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Mirimus, housed in the Downstate Biotech Incubator is a very successful award winning New York biotech company, founded by CEO and co-founder Dr. Prem Premsrirut.
For the past 10 years, Mirimus has become well known for high-volume, complex and accurate PCR testing, and developed the SalivaClear, a pooled saliva COVID-19 testing platform for which they were one of the five winners of the XPRIZE Rapid COVID Testing competition in March 2021.
Read about Dr. Premsrirut's journey and successes.
Dr. Premsrirut in the lab at Mirimus
Q. What was your original vision for Mirimus, and how did you move from the idea to founding the company?
During my time at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we were dissecting the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway and learning how to hijack it to control gene expression. By doing so, we could turn genes off-and-on not only in cellular systems but also in animal models. It was the beginning of RNAi therapeutic development and the thought of advancing this technology further to treat human disease was fascinating. Our ability to engineer models with RNAi cassettes enabled us to mimic small molecule therapies in live animals and evaluate the consequences, measuring both therapeutic potential as well as unintended adverse effects. This is where Mirimus was formed, to scale this technology and enable wide-spread access to next-generation RNAi tools. Prior to the formation of Mirimus, the project was funded by the NCI; therefore, Mirimus was a natural progression to transfer the pipeline from academia to a commercial entity.
Q. How did you first hear of Downstate and the Biotech Incubator? Why was it appealing for you?
While we started at CSHL, we outgrew the space and needed laboratory space and a vivarium to continue our operations. The Downstate Biotech Incubator was the only place that could provide state-of-art facilities and a collaboration with a renowned institute for common facilities, including a vivarium. We had many discussions with Eva Cramer, and her passion and willingness to support new companies drew us to the incubator.
Q. What role did Downstate play in helping you get your work off the ground and to the next level?
Downstate has been an essential partner of Mirimus since we moved to the incubator in 2016. We utilize many shared resources, including compliance review boards, such as IACUC and IRB. It is critical for early-stage companies to maintain connections with an academic institute, and Downstate provided that support.
Mirimus lab at Downstate
Q. How did Mirimus pivot at the onset of COVID and how did that impact your work/growth/goals?
When COVID hit, everyone at Mirimus wanted to help by applying our scientific and medical knowledge to better diagnose and understand the disease. Our expertise in disease modeling enabled us to quickly engineer humanized ACE2 mice and rats that could be use to understand the infectious process of SARS-CoV-2 and therefore understand how block viral replication. We also understood how to analyze the genome of the virus and therefore, we could establish assays to detect it and measure immune response upon infection. At the time, reagents to develop assays were not available commercially, but the sequence of the virus was published. We took protocols published by other academics and began developing immunoassays for Downstate, in order to help them examine antibody levels in severely ill and recovered patients. Since there was no available treatment, convalescent plasma harboring antibodies from recovered patients was believed to be the best option available, but we needed a way to measure them. This is where Mirimus’ team came in to play with the Downstate clinicians, using our molecular expertise to quickly synthesize and generate the assays.
In addition, we recognized that COVID testing was scarce and not accessible to everyone, but we knew that in order to combat this virus, we needed to test everyone frequently in order to prevent the spread. Therefore, we used our process expertise and established a high-throughput testing pipeline that could test more than 20,000 samples daily. We also developed our assay around saliva testing to eliminate the hurdle of collecting nasopharyngeal swabs, which was the gold standard at that time. Through our work, we were able to perform more than 4M tests and help school districts and businesses remain open throughout the pandemic. For our efforts, we were awarded an XPRIZE for the Rapid COVID testing competition.
Q. What strengths does Downstate’s research enterprise have that made coming here attractive to you, and how has the university aided your growth?
We believe our research will result in the development of a number of new diagnostic immunoassays to identify disease causing antibodies, particularly those that have not yet been characterized. By doing so, we will also be able to engineer better targeted therapies to treat autoimmune disease, ones that do not render patients highly immunocompromised. Downstate and its clinicians have been instrumental in helping us access patient samples, which are crucial in validating the clinical assays we have developed. In addition, they have helped us select patients who may be suffering from new unclassified autoimmune disease so that we can begin our investigation. Notably, Downstate's patient population is very diverse, which is instrumental in studying compound diseases.
Q. Where do you see Mirimus going, and what has Downstate done for the company as it moves into its next phases?
Mirimus is now starting to investigate autoimmune diseases. We know that autoimmune disease is caused by a combination of triggers, including genetics, environmental exposures and infections, which combined may lead to the development of autoantibodies that attack normal, healthy tissues. We anticipate an upsurge of new autoimmune disease cases given the number of patients affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we are beginning to investigate this to get ahead of the problem. Currently, Mirimus has developed new immunoassays that can identify specific autoantibodies that cause disease.
Q. What advice do you have for students who are interested in careers as scientist-entrepreneurs?
For students interested in pursuing scientific-entrepreneurial careers, it's critical to have exposure early on. Downstate provides a unique opportunity for PhD students to rotate through, and also perform their PhD work within a company laboratory. Entrepreneurship requires a keen insight into building scientific technologies, scaling them and thus critically evaluating their commercial potential. Not all scientific discoveries are commercializable, and that’s what distinguishes scientific entrepreneurs from scientists. They not only address biological questions, they also address the market potential of their discoveries and whether the invention or innovative idea is scalable to bring to market.
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Follow The Office of the SVPR on Twitter (@DHSUresearch) & LinkedIn
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