Innovation Insights- September 10, 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!
Video Summary, Click to Play!
Summary
In the News:
World-first lung cancer vaccine trials launched across seven countries
Inspire Veterinary Partners Announces Non-Binding Acquisition Proposal of Vetsie.ai
How an animal health leader’s $130M investment in KC will boost its fight against canine parovirus
Companion Protect Raises $20.25M Series A Extension
Korea’s SK Telecom expands AI-based veterinary care service to Southeast Asia
Science stuff:
Pathogenomics for accurate diagnosis, treatment, prognosis of oncology: a cutting edge overview
Evaluating artificial intelligence–enhanced digital urine cytology for bladder cancer diagnosis
In the news
World-first lung cancer vaccine trials launched across seven countries
- An mRNA vaccine containing tumor antigen from NSCLC is being used to prime the immune system to fight cancer cells expressing these antigens
- This is a phase 1 clinical trial rolling out in the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Turkey.
- Why does this matter?
- This is an exciting new area of immunotherapy to keep an eye on and I think we’ll continue to see more work in this area.
- In a prior newsletter, I introduced the company Calviri and discussed their VACCS clinical trial and the novel approach of using common neoantigens across multiple cancer types for potential use as both a preventative and therapeutic cancer vaccine. I continue to look forward to seeing the data from their clinical trial!
- Saiba animal health has a platform that uses virus-like particles in a therapeutic vaccine approach designed to create an immune response against disease-associated proteins.
- Saiba’s platform is intended to target chronic diseases such as allergy, inflammation, and pain.
Why does this matter?
- Therapeutic companies in animal health are eager to find ways to treat chronic disease in pet, with much interest in monoclonal antibody and immunotherapy. See a few of the following news articles that highlight other players in the space.
- Better Choice Company is a pet health and wellness company with a portfolio of pet products under the Halo brand.
- SRx Health Solutions operates one of the largest specialty pharmacy networks in Canada with 35 specialty pharmacy locations, 40 specialty health/infusion clinics, 4 clinical trial sites, and 2 wholesale distribution facilities.
Inspire Veterinary Partners Announces Non-Binding Acquisition Proposal of Vetsie.ai
- Inspire Veterinary Partners announced that it is pursuing acquisition of Vetsie,ai, an AI software platform that offers diagnosis/treatment assistance, medical insights, and streamlines administrative tasks like discharge instructions.
- Vetsie.ai is backed by Leap Venture Studio-Mars Petcare, R/GA ventures, Michelson Found Animals Foundation, First Fund VC, and White Hibiscus Capital.
Why does this matter?
- This field of AI-applications for vet hospitals is starting to get crowded. It’s good to keep tabs on which ones are getting attention.
- Side note: In a future newsletter I’ll compile a list of companies working in this space. If you are one of those companies and would like to be included, please message me to make sure I’m aware of you!
- This accelerator program has selected 11 animal health startups for the fall 2024 cohort. Check out the company list and see some startups you may not have run across yet.
How an animal health leader’s $130M investment in KC will boost its fight against canine parovirus
- Elanco is making Elwood, KS their flagship location for future monoclonal antibody manufacturing.
- Elanco currently manufactures and ships its canine parovirus monoclonal antibody from Elwood. This move is an investment in the location for their future monoclonal pipeline.
Why do this matter?
- The article mentions that they are one of only two companies offering monoclonals on the market today, but remember that last month Dechra announced their acquisition of Invetx, a startup focusing on a platform for discovery, development, and manufacturing of veterinary monoclonal antibodies.
Companion Protect Raises $20.25M Series A Extension
- Companion protect is a provider of a national B2B2C pet insurance and wellness program administrator.
- Funds are intended to be used to accelerate its continued growth and digital innovations in customer and agent experience.
- Backers included Avanta Ventures, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Old Republic International Corporation, and Stray Dog Enterprises.
- The raise followed a $27M series A in 2023.
- Zomedica expands into Central and South American regions by partnering with Sire Veterinario, S.A.
- Sire Veteirnario, S.A. is a distributor of high end veterinary equipment with 15 years experience, and will be the exclusive distributor for Zomedica in Costa Rica.
Korea’s SK Telecom expands AI-based veterinary care service to Southeast Asia
- Are you aware that SK Telecom has an AI radiology application, X Caliber?
Why is this important?
- Radiology is an area that is ripe for automation, with rich sets of data available for training, and is one of the earliest areas of animal health in which AI models have be in production for some time.
