Our Science Behind the Pet Health Tests

Our Science

Understanding the metabolic state

Metabolomics is the group of small molecules found in living organisms with a size of less than 1,500 Dalton, also known as metabolites [1]. These molecules or metabolites include amino acids, nucleic acids, fatty acids, vitamins, and hormones, as well as environmental contaminants, food additives, toxins and metabolites produced by the gut microbiome. Over 100,000 metabolites have been identified [2], and over 1,000,000 are expected to still be identified (dark metabolome) [3].

Our Founders

Fayzan Chaudhry

Fayzan Chaudhry is an accomplished PhD candidate specializing in the field of computational biology. He is a passionate animal lover and dedicated to helping pet parents care for their pets.

Shan Zhao

Shan Zhao is a physician and serial entrepreneur. He previously founded Basepaws for pet DNA testing and now is helping pet parents better understand four-legged family members in a whole different way.

Our Advisors

Evan Antin

Evan is a world renowned veterinarian. He enjoys traveling to exotic locations and treating animals from dogs to baboons.

Jan Krumsiek

Jan is a professor of metabolomics with over 10,000 citations. Jan is an innovative and results-driven biological data scientist with over 15 years of experience.

Soumith Chintala

Soumith led and co-created PyTorch machine learning framework managing over 100 engineers at Meta. He has over 90,000 citations on his published work in artificial intelligence.

Emily Heyward

Emily is the cofounder of Red Antler branding agency and a thought leader in design. She is the author of Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One.

Hair Metabolomics

Hair metabolomics is a relatively emerging field of research compared to other types of metabolomics, such as blood or urine metabolomics. It has gained attention in recent years for its potential to provide unique insights into an individual's metabolic history, particularly in terms of exposure to specific substances over time.

Mass Spectrometry

We utilize state-of-the-art Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry equipment with a triple quadrupole mass spectrometry detector. Our solutions and techniques have been verified in leading publications to detect exogenous exposures and endogenous small molecules or compounds. We have multiple PhD’s on the team.

Methodology/Interpretation

We have a standardized method of collection, processing, reference standards, data normalization techniques, and standard operating procedures to improve the quality and reliability of our data. We use established metabolites in the literature as well as our own novel metabolite in development to create risk models of disease and conditions.In interpreting the report it’s important to recognize that high risk to disease may be skewed heavily by one metabolite and in certain cases will not be fully accurate. Our methodology and training data size is constantly improving. We only provide evidence based recommendations that are vet reviewed based on the latest literature and clinical practices.