Mitera Biosciences is taking a cue from one of nature’s most effective biological tricks: how a mother’s body avoids rejecting a fetus.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based startup is emerging from stealth with $1.75 million in funding and a mission to develop new therapeutics for autoimmune diseases and organ transplant rejection. The company’s approach centers on a specific protein naturally expressed by the placenta during pregnancy.

“Our focus is really going back to nature and the human maternal-fetal relationship,” said Kevin Chow, Mitera’s co-founder, CEO and president. The startup is “trying to leverage what our bodies do naturally to help us with our immuno-tolerance.”

The startup, which uses a Greek word for “mother,” hopes its therapeutics can eventually replace traditional immunosuppressing drugs. Existing medications often hobble a patients’ helpful immune response, leaving them vulnerable to infections and causing toxic side effects over long-term use.

‘Important agent to investigate’

Mitera is working to commercialize intellectual property being exclusively licensed from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

While the startup is keeping the specific protein’s identity under wraps, it confirmed it is produced in the thymus — a gland that’s active in the immune system — and the placenta.

The protein plays a dual role: it bolsters regulatory T (Treg) cells, which protect the body’s own tissues, while dampening effector T (Teff) cells, which lead the attack against perceived invaders.

Given the protein’s role with these essential immune system players, “we felt it would be an important agent to investigate as a potential therapeutic,” Dr. Stanley Jordan, Mitera’s co-founder and chief scientist, said via email.

Mitera’s leadership team

Mitera’s three co-founders are longtime biotech leaders or medical providers.

• Chow is a serial biotech entrepreneur who previously co-founded and led Vitaeris, which worked on a treatment for kidney transplant rejection and was acquired by CSL Behring. Chow also works part time with Incisive Genetics, a startup developing a delivery system for gene therapy treatments.
• Jordan is a 40-year veteran of nephrology and transplant immunology and the medical director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai.
• Dr. S. Ananth Karumanchi, co-founder and lead scientific advisor, has been at Cedars-Sinai since 2017 and conducts research in hypertension in pregnancy and cardiovascular disease associated with kidney disease.

Mitera currently has seven employees. It conducts lab work at Cedars-Sinai and Contract Research Organizations (CROs), while its headquarters are in Bellevue.

The startup’s initial funding was led by Cedars-Sinai and provided as a SAFE, or Simple Agreement for Future Equity that allows an investor to receive a stake in the business in the future.

The biology underlying Mitera’s pursuit is “really new,” Chow said. While there’s clear potential for treating transplant patients, the therapy “could be used for so many bigger, broader diseases out there,” he added. “And that’s really exciting.”