They're family. Their medicine should be familiar.
Familiar translates proven human medicines into novel therapeutics for the animals who share our lives, designed to reach every pet, through every veterinary clinic.
The opportunity
Our pets get the same diseases we do. They deserve the same breakthroughs.
Dogs and cats develop many of the same cancers, immune disorders, and other serious diseases that affect people, but the medicines available to treat them haven’t kept pace. For families and veterinarians, that means facing devastating diagnoses with too few options.
We believe pets deserve medicines that can change the course of disease. Familiar exists to help make that possible.
Our approach
Built on human science.
Developed for pets.
Familiar takes proven human drug candidates with validated targets and established safety data, and translates them into novel therapeutics for companion animals.
We partner with the pharma and biotech companies that developed these medicines. From there, we take on the veterinary development work: animal-specific research, clinical studies and the path to FDA approval.
And because the biology is shared, the science flows both ways.
Dogs and cats develop these diseases naturally, making companion animal clinical programs a powerful source of early efficacy signal for human drug development.
- Who it's for
- Dogs recently diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma of the spleen
- Where
- University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, Urbana, Illinois
- Study stage
- Pilot study, the first study in dogs, to set the dose and look for early signs the drug helps
FAM-010 is one of 13 programs bringing advances in human medicines to pets.
Work with us
Help turn promising science into new treatments.
Help shape the medicines your patients need next.
Join our clinical-trial network, share an unmet need you're seeing in practice, or connect with our team.
Great science shouldn't stop at one species.
Familiar partners with biopharma, biotech, academic, and technology organizations to translate promising science into new medicines for companion animals.
OUR ORIGIN
A search for one better treatment became a platform.
Lily Iorns
7.2.13 – 10.6.2021
In 2020, our co-founder Elizabeth received the kind of news every pet owner dreads. Her French Bulldog, Lily, had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. As a cancer biologist who had spent her career at the frontier of human oncology, Elizabeth knew what modern targeted therapy could do. But for canine glioma, no such option existed. The standard of care hadn't changed in years.
The experience exposed something larger than one diagnosis. Companion-animal therapeutics has historically attracted a fraction of the R&D investment that human medicine commands. Yet the science is often already there, the targets validated and the mechanisms proven. What's been missing is a focused company to carry those breakthroughs across species and into the clinic.
Together with her long-time collaborator Dan Knox, Elizabeth set out to build that company. They spent more than a decade together building Science Exchange, the R&D orchestration platform used by the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, which was acquired in 2024. That experience taught them how to outsource intelligently and how to run lean, capital-efficient operations at scale.
Familiar is the application of those lessons to a problem they care about deeply: ensuring the next generation of modern medicine reaches the animals who share our lives.
News
The latest from Familiar.
(opens in a new tab)The Underbite
Her dog couldn't get cancer treatment. So she built a company to change that
The Underbite talks with our cofounder about why she started Familiar.
(opens in a new tab)Stuff
30 days to live: How this dog’s deadly diagnosis sparked an $8m idea
Stuff tells the story of Lily, the French Bulldog whose terminal diagnosis inspired our founders to start Familiar.
Familiar Therapeutics Launches with $5 Million Seed to Close the Gap Between Human and Veterinary Medicine
In its first five months, Familiar has built 13 programs for dogs and cats, signed several pharma partnerships, filed a provisional patent and opened two drug development files with FDA CVM.
Follow our progress.
Be the first to hear when new studies open and our programs move forward.