Team
The people behind Ester.
Mariana Larrañaga Tapia
Founder | Chief Science Officer
Nanotechnology and Chemistry Engineer with MS in Food Science.
Victor Martinez-Cortes
Board Member
Doctor of Medicine.
Laser therapy has been the only real option Nevus of Ota patients have had for decades. We're researching what comes next — a path to treating dermal pigmentation that doesn't start and end with a laser handpiece.
Nevus of Ota is a benign but often visible pigmented skin condition, typically appearing on the face. For many patients it carries real cosmetic and emotional weight — and for decades, the answer has been the same one: Q-switched laser therapy.
Laser treatment can help, but it comes with real friction: repeated sessions over months or years, discomfort, cost that adds up with every visit, and outcomes that vary a lot from patient to patient. For some, it works well. For many others, it's a long, expensive road that doesn't fully get them where they want to be.
We think that's a research problem worth solving — not by building a better laser, but by asking whether pigmentation like this could be addressed in an entirely different way.
Laser therapy remains essentially the only established clinical approach — patients haven't had a real alternative to choose from.
Laser sessions manage visible pigmentation over time; they don't offer a single, definitive, long term resolution.
Repeated in-clinic sessions mean cost and geography quietly decide who can complete treatment and who can't.
Countries with at least one verified, citable case report or case series identified through literature search. Highlighted regions reflect published documentation, not a comprehensive epidemiological survey — many more cases likely go unpublished or unreported.
Sources (compiled July 2026): China, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador are shown based on peer-reviewed case reports/series with a verified, working citation. This is necessarily incomplete — for example, case series from South Korea and Thailand and a U.S. case report were found in this search but lack a stable, re-confirmed source, so they're intentionally excluded here pending verification.
Number of distinct sources per country from the compiled source list — a rough gauge of where Nevus of Ota has been written about most, not a systematic literature review.
Counts: Spain 4 · India 2 · China, Pakistan, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador 1 each. The single United Kingdom/Ireland source didn't specify which country the case originated in, so it's counted toward both. These are counts of sources in the compiled document, not full PubMed publication totals.
This section is where we'll walk through our research approach once we're ready to share specifics publicly.
We're keeping this section high-level for now while our research matures. Reach out directly and we're happy to talk through our approach in more depth.
Nevus of Ota sits inside a broader category of pigmentary skin conditions where treatment options have stayed narrow for a long time.
Patients today are largely funneled toward a single treatment modality, with little room for alternatives suited to their skin, budget, or timeline.
Success here could open the door to related forms of dermal pigmentation that share the same underlying biology.
Where there's only ever been one path to treatment, a credible alternative has room to define its own category.
Nanotechnology and Chemistry Engineer with MS in Food Science.
Doctor of Medicine.
Nevus of Ota is a recognized clinical need, but reliable data on how many patients are affected — and who they are — doesn't yet exist. We're working to establish that picture.
Preclinical research and validation of the selected approach.
Translating validated research into a defined product design.
Whether you're an investor, a potential partner, or just curious about the research — we'd like to hear from you.