Startups to Watch 2026: St. Louis biotech startup adds environmental chemical testing to its research services
Story Highlights
- Panome Bio provides proteomics and metabolomics data to pharmaceutical companies.
- Six of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies work with Panome Bio.
- The company will launch comprehensive exposomics testing capabilities this year.
Founders: The company was founded by Gary Patti (the Michael and Tana Powell Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds appointments in the Departments of Chemistry, Medicine, and Genetics), Tom Cohen, Edward Weinstein, and David Smoller.
What it does: Panome Bio, located at BioGenerator Labs inside Cortex, is a contract research organization that focuses on delivering “proteomics” and “metabolomics” data to our academic, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical company customers. Researchers who come to us want to understand what proteins and metabolites are found in their samples, and they are working with everything from R&D samples through clinical samples from patients. Knowing the protein and metabolite profiles allows researchers to understand more about how a drug works and even which patients it works on.
Major accomplishments and/or milestones achieved: When Panome Bio started, with an exclusive license for the Next-Generation Metabolomics technology from Washington University, we began by analyzing metabolites in blood and tissue. Since then, we have expanded our capabilities to allow us to handle hospitals’ archival samples and even dried blood spots. We’ve automated our sample-preparation capabilities in order to be much higher throughput. And we’ve added Discovery Proteomics to our portfolio. This type of very broad coverage is why six out of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies are already working with us.
What’s next? Until now, Panome Bio has been focused on “endogenous” metabolism and biochemistry – small molecules that your body makes, such as glucose and amino acids (as well as thousands of others). We are going to have a major addition this year by adding the capability to measure chemical exposures – what is in your blood or your tissue as a result of your exposure to the environment. This includes herbicides, insecticides, “forever chemicals”, PCBs, and all sorts of carcinogens. An individual’s exposure to environmental chemicals not only impacts their health, but also their likelihood of getting certain diseases and of responding to certain drug therapies. This field of science is called “Exposomics,” and Panome Bio will be the first contract research organization to offer a comprehensive exposomic assay for researchers.
Year founded: 2022
No. of employees: Panome Bio has approximately 20 full-time employees. This includes people in marketing, research and development, operations and sales. Over half of our employees are located here in St. Louis and over half of our employees hold a PhD in a scientific field.
Capital raised: About $12 million in two rounds since 2023
Notable investors: Major investors include Telegraph Hill Partners and Biogenerator Ventures.