DARO, a biotech startup in Lincoln centered around early disease detection in livestock, announced that it raised a $1.1 million seed round. The company said it plans to use the investment to scale its pilot programs with pork producers and veterinary teams, further develop its disease forecasting and genomics platform and hire more talent.
The funding round was led by Invest Nebraska with additional participation from MOVE Venture Capital, Nebraska Angels and other angel investors.
DARO uses “whole-herd” molecular testing that is non-invasive, said Founder and CEO Kristen Bernhard. Josh DeMers, co-founder and COO, said the technology has a provisional patent, so specifics could not be shared as the company goes through the patent pending process.
“Currently, veterinary clinics can either test individual pigs, litters or pool small groups of 20 to 30, which limits accuracy and early detection,” said Bernhard. “DARO’s platform changes the game by allowing us to test thousands of pigs in a barn at once — while still reliably detecting a single shedding pig.”
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“And we’re doing all of this without ever having to touch a pig.”
Bernhard has a master’s of science in ecology and evolutionary biology from Iowa State University. She said she formed the LLC in 2023 after working as an operations manager at an emerging pathogens and genomics lab through the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). Bernhard said she has experience assisting local and global research programs through UNMC, including wastewater surveillance for the virus that causes COVID-19. Bernhard said she was eager to apply what she learned.
“It was the idea that we should be taking these kinds of systems to all communities, and being in Nebraska, it made sense to work in agriculture and protect our food supply,” said Bernhard. “And swine made a whole bunch of sense because we’re right in the kind of epicenter of swine production – right here in eastern Nebraska.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service, Nebraska had 3.65 million hogs as of Dec. 1, 2024, ranking the sixth largest herd in the country. Hog sales in the United States totaled $36.4 billion in 2022, with the top sellers being Iowa, Minnesota and North Carolina. Nebraska ranked fifth, contributing around $2 billion.
Bernhard said the push she received to go from a lab to a LLC came from the support she experienced in the Nebraska startup community, such as with her friendship with Flywheel and Workshop Co-founder Rick Knudtson. DARO has utilized resources within the state, like the LaunchLNK Grant Program and The Combine. The company is currently based in the BioTech Connector on Nebraska Innovation Campus.
When asked if DARO would expand outside of the pork industry, Bernhard said the company would focus on pigs for now.
“But DARO is a population-wide pathogen surveillance company,” said Bernhard. “And we believe all living communities benefit from having access to the earliest disease data possible.”
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