Industrial bio · Pet health ingredients
Kingdom
A Brooklyn fermentation lab that sells postbiotic powders to pet brands rather than products to pet owners. Two ingredients, five peer reviewed papers, and a second life after the plant based food boom it was founded to serve.
Twenty four dogs and a breath meter
A colony of beagles and small mixed breed dogs, aged two to twelve, eats its usual dry kibble. Half the bowls get 150 milligrams of a tan powder stirred in on top. The other half get a placebo powder that looks the same. Nobody in the room knows which bowl is which.
On day zero, day seven and day fourteen, a technician holds a halimeter to each dog’s mouth and reads the concentration of volatile sulfur compounds, the molecules that make dog breath smell like dog breath. A second person scores the smell by nose on a ten point scale.
By day fourteen the placebo dogs are worse. Their sulfur readings have climbed 38 percent. The treated dogs have not moved at all. The gap between the groups is 26 percent, at P = .04.
That trial, published in the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry in May 2026, is one of five peer reviewed papers Kingdom has to its name. It is also an accurate picture of the business. Kingdom sells neither a supplement nor a brand. It sells a powder that other companies put into their own products, and the folder of clinical paperwork that comes with it.
The gap it is aimed at
Pet supplements are a claims business. Ingredient suppliers have historically built molecules for humans or for livestock and sold the leftovers sideways into dogs and cats, without running a trial in the species that would eat it.
Kingdom says it found that out the slow way. “What we learned was that for decades, most ingredient companies had designed their ingredients for humans or livestock first, and then cross-sold them into pets. Usually with little scientific justification, and no clinical evidence of actual efficacy in dogs or cats.”
The disease burden is real, though the numbers move depending on who is citing them. Pet Food Processing, covering the company in May 2026, put it at 70 to 80 percent of pets developing an oral health issue by age three. Kingdom’s own product page says 90 percent of dogs have periodontal disease by age two.
Two researchers from Columbia
Kendall Dabaghi and Ravi Sheth met over microbiome research at Columbia University in 2017. Dabaghi had already sold two consumer technology companies and came to the lab for personal reasons: years of gut and immune trouble that conventional medicine had not fixed, and fermented food that did. Sheth was a PhD candidate on an NSF and Hertz fellowship, with first author papers in Science and Nature Biotechnology and a summer at the Gates Foundation on childhood malnutrition.
They incorporated in Delaware in 2019 and went through Y Combinator in the summer 2020 batch. The name came from taxonomy. “The name is a nod to biological taxonomy, where ‘kingdom’ is one of the broadest classifications of life, including the microorganisms that our entire company focuses on.”
From plant based cheese to dog breath
The first version of the company was a food ingredients company, and a well funded one. In October 2021 Kingdom Supercultures announced a $25 million Series A led by Shine Capital, with Valor, Tao, Lux, SALT, Reference and Digitalis, plus personal checks from the founders of Daring Foods, Good Culture, Hungryroot, RXBAR and Waterloo. The pitch was plant based yogurts and cheeses that tasted like dairy, low alcohol beers, and fermented components on the vegan menu at Eleven Madison Park.
None of that is on the website now. The pet business grew out of the customer calls. The two products today are Superculture Pet Oral, a Pediococcus pentosaceus and Bacillus subtilis fermentation product aimed at the microbes behind bad breath and plaque, and Superculture Pet Immune, an indole rich Pediococcus acidilactici fermentation product aimed at itching, coat quality and stool consistency. Three customers are named: Dinovite, Native Pet and Woof.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Halitosis trial, 2025 | A Novel Postbiotic Reduces Canine Halitosis, Animals, May 29, 2025, PMID 40509062. 24 dogs, 14 days, 250 mg topper. Sulfur compounds fell 22 percent from baseline by day 7 (p = 0.002) and ran 27 percent below placebo (p = 0.004). | Public record |
| Itching trial, 2025 | An Indole-Rich Postbiotic Reduces Itching in Dogs, Animals, Jul 9, 2025, PMID 40723482. 30 dogs, 28 days. Accelerometer scratching down 20 percent from baseline (p = 0.032), owner scored itch down 27 percent against placebo (p = 0.02), gut Shannon diversity up 4.6 percent (p = 0.043). | Public record |
| Oral microbiome, 2026 | A Postbiotic Positively Shifts the Canine Oral Microbiome, Journal of Veterinary Dentistry, Apr 15, 2026, PMID 41984040. Ten dogs, five per arm, 7 days. The fall in hydrogen sulfide producing colonies was a trend, not significant (P = .06). The microbiome shift was the significant result. | Public record |
