MEDICAL ALLEY, Minnesota (August 12th, 2025) – LEAH Labs, a translational medicine company building designer cell therapies for pets first, and their people next, has been awarded a highly competitive, $500,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase IIB grant award. The objective of Phase IIB funding is to provide additional R&D funds to further accelerate commercialization of a Phase II project, when a qualifying third-party financial investment/commitment has been received as a direct consequence of the NSF funded research outcomes. Since being awarded NSF funding first in 2019, LEAH Labs has received ~$5.8M in investments and other non-dilutive grant funding.
LEAH Labs is first pioneering the development of designer cell therapies for dogs with cancer. 6,000,000 dogs die of cancer every year in the USA, and current strategies in veterinary oncology are generally non-curative, only offering temporary relief and comfort to a pet and their family. In humans, CAR-T cell therapy is often curative, with 7 FDA approvals in hematologic malignancies since 2017, and hundreds of candidates in clinical trials. Because dogs occupy the same living environment, eat the same foods, and share genetics and physiology with humans, therapeutic strategies that work in dogs often work in humans, and vice versa, in what is deemed the “One
Health Model.” LEAH Labs is working to develop novel therapies for pets with analogous cancers in humans and eventually translate a hit from veterinary medicine to human medicine.
The Phase IIB funding allows LEAH Labs to transition their precision gene editing platform from research to commercial scale. Having recently induced remissions in pet dogs with B cell lymphoma using CAR-T cell therapy, LEAH Labs is nearing the point at which their exploratory pilot studies reach USDA Center for Veterinary Biologics efficacy trials. This Phase IIB award will fund the development required to transition from five pet doses per manufacturing run to >50, effectively reducing product variability and dramatically lowering the overall cost of goods to $500 per dose.
Dr. Wes Wierson added, “Affordability is as important as efficacy in the companion animal market, and winning this NSF Phase IIB grant is a critical enabling supplement to our current funding that lets us keep pushing forward on multiple milestones rather than pick one effort. Our CAR-T cell therapy platform for pets uses primary human T cells as a therapeutic modality, so increased scale and quality control in our manufacturing process for pets also readies a transition to the other end of the leash when our assets are ready. This is a win for pets now, and a win for people next.”
This NSF Phase IIB award brings LEAH Labs’ total funding from NSF to $1,893,708 across a $225,000 NSF SBIR Phase I, a $973,924 NSF SBIR Phase II, and a $194,784 NSF Technology Enhancement for Commercial Partnership. All awards have met their milestones, increasing the value of LEAH Labs’ proprietary platform technologies, derisking the technical hurdles towards commercialization, and allowing LEAH Labs to hire and employ PhD-level research scientists in the Minnesota Bioeconomy.
“We are grateful to NSF and American taxpayers for funding innovative research like ours that stimulates the economy and pushes America’s technological supremacy forward.” Dr. Wierson said.
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About LEAH Labs
LEAH Labs is building living therapies for pets first, and their people next. We’re first focused on bringing to market Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell therapy to disrupt the current treatment paradigm for dogs with B cell lymphoma, the clinical analog of CAR-T curable non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans. Underpinning LEAH Labs’ ability to bring CAR-T to dogs is a patented, virus-free gene integration technology, GeneWeld. Leveraging our core technology, an unmet need for improved canine cancer therapies, a favorable regulatory environment under the USDACVB, a network of innovative veterinary oncologists, and pet owners eager for the best possible
care, LEAH Labs is uniquely positioned to rapidly iterate and innovate on CAR-T cell therapy in natural cancers like no one else in the world. This approach allows for a 1,000x reduction in CART cell therapy development and clinical trial costs when compared to FDA-regulated cell therapies in human patients and will ultimately lead to rapid identification of better therapies that impact both ends of the leash.
About the NSF’s Small Business Programs
America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $2 million to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $9 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. For more information, visit seedfund.nsf.gov.
