Pharmaceutical Technology

How to Turn Human Health Treatments into Blockbuster Veterinary Drugs

Innovation in veterinary health has traditionally come from the R&D pipelines of parent human pharmaceutical companies with some of these human-derived compounds turning into blockbuster animal health drugs.

The path to market is considerably shorter and cheaper in Animal Health, meaning that instead of taking up to 15 years and $2.5 billion to get a human drug approved, the veterinary health route can take two thirds of the time at one twenty-fifth of the cost.

More and more companies are starting to licence their human-derived drugs to veterinary health companies, giving them an additional revenue stream for half the cost. In addition to these lucrative dealings, many human biotechs are entering into research collaborations with some of the largest animal health companies which in turn allow them to not only de-risk their human products more effectively, but reap many financial benefits from these collaborations.

Kisaco Research’s latest report looks at a selection of these human drugs that have hit the big-time within the animal health industry, with major benefits to both parties. View the report here.

Translating Human Medicine into Animal Health: Bulldozing the Misconceptions

External Innovation teams at animal health companies are eager to connect with innovators in human medicine and technology in order to tackle areas of unmet medical need that exist in veterinary medicine, but human biotechs are apprehensive about making this jump.

Kisaco Research interviewed tens of human biotech companies to discover what the most common misconceptions are and how we can overcome them. Read the full report here.

The three reoccurring questions they encountered were:

Can my human product be applied?
Is there real market opportunity?
Will it negatively impact my human programme?

What they found from their research is that the benefits are huge for both the human and animal companies involved, and the biggest plusses for human-focused biotechs are:

Earning money from the veterinary space while waiting for FDA approval in human patients;
Generating additional revenue from existing products through veterinary collaboration;
Turning previously ‘shelved’ or ‘failed’ products that had adverse effects in humans into success when the product is well tolerated in animals.

Human Biotech & Animal Health Business Partnering Summit aims to bring companies together from both industries to discuss these benefits and learn together what the benefits of collaboration can be. Join them with our 10% discount code UBM10 in Boston this April 9th.

Want to Increase ROI? Collaborate with an Animal Health Company

In recent years, more and more human-focused biotechs have identified the commercial and scientific benefits of translating their technology into animal health. It has proven to effectively de-risk their human projects in addition to creating an additional stream of revenue.

Veterinary health companies can bring a product to market faster than human biotechs because they are able to skip pre-clinical studies and test directly in target species, such as dogs or cats:

"We can move from drug lead identification to safety testing and preliminary efficacy studies in about 18 months."

- Mark Heffernan, CEO, Nexvet

In addition, the rapidly expanding market opportunity in veterinary health has driven some companies such as Gilead and RaQualia Pharma, to partner with animal health companies. These partnerships can drive tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of non-dilutive revenue.

Kisaco Research have researched and compiled the top benefits to human biotech companies in their recent report here.

They asked attendees of last year’s Human Biotech & Animal Health Business Partnering Summit what benefits they see for biotech and veterinary medicines companies collaborating:

“Human health can benefit immensely from veterinary studies as many of the diseases seen in animals have a very similar etymology, time course and response to treatments as their human counterpart. Furthermore, development of veterinary therapeutics can be a faster and considerably less expensive path to clinical proof of concept. This can translate more rapidly to human studies.

Already a number of veterinary medicine schools and some veterinary contract research organizations are developing clinical programs of exciting new drug candidates to help the animals they see in their clinics, as well as advancing these new potential therapies into human clinical trials. Since many biotech/biopharmaceutical companies are at the cutting edge of therapeutic innovation it would advance both human and animal health greatly if more collaborations and partnerships were established earlier in the research and development stage."

- Michael G. Palfreyman, Director of the Scientific Advisory Board, Pafos Pharma, LLC

Join them to find out how your company could benefit at this year’s event in Boston on April 9th, 2019, and receive 10% discount on your pass with our code UBM10.

Pediatric, Veterinary Oncologists Call for More Comparative Research

For most people, there isn’t an immediate connection between pediatric and canine cancer—unless you’re an oncologist, or researcher, who works in either of these fields.

Then, the similarities are striking. Pediatric and canine cancer doctors, researchers, health advocates, government officials, and pharmaceutical leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. at the Paws for a Cure Summit, presented by the Canines-n-Kids Foundation, to talk about how they can better work together—in and outside the lab—so that advances can be made in both disease areas. Read the article here.

Merck Animal Health and XL-protein Partner to Produce Biopharmaceuticals for Animals

Following a nearly three-year research collaboration between XL-protein and MSD Animal Health (Merck Animal Health in the United States), the companies announced that they have inked a licensing agreement to develop biologics for animals. All of the product candidates in development have previously been used for human health medications, according to a press release announcing the partnership. Per the terms of the agreement, XL-protein will use its proprietary technology for plasma half-life extension, also known as its PASylation platform, to develop MSD Animal Health targets. MSD Animal Health will retain all of the rights to the drug candidates discovered through the collaboration. Read the article here.

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