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Living therapies for pets first, and their people next
LEAH Labs is building living therapies for pets first, and their people next. We're first focused on CAR-T cell therapy for dogs with B cell lymphoma, the naturally occurring clinical analog of human non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. CAR-T cells are curative in humans, and our early results are showing the same - we're inducing remissions in pets with late stage lymphomas. Our virus-free gene editing platform allows us to engineer a dose of CAR-T cell therapy for ~$500, and brings the promise of a curative outcome. Given our safety and efficacy data to date, we believe this product could be used by general practice veterinarians, meaning we have thousands of customers all across the USA who typically treat with palliative care or refer cancer patients to specialty oncologists. Our CAR-T cell platform is regulated by the USDA, not the FDA, affording us a cost effective "full stack" to iterate and innovate on CAR-T cell therapy from a hypothesis through clinical validation.
LEAH Labs is a company developing CAR-T cell therapies for dogs, with translational aims to inform human cancer treatment. They claim to be the first to achieve remissions in canine CAR-T therapy and run fully funded clinical trials for pets. Their mission emphasizes designing living therapies for pets first, with potential human impact.
They engineer living immune cells (CAR-T) for dogs using de novo protein engineering and a gene editing platform called GeneWeld to create affordable, pet-focused CAR-T therapies. The approach involves translational oncology, enrolling dogs with cancers in fully funded clinical trials at partner veterinary institutions, and collecting data to accelerate human CAR-T development.
Who it’s for: Pet owners with dogs diagnosed with cancer, veterinarians, investors, and potential partners interested in translational oncology and companion animal therapeutics.
Customers: University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine, Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Missouri Veterinary Health Center, Pet owners enrolling dogs in trials
Clinical trials actively enrolling; fully funded trials; multiple academic partner institutions; leadership with prior YC experience and biotech funding
I am a scientist and entrepreneur applying my expertise in gene editing towards solving consumer level problems in society, first focused on building curative cancer therapies for pets, and eventually their owners. Through my time at LEAH Labs, I've also found a passion for biotech business model innovation through regulatory arbitrage - e.g. CAR-T in pets is regulated by USDA, not FDA, thus we can get to market 2-3x faster and for 500x less capital than human CAR-T
Formerly “Lifengine Animal Health Laboratories”, “Incorporated” · why startups rename →
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