- It’s good to watch this space and this company as there are only a handful of players for a very large global market.
- Akston Biosciences recently sold its veterinary insulin program interests to Dechra, struck an agreement with Purdue University to co-develop an anti-cPD-L1 monoclonal antibody immunotherapy for canine cancer, and is now partnering with Energesis to treat obesity in pets.
Why is this important?
- Obesity is a problem in pets too. The current attention and momentum of Ozempic therapy in humans makes this a hot topic right now, and may hasten the translation of anti-obesity therapy into pets.
Science Stuff
- This paper is a big deal! Unfortunately it’s going to slip most people’s radar because it’s not in a journal most of us read on a routine basis.
- Microsatellite instability is a feature that is commonly used to predict potential response to immunotherapy, with MSI-high tumors responding favorably to inhibitors of the PD-1 pathway.
- Limited studies of MSI has been performed in canine cancer, with many studies using IHC or PCR based methods rather than the more precise and comprehensive NGS approaches now available.
- In this paper the authors evaluate 10 distinct cancer histotypes encompassing 692 tumors, utilizing msiSensor-pro to analyze MSI status and provide a genome-wide perspective on microsatellite instability.
Why does this matter?
- This study provides much needed data regarding MSI status across common canine cancer types, with valuable insight into the ones that might be the best candidates for therapeutic PD-1 blockade (checkpoint inhibitors, think gilvetmab in dogs).
- This study highlights the supreme importance in using available modern diagnostics to not only guide the commercialization and application of immunotherapy drugs in pets, but the important role in plays in picking the best candidates for a drug (ie: precision medicine)
- A reminder that in a prior newsletter we highlighted the launch of Cancan Diagnostics’ K-9 TMB/MSI test, intended to provide important predictive information for patients in which checkpoint inhibitor therapy is being considered.
- I’m excited about studies like this in which AI models evaluating histopathology image data are being used to predict molecular subtypes of various tumors. There’s a lot more information to be mined from images than we realize!
Pathogenomics for accurate diagnosis, treatment, prognosis of oncology: a cutting edge overview
- A really nice review of the current state of pathogenomics.
- Pathogenomics is a burgeoning field which takes a multimodal approach to diagnostics, using AI to develop joint histopathology-genomic models that consider both types of data in its analysis of a pathology specimen.
- This is going to be the focus of an upcoming newsletter, so I’ll refrain from elaborating more here and just let you go read the review!
- In case you didn’t believe me in the articles above, there are lots of studies about pathogenomics happening right now.
Evaluating artificial intelligence–enhanced digital urine cytology for bladder cancer diagnosis
- Bladder cancer is the 6th most common malignancy and 10th most common cause of cancer-related deaths.
- Study evaluated the diagnostic effectiveness of an AI-based platform in reviewing urine cytology for bladder cancer management.
- How the platform works:
- Displays a gallery of thumbnail images of abnormal cells accompanied by statistical data on each cell, including nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio, nuclear size.
- Pathologist can click the cell and view the area around the cell to compare to adjacent cells.
- The pathologist makes the diagnosis based on reviewing the abnormal cells. The model does not provide a diagnosis by itself.
- Results:
- AIxURO improved sensitivity, PPV, and NPV, and also reduced screening time by 52.3%-83.2%
Why Does this Matter?
- This model’s not going into production anytime soon, and isn’t the application the veterinary space is needing right now. However, these are the kinds of studies that push the field into new areas, and I’m excited to see more of these studies that push into new ways of being more accurate and more efficient.
Melanoma of the dog and cat: consensus and guidelines
- a nice basic review of melanoma in dogs and cats
Why is this important?
- If it has Craig Clifford and Phil Bergman’s name on it, you should probably read it.
- Melanoma is complicated. Our understanding of melanoma and how it’s handled diagnostically and treated clinically is important to stay updated on.
- The authors recently identified ~10k correlated regions of systemic interindividual epigenetic variation (CoRSIVs) in the human genome.
- In this study they confirm the presence of CoRSIVs in cattle.
Why is this important?
- CoRSIVs may be useful in predicting and tailoring phenotypic outcomes that boost production efficiency in cattle, and may one day prove to be another biomarker for selection and culling strategies as well as provide opportunities for epigenetic engineering.
Recommended:
Suno AI Music
- This has nothing to do with animal health, but it’s blown my mind this month and I have to share. Way too much fun!
- Hands down the best AI music generator out there
- Check out it out by listening to this song I generated poking fun at the strange toxic culture that sometimes develops in the startup world
*****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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