Research Portfolio
Pastør21's computational platform — built on three decades of systems biology leadership — enables novel, fundable research across the life sciences.
This page describes research areas in which Pastør21 is actively pursuing or has capacity to pursue Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding in collaboration with federal agencies.
Each research area below is powered by the same core technological foundation: genome-scale modeling, multi-omic data integration, and explainable AI. Pastør21 translates decades of academic systems biology research into computationally rigorous, commercially-relevant tools.
Constraint-based reconstruction and analysis (COBRA) across organisms — from pathogens to mammalian cell lines — enabling mechanistic, whole-cell simulation.
Simultaneous analysis of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data layers to capture system-level biological behavior.
Machine learning models grounded in biological mechanism — producing interpretable outputs suitable for regulatory review and clinical or industrial decision-making.
Six active or emerging research domains in which Pastør21 is positioned to pursue SBIR Phase I and Phase II funding.
Pastør21 builds on pioneering genome-scale models of the human red blood cell — among the first complete whole-cell computational reconstructions. These models integrate metabolomics and proteomics to predict RBC storage lesion, transfusion outcomes, and metabolic vulnerabilities in hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell disease.
Key Capabilities
Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells are the dominant production chassis for biopharmaceuticals, yet their metabolic behavior remains poorly understood at a systems level. Pastør21 applies genome-scale modeling to CHO cell lines to optimize recombinant protein and monoclonal antibody yield, reduce metabolic byproduct accumulation, and accelerate cell line development.
Key Capabilities
StrainCAD is a computational strain design platform that applies constraint-based modeling and evolutionary algorithms to identify optimal gene knockouts, overexpressions, and heterologous pathway insertions for metabolic engineering objectives. The platform dramatically reduces the experimental search space for strain optimization across industrial and therapeutic applications.
Key Capabilities
Pastør21 integrates genome-scale metabolic models with network pharmacology and AI-driven compound prioritization to accelerate early-stage drug discovery. By simulating the metabolic consequences of target inhibition across human cell models, we identify candidate compounds, predict off-target effects, and rank drug combinations — reducing costly wet-lab screening cycles.
Key Capabilities
The microbiome represents a tractable target for next-generation therapeutics, but rational design of probiotic strains remains constrained by limited mechanistic understanding. Pastør21 applies systems biology to characterize and engineer commensal organisms — modeling their metabolic interactions with host epithelial and immune cells, and optimizing strains for survival, colonization, and therapeutic metabolite production.
Key Capabilities
Leveraging deep expertise in E. coli genome-scale modeling, Pastør21 develops humanized E. coli strains that express human metabolic pathways — enabling scalable, cost-effective screening of drug candidates, enzyme variants, and pathway designs that would otherwise require costly mammalian cell culture. This platform bridges computational predictions with rapid experimental validation.
Key Capabilities
760+ peer-reviewed publications across the founding team, spanning every research area listed on this page.
Active affiliations with UC San Diego, King's College London, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology provide world-class collaborative infrastructure.
Prior NIH and NIAID funding, 40+ U.S. patents, and multiple spin-out companies demonstrate a clear path from research to commercial application.
We welcome inquiries from federal program officers, academic collaborators, and industry partners interested in joint SBIR submissions or research partnerships in any of the areas described above.
For our primary infectious disease and clinical diagnostics platform, please visit the main Pastør21 AI site.
info@p21ai.com