Towson, Md.-based Somnair, founded by Johns Hopkins alumni, has raised $4.3 million in a seed round, as it builds a device to manage obstructive sleep apnea, according to an SEC filing. The company did not name the investors.

All the four co-founders — Anders Sideris, Mitchell Turley, Phoebe Dijour and Shri Prabha Shivram — received MS degrees in Biodesign from the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering. Sideris, who previously earned a MD degree in Australia, serves as CEO, while Turley, a mechanical engineer from MIT, is the startup’s chief technology officer. Prior to joining the Biodesign program at Johns Hopkins, Turley spent four years at Cook Advanced Technologies, “taking a FDA Class III breakthrough heart failure device from initial concept to clinical early feasibility study application,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

MedStar Health was an early backer of Somnair, after the company pitched at Towson University’s 2024 StarTUp Accelerator. Besides being one of Maryland’s largest healthcare organizations, MedStar has run an innovation institute since 2009. Mark Smith, MD, was the founding director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation, and continues to serve as its innovator-in-residence.

The Somnair co-founders “shadowed ear, nose, and throat surgeons and observed patients who struggled with CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure] but were unable or unwilling to undergo surgery. They spent over 1,000 hours listening to physicians and patients, determined to find a solution for the patients’ unmet needs,” according to an article in the summer issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine.

“We were able to bounce ideas off each other from different perspectives to develop this idea: a noninvasive treatment for the disorder that specifically serviced those patients that had no other option,” said Sideris, a President’s Venture Fellow at Johns Hopkins.

An estimated 54 million Americans suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, which disrupts their breathing during sleep. People with the condition can snore, gasp for air, or even stop breathing at nights. The condition raise the risk of various chronic conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. Patients with the condition require CPAP treatment to help them breathe during sleep but many quit because of the device’s discomfort and cost.

Somnair has designed a device that it says targets the root cause of obstructive sleep apnea. Its non-invasive neurostimulation device is easy to wear — in the mouth, like a retainer. The device contains a circuit that gently applies “stimulation, similar to a muscle stimulator used to reduce muscle pain after exercise.” This helps open the airway and ease breathing.

According to Johns Hopkins Magazine, the team “found a flash of inspiration when scouring anatomy textbooks,” zeroing in on a nerve that controls muscle activity in the palate and throat and help the opening of the airway when stimulated. “We realized that there’s this one target that hasn’t been tried before — and it’s accessible, noninvasively, in the mouth,” Sideris said.

The team is conducting a proof-of-concept study with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine physicians Luu Van Pham and Kevin M. Motz, Johns Hopkins Magazine said, adding that early results in 22 patients appear to validate their hypothesis that the device opens airways in patients who cannot tolerate CPAP.

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