As I committed to doing in my last blog, I am pleased to share our latest progress with BioSuperior over the last few months. As I prepared to participate in the RESI Pitch Challenge in Boston, I realized how much progress we have made since the last event in June.

First and foremost, we have been honored with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the development of our novel respiratory treatments. We appreciate this vote of confidence. The grant puts us above $500k in total grant funding, including from the March of Dimes. This NSF SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Grant will help us reach our next milestone and bring us much closer to conducting human clinical trials.

We continue to make great technical progress. As I mentioned in my last blog, we have started shipping samples of key ingredients to a partner laboratory for testing. These ingredients are highly specialized for lung delivery. I am very proud of this accomplishment and look forward to sharing more on this topic soon.

We are also thrilled to be collaborating with respiratory experts at National Jewish Health. Currently we are evaluating our technology as a therapeutic for bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and respiratory distress in preterm babies. We expect our therapeutic candidate to be eligible for Orphan Drug Designation. Ultimately, our plan is to develop a pipeline of treatments for diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and lung cancer based on our drug delivery platform.

Beyond product development, we also continue to make progress in building our business foundation. As part of the NSF grant, we are working with NSF I-Corps experts to help address issues that are important for commercialization. In addition, we are working with RedCrow, a subsidiary of Alira Health, an organization that helps startups devoted to healthcare innovation raise funding. Beyond their fundraising capabilities, Alira Health provides access to a prolific network of tools that complement our internal capabilities.

As all founders know, building a new business is a labor of love. I am amazed at the number of personal stories I hear daily as I talk to people about our work at BioSuperior Technology. I speak regularly with COVID patients who have been sick enough to require ICU care, and to parents of preterm infants who have needed lung surfactant treatment in the NICU. These stories are a constant reminder that developing innovative treatments for these lung diseases is a fight worth fighting.  And since these issues are increasingly prevalent, they need our attention now – more than ever.