Funding profile · Veterinary biotech

LEAH Labs

A grant and crowdfunding backed company with no priced institutional round on record. Two Wefunder SAFE campaigns and roughly $1.9 million in federal grants make up its disclosed capital, and no new SEC filing has appeared since 2019.

$1.94MFederal SBIR and STTR grants on record, NSF and NIH, 2020 to 2025
$866KTotal raised on Wefunder across two SAFE campaigns, platform-reported
$1.07MCeiling of the first SAFE round, Form C and Form D, 2019
$535KCeiling of the second SAFE round, Form C, 2021

Data as of September 25, 2026. Company-reported and platform-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Nov 2018 Incorporated as LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories Inc Not applicable Not applicable SEC EDGAR
Mar 2019 Y Combinator, Winter 2019 $150,000 standard YC seed Y Combinator Independent
Aug to Dec 2019 Wefunder SAFE round 1 $1,070,000 ceiling; $53,000 sold on the Form D tranche 2 accredited investors (Form D); remainder via Wefunder Reg CF Form C + Form D
By Mar 2020 Angel round closed $900,000 total, incl. $468,000 via Wefunder Angels, not individually named Independent reporting
2020 NSF SBIR Phase I $225,000 National Science Foundation SBIR.gov
Mar 2021 to Apr 2022 Wefunder SAFE round 2 $535,000 ceiling; $270,060 reported raised as of Apr 2021 Crowd investors via Wefunder Reg CF Form C
2022 NIH/HHS SBIR Phase I $337,433 National Institutes of Health SBIR.gov
2023 NSF SBIR Phase II $973,924 National Science Foundation SBIR.gov
2024 NIH DOGS grant supplement, project 3R37CA266344-02S1 Amount not disclosed National Cancer Institute Company-stated
2025 NIH/HHS SBIR Phase I, c-MYB project $400,000 National Institutes of Health SBIR.gov

What the filings show

LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories Inc · Form D · filed Dec 3, 2019

First sale
Nov 7, 2019
Security
Option to acquire (consistent with a SAFE)
Offered
$1,070,000
Sold
$53,000 · $1,017,000 remaining
Investors
2 · average about $26,500
Minimum investment
$1,000
Exemption
Rule 506(c)
Related persons
Wesley Wierson (executive officer, director)
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001782895

LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories Incorporated · Form C · filed Aug 23, 2019

Security
Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE), $1 units
Target
$100,000 · Maximum $1,070,000
Deadline
Dec 9, 2019
Portal
Wefunder Portal LLC, 6.0% of the raise as compensation
Financials disclosed
Total assets $149,610 (prior FY $523); long-term debt $275,355; 2 employees
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001782895

LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories Incorporated · Form C · filed Mar 15, 2021

Security
Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE), $1 units
Target
$100,000 · Maximum $535,000
Deadline
Apr 30, 2022
Portal
Wefunder Portal LLC, 3.75% of the raise as compensation
Financials disclosed
Total assets $387,593 (prior FY $228,643); net loss $232,999 (prior FY $276,139); long-term debt $879,467 (prior FY $504,923); revenue $0 both years; 2 employees
Signed by
Wesley Wierson (CEO); Stephen Carl Ekker (director)
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001782895

