Mario Danek is the founder and CEO of Qnovia, Inc., a pharmaceutical and medtech company he launched in 2018 to develop a next-generation inhaled drug delivery platform designed to improve patient outcomes.
A lifelong entrepreneur and inventor, Danek leads Qnovia’s mission to transform smoking cessation and respiratory care through breakthrough aerosol delivery technologies and formulations. He is also spearheading the company’s antimicrobial peptide platform, expanding Qnovia’s pipeline beyond nicotine replacement therapy into a new class of population-scale public health indications, including serious and drug-resistant infectious diseases.
Danek currently oversees the launch of Qnovia’s RespiRx, which combines an FDA clinical-stage smoking cessation therapy with an AI-enabled behavioral health coach to help the world’s one billion smokers quit for good. Before resuming the CEO role in 2025, Danek served as Qnovia’s Chief Technology Officer, leading the development of the RespiRx platform and its underlying aerosol technologies.
Before Qnovia, Danek founded and led ventures including Aegis Biomechanics, building broad experience in life science, consumer health, and medical
device innovation. He is the principal inventor on multiple patents and brings deep experience across sales, hardware manufacturing, product development, and regulatory strategy. Based in Orange County, California, Danek is an associate member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon.
Bacteria have learned to evade many of our antibiotics. But what about defenses shaped by millions of years of evolution? An experimental peptide derived from the human immune protein CXCL10 targets resistant pathogens by exploiting a distinct bacterial vulnerability. The research is early, but the strategy could have implications far beyond a single drug candidate.