Miist Therapeutics

Miist Therapeutics is an Alameda, California-based developer of inhaled medicines built on a physics-based aerosol drug delivery platform. Its inhaler uses ultrasonic vibration, rather than heat, to generate sterile aqueous drug particles of roughly 2 microns that deposit in the peripheral lung, where the company says they are absorbed directly into the bloodstream. The company positions this against oral therapies, which it describes as taking one to four hours to act, and against conventional inhaled medicines, whose larger particles it says become trapped in the lung and are therefore unsuitable for systemic conditions.

The platform is intended to support a portfolio of instant-acting therapies across migraine, pain, anxiety, insomnia and nausea. Miist reports that in a 10-patient clinical trial using a reference molecule, its microparticles reached Cmax within 30 seconds and patients achieved 92% symptom relief within two minutes. Two assets have been described publicly: MST-01 for smoking addiction, for which Phase 1 results were reported, and MST-02, an inhaled migraine therapy. MST-02 has been tested in two canine studies with reported rapid onset and a favorable safety profile, and the company states it is advancing the program into a Phase 1/2 clinical trial. A February 2025 $7M financing was described as funding acceleration of both the migraine and smoking cessation programs.

Founding story

Sources describe the company as founded by Eric Ezerins, who serves as Head of Technology, and Dalton Signor, who serves as CEO; the two are described as long-time friends who took Miist from an idea to a clinical-stage therapeutics company in under two years [0][1][3]. One aggregator profile gives a founding year of 2019 and additionally names Jeff Schuster, a Berkeley physics PhD focused on aerosol drug delivery, as a co-founder, and states that Signor left university to pursue the company; this conflicts with other records and the source is of uncertain reliability [3].

Business model

Miist is a clinical-stage therapeutics developer. It advances proprietary drug-device candidates (an inhaler plus formulation) through preclinical and clinical development toward FDA approval; an earlier company profile described the smoking cessation product as intended to be an FDA-approved prescription treatment delivering an already-approved smoking cessation medication [2][4].

Traction

The company reports clinical validation of its microparticle platform in a 10-patient trial (Cmax within 30 seconds; 92% symptom relief within two minutes), Phase 1 results for MST-01 in smoking cessation, and two canine studies for MST-02 ahead of a planned Phase 1/2 trial. It operates a 2,000 sq ft aerosol lab in Alameda, California, and raised $7M in February 2025 [0][1][3][4].

Latest developments

In February 2025 Miist announced $7M in funding to accelerate its migraine and smoking cessation programs. Its website describes MST-02 as being advanced into a Phase 1/2 clinical trial following two canine studies, and lists press coverage of the raise including a TechCrunch article on the company taking on smoking cessation and migraine [0][1][3][4][5].