THE ENTREPRENEUR
ANDRIA BEAL, 35
Founder and CEO
EpiPaws, Fort Lauderdale
Andria Beal always wanted to be a scientist. Interested in marine wildlife, she earned her master’s degree at Texas Christian University studying RNA in pipefish. Then she learned about a Ph.D. program focused on marine life epigenetics, an emerging science of how behaviors and environmental factors can influence how genes are expressed over time, at Florida International University in South Florida. “It sounded really cool, and I was into anything related to DNA,” she recalls. In 2016, she dove in, initially studying corals.
At FIU, Beal at first envisioned a future in marine biology, perhaps decoding the mysteries of shark DNA. When a colleague later asked Beal if she could develop an age estimation test for dolphins, she succeeded. “That was the start of all the aging research I would do.”
The experience sparked a broader idea: Could Beal develop and sell similar tests for other animals? The idea simmered until she attended a workshop on research commercialization at StartUP FIU, the university’s entrepreneurship hub. There, she told StartUP FIU Director Bob Hacker that she was thinking of starting an epigenetics lab for animals, and he said that sounded like a nice small business, Beal recalls. But when she said it could be for dogs and cats, he lit up: Pet parents make up a huge market — half of U.S. households have at least one dog, contributing to the $150-billion pet industry. That was the lightbulb moment.
Making the Leap
In 2022, after earning her Ph.D., Beal founded EpiPaws, a Fort Lauderdale-based company that would offer epigenetic testing for dogs and cats. EpiPaws’ initial product would be a test, with a simple mouth swab, that estimates a pet’s age, particularly useful for people who adopt their furry friends from shelters. That’s because many of the 4 million dogs and cats rescued each year have unknown ages or health histories.
Beal launched her own grassroots citizen science research program, setting up booths at local events and dog festivals, offering free age testing in exchange for DNA swabs from pet owners. She mailed kits for samples and gradually built a large enough dataset to develop a reliable age estimation model, all the while conversing with her new customers about ways to better meet their needs. By October 2022, Beal had a working first product and launched the age test with a soft rollout, selling the tests for $96. The official market debut came in January 2023. In 2024, EpiPaws tripled revenue over 2023, all through direct-to-consumer sales, Beal says.
At the same time, her citizen science cohort grew, and so did her valuable dataset. EpiPaws won a Purina Pet Care Innovation Prize, along with $25,000 in launch funding and participation in a Purina bootcamp for pet-industry startups. After that, Beal connected with other large players in the pet industry, including Hills Nutrition and Australia-based fresh pet food brand Lyka; both companies are now engaged in research pilots with EpiPaws.
Health Mapping
While the age test provided the entry point, Beal envisions something bigger: a health monitoring platform informed by the pet’s biological age, the internal pace at which an animal is aging. This fall, EpiPaws plans to launch a test that will estimate the biological age and map it against healthy and unhealthy populations to better understand a pet’s health trajectory.
Longer term, as the dataset grows, “that’s when it will get really exciting,” Beal says. “Our aim is to be able to predict when a health trajectory is headed toward developing a disease … and give customized recommendations, like exercise or diet changes.”
Her own experiences as a pet owner help keep her going. “When I was working on my Ph.D., all four of my dogs were seniors. We tried to keep them healthy, but we were blindsided every single time they got sick, and when it was time to say goodbye, it felt like it came out of nowhere. That was part of the motivation for EpiPaws’ bigger vision.”
Beal, who today lives in a three-dog household, remains a scientist at heart. This year, EpiPaws received a research grant from the Morris Animal Foundation, along with access to blood samples from its Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, a treasure trove of data for refining disease biomarkers.
EpiPaws still runs lean: Beal is the only full-time employee, supported by 11 part-time consultants covering science, sales, marketing, finance and operations.
She credits participation in South Florida startup incubator and accelerator programs — StartUP FIU, Spark Hollywood, The Runway at Florida Atlantic and the Levan Center of Innovation at Nova Southeastern University — for helping her refine her business model and build a team that even includes one of her former Runway mentors. Those programs also helped her realize that the fastest path to market wasn’t through veterinarians, who were slow to adopt new tech, but directly through pet owners, she says.
Americans Love Their Pets
65.1 million:
Households with dogs
46.5 million:
Households with cats
$1,500: Average annual expenses per dog
$152 billion: Amount spent on pets in 2024
97% of pet owners consider their pets to be part of their family.
72% of owners say they actively seek ways to help their pets live longer and healthier lives.
38% of dog owners and 40% of cat owners obtained their pets from an animal shelter or rescue.
Sources: American Pet Products Association, American Veterinary Medical Association, Pew Research Center
What’s Next
The next big milestone is the full launch of the biological age health test, which Beal sees as a key to building the platform for long-term pet health monitoring and identifying markers that can be used as early diagnostics. Beal is also seeking to raise $500,000 this year to fuel R&D, fund more data collection and eventually to build out EpiPaws’ own research lab.
Longer term, Beal believes her company could be acquired by a pet food or pharmaceutical company eager to use EpiPaws’ data-driven insights to improve their products and “go faster and further with what we started,” she says. But for now, she’s focused on translating science to help pets and their people.