Novilytic, LLC

“To grow a great company, you need great people,” said Novilytic’s Chief Executive Officer and Partner Paul C. Dreier, as he explained how he became involved in this technology startup. At Novilytic, that great company began with Fred E. Regnier, PhD, who founded the company. Novilytic’s purpose was to utilize nanotechnology to monitor the quality of lifesaving medicines that are in discovery and development at pharmaceutical companies and that objective remains today. It was not Fred’s first business launch. He co-founded 4 successful analytical science companies before Novilytic, with PerSeptive Biosystems (PBIO), BG Medicine (BBMD) and Quadraspec among them, and he currently serves as Chief Technology Officer at Novilytic.

“Fred is truly a world-famous, world-class analytical chemist, documented as one of the top 20 analytical scientists alive today,” Paul said. “He is co-author of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications in chromatography, proteomics and metabolomics, has been cited in literature hundreds of times, and holds over 50 patents in analytical and diagnostic science.” His educational credentials include degrees earned at Harvard University, MIT, the University of Illinois, and a professorship at Purdue University. “He’s a superstar,” Paul added.

Paul’s introduction to Novilytic was serendipitous. He had recently scaled a previous start-up through to acquisition and was in search of new technology offering him an opportunity to start another venture when a mutual friend suggested he meet with Fred. The two men had much in common; Paul, had been involved in previous start-ups as an investor and an employee. The two also share a preference for technology tied to instruments or analytical tools. Novilytic leverages nanotechnology to help pharmaceutical chemists get products to market much faster and more cost-effectively.

At every stage of development in the pharmaceutical industry, versions of each drug are sampled every week, and each one of those must be individually analyzed. “If a drug is efficacious, you should be able to measure efficacy,” he explained. “You must prove not only that it works, but that it is safe for the human or animal ingesting it. That’s what we do, and we do it in 10 minutes or less.” The Novilytic Proteometer (short for “proteoform meter”) performs analyses of medicinal batches every 10 minutes or less, so process engineers and upstream R&D scientists in drug discovery can quickly identify when a product run or batch is off the mark, saving as much as six or more hours a day and more than $1 million per batch, resulting in increased profits and improved FDA compliance. To put it into context, if 1,000 samples are to be tested, Novilytic’s 10-minute analysis versus an overnight testing procedure can save customers valuable time and money.

“You need multiple people to run every analytical piece of equipment and instrumentation and, at the end of it all, 24 hours later they might have an answer. The Proteometer does everything they can but does it much more accurately in just minutes with only one person,” Paul said. Part of that story is reflected in the company’s canary logo image. “We think of our products as much like the ‘canary in the coal mine,’” Marketing Director Ryan Simpson said, harkening back to an era when canaries went down to the mines with miners because the birds’ sensitivity to carbon monoxide was significantly greater than humans’. “If a canary went ‘belly up,’ that was an alert to miners to exit the mine immediately,” he said. “We provide that same early detection for the pharmaceutical companies’ drug development process. If the testing kit indicates an issue or if something’s seems off, the scientist can quickly put that aside and move on to the next sample saving time and money.”

In 2024, Novilytic entered an exclusive distribution partnership with Avantor, a global supplier of discovery-to-delivery solutions making Novilytic’s Proteometer platform accessible to laboratories across the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. Leveraging Avantor’s extensive distribution network, the collaboration adds global reach to Novilytic’s supply chain.

“Once I learned what Fred was up to and did the market study to develop a business plan, it was clear this was a game-changing technology,” Paul recalled. “It was a chance to replace technology that was 30 years old with something new and innovative. I was all in. We all invested in the company.” They also received outside investment and what Paul called “some great private investors.” Elevate Ventures came onboard, and Purdue Ventures invested twice. “We met our milestones and were on to the next step, seeking the next round of investments. The investors were very pleased to participate because they saw the opportunity for success and continued growth,” Paul said. “Another thing we have here in Indiana is angel investors and venture investors that care about the life sciences sector.”

The Proteometer-L Kit was the first of three Proteometer kits (including Proteometer-CV Kit and Proteometer-UFT Kit) with at least two more in development for release in early- and mid-2026. All models provide more accurate data analysis at significantly faster times than previous methods, eliminating additional testing time in the drug development process. This transformational technology fundamentally changes the production of antibody and protein-based medicines, providing near-real-time molecular structure analysis Paul noted. Cost and time are two large barriers to development and innovation for pharmaceutical products, and Novilytic’s Proteometer Kits reduces both. “The success of our technology is reflected in near-daily requests for Novilytic to develop bespoke solutions for other particular channels using the Proteometer platform,” Paul stated.

Less than five years old, Novilytic’s impact has been validated by no less than Johnson & Johnson through peer-reviewed articles. A household name, Johnson & Johnson has verified the efficacy of the Proteometer platform to the world at large, acknowledging that it is adopting the technology because it has enabled its scientists to accomplish testing so much faster and more accurately.

Indiana, and West Lafayette in particular, were an easy choice to grow Novilytic’s headquarters, and not just because the founders and initial investors were residents there. The benefits were on-going, “When we need to hire another biochemistry scientist or engineer, we get 20 or 30 resumes right away.” Paul said. And it’s an extraordinarily qualified pool of recruits, too. In fact, he added, “Indiana has three of the top five analytical chemistry universities in the whole world. California and England each have another one. The state of Indiana truly is a powerhouse, and there are very few drug or analytical chemistry-based diagnostic tools today that weren’t invested or invented in Indiana. They tease us about being a flyover state. Well, this cornfield is producing and saving a lot of lives every single day! Indiana is the number 1 exporter of health-related tools, and that’s an amazing thing. That is something to be proud of.”

Purdue Innovates and specifically the Purdue Research Foundation have been instrumental in Novilytic’s ability to grow. The company licenses two of its patents from Purdue. “You start there,” Paul noted, “but more importantly, once you’re in that, Purdue Innovates invests in the company. They also do research for the company at substantially less that what we would pay anywhere else in the Midwest — Indianapolis, Chicago or any other major city. We get great laboratory space that is affordable for a startup, and that allows us to hire more people. And providing the ability to use that facility for the limited manufacturing we have right now has a direct impact on our ability to function.”

Indiana’s advantages extend beyond providing an extraordinarily qualified workforce and the benefits of three of the top five analytical chemistry universities in the world. Professional business and creative services on a par with national and international consultants can be found in nearby locations offering competitive pricing and functional production. “We get our packaging and shipping boxes from a company called Indiana Box, and they do a very, very nice job,” he said. “Plus, we don’t have to worry about tariff issues and such. So, yeah, all that helps.” Ryan pointed to the specific details of the packaging used to ship the company’s kits around the world. The canary on the box visually references the “canary’s early warning, and each feather is a different color. Each of those colors designates a different analyte that can be tested with the product. That’s a great conversation starter at a demonstration or a presentation, he added.

“If you look at us, at our footprint, the companies we partner with, the champions who have used our products, it feels like we’re much bigger than we are,” Paul said. “I’m frequently asked if our workforce is 100 or so. But no. We currently have about a dozen. We just hire really smart people, and the right people.” In early 2025, just 12 employees were accomplishing all the goals met, but Novilytic anticipates that number to grow to 40 by the end of 2026. Next on the list: technical product managers. “They’re going to be remote,” Paul said. “But that’s new and exciting growth for us.”