Innovation Insights- June 14, 2024
Periodically I’ll share some of the latest developments in animal health including emerging startup companies, noteworthy innovations, trends, and impactful scientific publications. You’ll also get occasional book or podcast recommendations.
I value your input- if you have a newsworthy item or resource you think should be featured, please share it! Let’s keep our finger on the pulse of innovation in animal health together!
In the news
- Pet care startup Supertails secures $15M funding
- Supertails, a pet care startup, raised $15 million in series B financing
- Funds will be used to set up its first offline retail store by the end of Q1 FY25 as well as strengthen its 9 month old private label business
- About Supertails:
- Claims to be the largest teleconsultation provider for pets in India, with over 70,000 online consultations conducted by 20 in house vets.
- Private label division has 3 brands
- Henlo- dry food
- Skaters- accessories
- Scoopy- cat litter (what a great name!)
- Cancan Diagnostics Ltd. launches the first and only commercially available assay to evaluate TMB/MSI in dogs
- I bet you haven’t heard of Cancan Diagnostics, have you? They’re a spinout from the University of Edinburgh that launched in March 2024, offering advanced genomic testing for canine cancer. Their initial test offering was K9-LiquidX, a liquid biopsy test for detecting minimal residual disease (MRD).
- Cancan just announced the launch of their K9-TMB/MSI test. This is an assay that evaluates 499 genes and provides information about tumor mutation burden (TMB) and microsatellite instability (MSI).
- Don’t know what TMB and MSI are? A deep dive on these will follow in a future newsletter, but for now just know that these are important predictive biomarkers in human oncology that are evaluated when considering immunotherapy such as checkpoint inhibitors. This is the first test of its kind in veterinary medicine. Bravo to Maciej and team!
- For those who want to go a little deeper on this now, here’s a joint consensus on recommendations for TMB validation and reporting in human oncology, just released by the Association for Molecular Pathology, College of American Pathologists, and Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.
- Mella Pet Care launches a PiMS partnership integration, appears on Shark Tank
- I watched Mella Pet Care present at the Veterinary Innovation Summit’s pitch contest in 2021 in Kansas City as they introduced their axillary thermometer. Since then they’ve expanded their product line and have integrated with a number of Practice Information Management Systems (PIMS).
- Mella just launched a PiMS partnership integration with Vetspire. As with many other products in vet med, offering seamless integration with the hospital’s PiMS means the staff isn’t doing manual data entry to get device data into patient records. This can make or break a company trying to get its services into hospitals.
- For fun, check out Mella’s recent appearance on Shark Tank.
- Idexx expands Test menu for the Catalyst Platform, including pancreatic lipase for dogs and cats
- Catalyst One is a chemistry analyzer from Idexx currently offering a variety of chemistry panels as well as specialty single slides (CRP, Progesterone, Fructosamine, etc).
- In Fall 2024, the Catalyst will be equipped with pancreatic lipase testing for dogs and cats.
- A nice overview and history of Mars (not the planet)
- When I worked at Antech and told people that we were owned by Mars, I always got the same reaction: You mean, the candy company? Why do they own veterinary businesses? This is a nice and short summary of Mars’ Petcare business segment for any of you that are less familiar with what Mars does in animal health.
- Clinical Trial news: AKC Canine Health Foundation invests $3.6 million in canine cancer research
- We need better cancer treatment options for dogs and cats. To do that we need better diagnostics and we need more data. Even though these grants are small, it’s worth celebrating those doing interesting research in veterinary oncology. Check out these interesting studies being funded:
- Raman spectroscopy for osteosarcoma
- Raman Spectroscopy again? Check out last week’s Innovation Insights where we linked to a study in which Raman spectroscopy was used as a cancer screening tool for dogs. It’s a cheap and fast technology with potential to be point of care. It also makes me hungry every time I read an article about Raman…….
- This project aims to use Raman Spectroscopy to analyze blood of dogs as a potential early diagnosis and monitoring tool.
- Mechanisms of Immunotolerance in Canine Oral Melanoma
- Back to the hot topic of immunotherapy for cancer, this project aims to better understand the microenvironment of canine oral melanoma and its ability to modulate the immune system, comparing it to what we know about human mucosal melanoma.
