workers at Sigma-Aldrich for more than 10 years. They published 2 papers about genome editing technology and its life science applications. In 2021 they resigned from the company to start a startup Samdolite Pharmaceuticals Inc. The goal was to design and develop new remedies for skin inflammatory diseases (particularly chronic urticaria and rosacea – both are mast cell-driven diseases). During this period company co-founder Dr. Andrey Samsonov’s son had severe acne. He tried many treatments suggested by dermatologists with limited success. This inspired Dr. Samsonov to develop novel topical acne drug.
Later Dr. Fetter and Dr. Samsonov were joined by Dr. Vladimir Razinkov (Chief Development Officer), Liza Tarakanova (BS, Chief Strategy Officer) and business entrepreneur Dr. Zongxing Wang (PhD/MBA, Chief Business Officer).
Samdolite Pharmaceuticals was established with the mission of transforming the old paradigm of skin inflammatory diseases curing. After years of intensive research and development, our team has developed a first-in-class mutual prodrug that is the only agent targeting both acne bacteria and subcutaneous overacted mast cells that initiate and support an inflammation process. After recent Pre-IND meeting with FDA we have straightforward roadmap to pre-clinical animal studies, IND filing and human Phase 1 clinical trial.