Reading the filings

  1. Every round on file is a SAFE, not priced equity.The 2019 Form D and both Form C filings describe a Simple Agreement for Future Equity. No filing shows priced preferred stock, and no Form D has been filed since 2019.
  2. The accredited-investor tranche was small.The Form D shows only $53,000 sold to 2 investors, about $26,500 each, against a $1,070,000 ceiling. Most of that round’s money moved through the Reg CF, Wefunder side of the offering instead, which files as Form C rather than Form D.
  3. Press totals and filing ceilings roughly line up, but not exactly.The Star Tribune reported almost $480,000 raised on Wefunder and more than $1 million total by April 2020, close to the $1,070,000 ceiling in both 2019 filings. Twin Cities Business separately put the angel round at $900,000 closed by March 2020, including $468,000 via Wefunder, a slightly different figure for what looks like the same round.
  4. Recorded debt has grown faster than recorded assets.By the 2021 Form C, long-term debt stood at $879,467, more than double the $387,593 in total assets. That liability most likely reflects outstanding SAFE notes booked as debt rather than equity, since SAFEs convert only in a future priced round.
  5. Grants now outweigh crowdfunding.SBIR.gov lists $1,936,357 in federal Phase I and Phase II awards from NSF and NIH, 2020 to 2025, more than double the $866,493 Wefunder says it raised from 1,104 investors across both campaigns.
  6. No SEC filing has appeared since 2019.Filing history runs C (2019), C-AR (2020), C (2021), C-AR (2021), C-AR (2023), with the sole Form D also from 2019. No newer Form D or C has been found, so capital raised since 2023, if any, is unreported to the SEC or was not a Regulation D or CF offering.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Regulatory Company says its CAR-T platform is regulated by the USDA Center for Veterinary Biologics rather than the FDA. No public license record found. Company-stated
Clinical trials Three partner sites listed as actively enrolling: University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, University of Missouri. A matching University of Minnesota trial listing exists but does not name LEAH Labs. Company-stated, partly corroborated
Federal grant support $1,936,357 in NSF and NIH SBIR/STTR awards, 2020 to 2025, plus an undisclosed-amount NIH DOGS grant supplement announced 2024. Public record
Team size 2 employees per 2019 and 2021 Form C filings; 4 employees per the current SBIR.gov listing. Public record
Revenue $0 reported in both fiscal years disclosed in Form C filings (FY2019 and FY2020). Public record

What to watch

  • Whether a new Form D or a priced round appears; none has been filed since 2019.
  • Results, and any publication, from the NIH funded DOGS PET-imaging trial with the University of Missouri.
  • Confirmation of a USDA Center for Veterinary Biologics conditional license; the company’s own 2019 materials targeted Q2 2024.
  • Revenue disclosures, once trial enrollment converts into a paying commercial product.

The LEAH Labs story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • FidoCure: Similar focus. A tumor sequencing service that routes dogs with cancer toward human targeted therapy drugs, compounded to canine doses
  • Perception Biosystems: Also in Therapeutics. A Y Combinator company that set out to build a robotic lab so a rare disease gene therapy could be made faster and far more cheaply
  • Kernal Biologics: Also in Therapeutics. A Boston company designing messenger RNA that switches on only inside the cells it is aimed at, now building an in vivo CAR T therapy on that idea
  • Humane Genomics: Also in Therapeutics. A New York biotech engineering synthetic RNA viruses that are designed to infect and kill only cancer cells

Sources

  1. Public recordSEC EDGAR filer submissions, LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories Inc, CIK 0001782895SEC
  2. Public recordForm D, LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories IncSEC · filed Dec 3, 2019
  3. Public recordForm C, LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories IncorporatedSEC · filed Aug 23, 2019
  4. Public recordForm C, LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories IncorporatedSEC · filed Mar 15, 2021
  5. Public recordSBIR.gov company portfolio, LifEngine Animal Health Laboratories Incorporatedsbir.gov
  6. IndependentLeah Labs using gene editing to develop cancer treatment in dogsMinnesota Star Tribune, Caitlin Anderson · Apr 18, 2020
  7. IndependentLEAH Labs Startup Fetching Fresh Funding for Cancer Treatment for DogsTwin Cities Business, Burl Gilyard · Apr 21, 2021
  8. IndependentNebullam and LEAH Laboratories selected into Y Combinator’s winter cohortClay & Milk, Jake Slobe · Mar 19, 2019
  9. IndependentLEAH Labs company profileY Combinator
  10. InvestorLEAH Labs deal profileCrowdability
  11. CompanyLEAH Labs on Wefunder, campaign pageWefunder (2022 snapshot)
  12. CompanyLEAH Labs Receives SBIR Phase II GrantMedical Alley, Tyler Mason · Oct 2, 2023
  13. CompanyLEAH Labs and University of Missouri Launch Trial Funded by National Cancer InstituteMedical Alley, Katie Lew · Jul 8, 2024

Compiled from SEC, SBIR.gov and other public records and published reports as of September 25, 2026. Form D and Form C notices report offerings under Regulation D and Regulation Crowdfunding; amounts reflect the filing date and may not capture later sales. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in LEAH Labs. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.