Miist Therapeutics, a physics-based developer of inhaled medicines, announced $7 million in seed funding from investors including Refactor Capital, 1517 Fund, Freeflow Ventures, Entrepreneur First, and California Innovation Fund. And Miist has clinically validated its approach and is currently advancing two assets: MST-01 for the treatment of smoking addiction and MST-02 for the treatment of migraine. The Phase 1 results for MST-01 demonstrate the speed of Miist’s therapies, with patients achieving 92% symptom relief in only 2 minutes post-dosing.
Tapping into the experience of Miist’s CTO, Jeff Schuster, a Berkeley Physics PhD and aerosol drug delivery veteran, the company has developed a proprietary inhaler that generates sterile aqueous drug particles small enough to reach the peripheral lung. And these aerosol drug particles are created using vibration, not heat, and are solely composed of water (the carrier) and the selected pharmaceutical molecule.
As these particles reach the peripheral lung, where the blood-air barrier is 100 times thinner than a single human hair, they are instantly absorbed across this barrier and into the bloodstream. And Miist has clinically validated that this approach achieves peak plasma drug levels in less than 30 seconds, approximately 100x faster than the absorption of a pill.
Miist Therapeutics’ founding team has diverse experiences and viewpoints that have been key to the company’s success. Before joining forces and setting up their Bay Area HQ, Dalton Signor (CEO) was recruited by Entrepreneur First and started building Miist full time in London, Eric Ezerins (Head of R&D) had begun a career in ocular biotherapeutic drug delivery. Jeff Schuster (CTO) already established himself as one of the top technical minds in inhalation drug delivery.
KEY QUOTES:
“So many therapeutic areas today are dominated by oral treatments that work far slower than patients want. A great example is migraine: when someone is suffering through debilitating migraine symptoms, they don’t want to wait an hour for their pill to kick in. Their #1 priority is getting fast relief and that’s what we’re uniquely positioned to deliver.”
- Miist Therapeutics’ CEO and co-founder Dalton Signor
“The Miist team has executed across every phase of development, from early technical R&D through human clinical studies. With these Phase 1 trial results validating the rapid action of their peripheral lung delivery and multiple active programs already in development, there is a real opportunity here to set a new treatment standard for many conditions,” says Bilimoria.
• ⁃ Zal Bilimoria, GP of Refactor Capital
