Mytos cofounders Ali Afshar (L) and Ignacio Willats (R).
MytosBiologists are able to manipulate genes, program cells and develop vaccines for new diseases in months. But major elements of basic research, like growing different types of cell cultures, have been handled without much change for decades. Growing cells on which they can research causes of and treatments for disease is still laboriously carried out by hand.
“Scientists hate doing it. It takes a lot of time, you’ve got to go in on the weekend…. And they’re not very good at it,” said Mytos cofounder and CEO Ali Afshar, who notes that the painstaking, manual process also leads to issues like contamination and lack of replicability. For example, he noted, it’s possible to even tell what cell cultures in a lab were grown by which scientist. All of these issues can be a drag on both basic research and drug development.
That’s where his company, Mytos, comes in. It’s developed an automated way to grow cells that enables scientists to focus on advancing their research instead of tediously manipulating cultures. Its self-contained cell incubation unit relies on a simple, fluidic system for automating the processes of adding nutrients to containers, monitoring growth in the number of cells, and other basic functions. The company is able to now grow over a dozen different types of cell lines commonly used in labs, Afshar said.
A physicist by training, Afshar developed ways to automate his lab work so he could focus on other aspects of his PhD research at Imperial College. It was there he met Ignacio Willats, who was working on his business degree, and the two saw potential for bringing more automation to the lab. They reached out to companies in the pharmaceutical space and discovered that automating growing cells was a huge gap in the market. The pair founded Mytos (then called Cytera Cellworks) in 2018, then incubated their startup at YCombinator. (The two were also named to the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list.) Now, the company has announced a $19 million series A investment led by Buckley Ventures with participation from Wing VC and IQ Capital.
Interior shot of one of Mytos automated cell growth platforms.
MytosMytos isn’t the only company working on automation for cell cultures. But other solutions rely on robotic arms, which are clunky and can create similar contamination risks to those caused by people, says Wali Malik, director of lab automation at Cambridge-based Tessera Therapeutics, which uses Mytos’ product in its lab. That’s in part because the arms are basically replicating the way humans grow cells. By contrast, Mytos’ product relies on simpler, easier to control systems such as pumps to automate cell growth.
The focus on a contained, fluidic-based system of automation is also something that attracted Buckley Ventures to invest in the company. “It was really first principles thinking around the problem space, actually solving for cell culture growth for scientists in a way that just plugs and plays in their existing process,” managing partner Josh Buckley said.
With the new infusion of capital, Afshar said the company will be able to accelerate the development of new types of cell lines the company can grow, which will enable it to meet the needs of more pharmaceutical company customers for use in drug development and other research. Down the road, he said, the company is also planning to explore the possibility of automating the manufacturing of cell-based treatments for cancer and other diseases. The bottom line, he emphasized, is that “by automating this process, Mytos can accelerate development of every new treatment in development.”