| Dose validation, 2026 | Canine Halitosis Improved With a Postbiotic, same journal, May 7, 2026, PMID 42095656. 24 dogs at a lower 150 mg dose. Placebo sulfur rose 24 percent by day 7 and 38 percent by day 14; the treated group held flat, a 26 percent difference (P = .04). | Public record |
| Fifth paper | A Novel Postbiotic Improves Stool Consistency in Dogs, journal Pets, announced May 6, 2026. Half the treated dogs improved on the Waltham Fecal Score against 10 percent on placebo. PubMed searches run Sep 22, 2026 did not return it. | Not indexed |
| Who ran the studies | Every author on all four indexed papers lists Kingdom, Brooklyn, as their only affiliation. No academic or veterinary school co-author appears, and no study of either ingredient by an unaffiliated group was found. | Not found |
| Study count | Totals differ by page: 12 completed or in progress on the website, 10 in the February 2026 blog, 11 on the NASC listing in August 2026, 9 completed and 3 in progress in a September 2026 interview. | Counts differ |
| Registered trials | The only studies registered under the sponsor name Kingdom are two human trials of NOBO, a yeast fermentation deodorant, run at the company’s own Brooklyn address. NCT07547761, 5 participants, completed April 2026. NCT07726238, 16 participants, completed July 2026, titled a third proof of concept study. No second is registered. | Public record |
| Regulatory footing | Both ingredients are described as covered by AAFCO definitions and on the EU QPS list. Kingdom is on the National Animal Supplement Council Preferred Supplier list, a status re-earned each year. | Certifier |
| Patents | Two published US applications, 17/515358 and 17/687563, on fermented beverages, list Ravi Sheth under Imvela Corp. The company states three granted patents across seven families; those grants were not located. | Partly verified |
| Federal grants | Food Dive reported in 2021 that the founders started with an NSF SBIR grant. NSF award searches for the company name and for the word superculture return nothing, and NIH RePORTER returns nothing. | Not in the award record |
Read plainly: Kingdom has done more real clinical work than this category is used to, and has put it through peer review rather than leaving it in a sales deck. The trials are small, ten to thirty dogs. Several headline results are differences against a worsening placebo rather than improvements from baseline. And the company designed, ran, funded and wrote up every one of them. Independent replication is the missing piece, not rigor.
What to watch
- Whether anyone outside Kingdom runs a trial on either ingredient.
- The human line. Two deodorant trials finished in 2026, and one is called a third proof of concept study, implying a second that was never registered.
- Named brands. Three are public, dozens are claimed.
- Cat data. One feline study is described as complete; none of the five published papers covers cats.
- A securities filing behind the $40 million the company now says it has raised.
In their words
“Instead of taking another thousand years to randomly stumble upon the collection of microorganisms that will turn oat and coconut into a really compelling plant-based yogurt, we can speed through these combinations and start to span that really complex design space very quickly in the lab using computation and different experimental approaches.”
Kendall Dabaghi, co-founder and CEO, Food Dive, 2021 · Independent
“Willy Wonka factory for natural foods”
Ravi Sheth on the Brooklyn lab, Food Dive, 2021 · Independent
“The truth is, when we started Kingdom in 2019 we never thought we’d be making pet ingredients.”
Company blog, February 2026 · Company
“Probiotics deliver the organism itself. Postbiotics deliver the beneficial compounds those microorganisms produce.”
Ravi Sheth, Canine Culture interview, 2026 · Interview
“We achieved more than 2.5 times stronger itch reduction than any biotic study on record”
Ravi Sheth, PetfoodIndustry, August 2025 · Independent
“We’ve now completed 9 double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized studies in under three years, with 3 more in progress and 5 peer-reviewed publications out.”
Kendall Dabaghi, Pulse 2.0, September 2026 · Interview
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordPubMed 40509062, A Novel Postbiotic Reduces Canine Halitosis
- Public recordPubMed 40723482, An Indole-Rich Postbiotic Reduces Itching in Dogs
- Public recordPubMed 41984040, A Postbiotic Positively Shifts the Canine Oral Microbiome
- Public recordPubMed 42095656, Canine Halitosis Improved With a Postbiotic
- Public recordClinicalTrials.gov NCT07547761 and NCT07726238
- Public recordForm D, Imvela Corp., CIK 0001841793
- Public recordTrademark 90878768, KINGDOM SUPERCULTURES, owner Imvela Corp
- IndependentSpeeding up serendipity
- IndependentMicrobial cultures supplier raises $25 million
- IndependentKingdom Superculture Pet Oral shown to support dog oral health
- InterviewBeyond Probiotics: Rethinking Pet Health from the Microbiome Up
- InterviewInterview with co-founder and CEO Kendall Dabaghi
- CompanyKingdom Supercultures Raises $25 Million Series A
- CompanyKingdom website, product and blog pages
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