- Raman spectroscopy for osteosarcoma
- We need better cancer treatment options for dogs and cats. To do that we need better diagnostics and we need more data. Even though these grants are small, it’s worth celebrating those doing interesting research in veterinary oncology. Check out these interesting studies being funded:
- Oxford BioDynamics Develops a multicancer diagnostic liquid biopsy test for dogs
- There’s another new player in the canine multicancer early detection liquid biopsy space. Oxford BioDynamics announces the development of EpiSwitch Specific Canine Blood (EpiSwitch SCB) based on their non-invasive EpiSwitch array platform.
- EpiSwitch SCB is intended for diagnosis of canine diffuse large B cell lymphoma, T zone lymphoma, hemangiosarcoma, histiocytic sarcoma, osteosarcoma, and canine malignant melanoma. The test was validated using 3D whole genome profiling in peripheral blood.
- I don’t know much about the technology or performance and unfortunately the link to their BioRxiv article is broken. I’ll plan to include this technology in my upcoming liquid biopsy review and bring in some experts who can help navigate the various technologies being used so we can better understand them.
- Also, it sounds like they plan to use the nickname “Scooby”, I guess short for “EpiSwitch SCB”? Marketing folks, any thoughts?
Scientific Publications
- Multimodal Generative AI Copilot for Human Pathology
- AI Alert! AI Alert! This one is way too freaking cool. I’m going to have to do a dedicated newsletter just to this alone very soon.
- Faisal Mahmood and his team at MIT introduce PathChat, an AI Copilot specifically built to help users analyze pathology images and answer pathology-related questions. I narrate one of their demos below or you can check out the full clean video here.
- They also have a great linkedin post here.
- This group released PathChat 1 back at the end of 2023. This newer model is much improved with ability to evaluate whole slide images via an interactive viewer.
- Why is this important?
- As I’ll be explaining in my digital pathology series, pathology is an area in which AI is poised to do amazing things. AI imagine analysis models are already in commercial production in veterinary medicine, with many startups and research teams working in this area in both human and vet med.
- I don’t necessarily see a need for pathologists to have an interactive chat like this right now, but the fact that the model can recognize so many image features with this degree of accuracy holds great promise for what AI can do as a copilot. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
- Global status of gene edited animals for agricultural applications
- This is a fascinating overview of gene editing and its applications in agriculture, highlighting those in regulatory review as well as some that have been commercialized globally.
- Why is this important?
- We’re only going to hear more about CRISPR and gene editing applications. This field is moving at a dizzying pace. Start here for a primer and general update if you’re like me and want to stay better informed.
- A critical assessment of using ChatGPT for extracting structured data from clinical notes
- Processing large volumes of data from clinical notes and diagnostic reports is time consuming and expensive. This study evaluated an automated process of extracting structured data from clinical notes using chatGPT 3.5.
- Why is this important?
- Applications like this have potential to serve as a valuable tool in data management and decision-making. Think about:
- ways we could better match patient information with clinical trial critiera
- ways we could facilitate clinical research by accurately extracting data from clinical notes (I bet that gets the attention of a few of you who have worked with this painful process in a clinical trial!)
- ways we could identify trends in large volumes of clinical data, leading to better understanding of disease, regional variability, breed variability, etc.
- Applications like this have potential to serve as a valuable tool in data management and decision-making. Think about:
- High Path Avian Influenza (H5N1) in domestic cats
- You’ve likely seen and heard a lot about high path avian influenza (H5N1) in dairy cattle lately. But did you catch this early release manuscript from the CDC describing fatal infection in cats fed raw milk at affected dairy farms? This isn’t an innovation topic per se, but hey, I run this newsletter and get to pick the topics I think interesting, right?
- Lesions in cows: Cows exhibited reduced milk production and shed virus in milk, but don’t seem to suffer severe disease. Mild and nonspecific changes histologically.
- Lesions in cats: Cats exhibited severe system viral infection resulting in death. Histologically there was severe meningoencephalitis with vasculitis, pneumonia, myocarditis, and chorioretinitis. See these histologic lesions. Yikes!
*****Please note that I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned in this newsletter, nor do I receive any financial benefit from endorsing them. My interest is purely based on their innovative contributions to the industry.*****
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