Active Ingredient - Animal Health Attracting Capital

This is the second installment of Active Ingredient. I read an article and answer a few questions about it. It's shorter than the regular episodes. I try to get to the key points of the article - the active ingredient.

This episode is my off the cuff reaction to an article in the Indianapolis Business Journal by Daniel Lee, Animal-health startup BiomEdit advances poultry antibody, lands $20M in funding, grants.

Here is a link to the article:

https://www.ibj.com/articles/animal-health-startup-biomedit-advances-poultry-antibody-lands-20m-in-funding-grants

Let me know what you think of the article and of my take in Active Ingredient.

MUSIC:

Acid Jazz-Kevin MacLeod used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

 

TRANSCRIPT:

You are about to experience the life science effect season 2 brought to you by our presenting sponsor, BPM associate. Extraordinary people's relationships that matter, important change for a better world. The joy of belonging. Life, science, leadership. Hi, it's Steve. Welcome to the life science effect. Today we're going to do another active ingredient, the shorter form off the cuff, less formal. Less prepared feature. Regular feature that we're going to do and I'm going to do a few of these in a row. Just so you guys can get used to them and then we'll go back to some of the regular ones and then we'll mix some of these in. It's going to be fun, but hopefully this gives you more content, more frequently and helps you think just like it helps me. Think. And what we're doing here in case this is your first one of these in active ingredient, I read an article to you know I I've read the article and then I'm going to interview myself about it. So I'm not going to read the article to you. You can go look it up. The link will be in the show notes. Today's article is from the Indianapolis Business Journal and it's by. Daniel Lee. And today, by the way, July 16th, 2025, when I'm recording this and the article is animal health startup Biome edit. Advances poultry antibody lands $20 million in funding and grants. First question is what caught my eye? Well, I just read this and the thing that made me stop scrolling on this one was $20 million is a lot of money and I had been hearing from some people in that world in the startup world that some of the. Investments were kind of drying up, but you look at this one and it's like $20 million boy, that's that's pretty good. It's animal health, which means this is a drug. Well, I'm not sure if they call it a drug, you're going to learn here. One of the things that I that I wanted to get into here was I'm not as familiar with animal health things as I am with the. Human health. So you're going to find that out as I as I read through this. So what caught my eye was $20 million in in funding. That's pretty good and it's a local company. To me it's in Greenfield IN if if you're in the business, you know why Greenfield is important. Elanco Animal Health was headquartered there for a long time. They're moving their headquarters to downtown Indianapolis, but Greenfield IN is where. Eli Lilly and Company put their animal health division when they spun it off and called it Elanco BioMed. It is actually a sort of a joint venture or a a new company that was actually founded by Elenco and a Boston based company called Ginkgo Bioworks. Biome Edit I love how they they come up with these and I want to be in the room when somebody comes up with a name like Biome edit. Anyway, if you're if you work at Biome edit my apologies, but please comment below where you came up with that name. I think I get it by him at it. OK, So what does this drug do this drug which they're calling BE 101. And if it's approved, it's not approved yet. It's still in studies. Their drug will be called Opdivo Ant. And I believe the reason they got their $20 million is they got some preliminary approvals from the United States Department of Agriculture. And they're planning on launching this thing in 2026. It treats something called Clostridium perfringens toxins, which is. It it gets rid of those toxins which cause deadly, necrotic enteritis. In broiler chickens, if those are actually all words, I just read them on my phone screen and I believe what that means is and later in the article they say some flocks that are go untreated. Some as as high as 30% of the flock could die. It results in something like $6 billion in losses every year. So you could see why somebody would want to invest $20 million to help the this company get their product to market when they're addressing a $6 billion total addressable market. So how did that hit me? Well, my first reaction after I read the article was, wow, there's a lot I don't know about the animal. Health. Side of things, it surprised me because they talk about USDA approval and I was sitting here thinking, well, I thought FDA approved animal. Bugs and I'm right about that, except there's a distinction. And if your drug, if your if your treatment is more of a biological product, the USDA regulates it. If it's a sort of synthetic drug like traditional drug, then the FDA regulates it. I didn't know that until I read this. Vertical. I had to go ask my. AI friend, what's the difference? What this? This one happens to be regulated by the USDA. OK. The other thing the the next question, does this feel like a big deal or just noise? I think it's a big deal and part of the reason it's a big deal is it's again $20 million is a lot to get from investors and you know one of the investors, it's a. It was a round that included multiple investors, including Nutreco Agri 0. Z Elevate Ventures, which is an Indiana venture capital company which I've had on the show before. So they're very interesting to talk to, but but tagro bet, Agro Ventures and others. So $20 million, I think that's a big deal. I also think this is kind of a big deal because this particular treatment is different. They're actually saying it's not really an antibiotic, it's more of a probiotic and people more and more want their chicken to not have antibiotics in it. So this one could sort of shift that industry a little bit. How does it connect to what I'm seeing or doing? It might be a stretch however maybe this is one of those remedies for if the you know capital is always looking for somewhere to go, so venture capital is no different. It's looking for somewhere to put its money to increase. You know, to get a return for investors, maybe it'll go to agriculture and and I don't know. Again, I think I've said several times. This isn't my expertise. Would love to, you know, know more about the animal health side of things. But perhaps with some of the uncertainty that we're seeing. And by the way, I guess it was. It was interesting that again, how it connects to what I've been saying lately, they have engaged Diamond Animal Health, which is based in Iowa, to be their contract development manufacturing organization, which means it will be manufactured. It will be developed and manufactured in the US and you know the US is a. Huge producer of chickens so it avoids tariffs. It it's more, you know, politically it's good because it and you know it's an investment in the United States et cetera. So. What would I love to hear someone else say about this? This is huge. I would love someone who's an expert in the animal health side of things to tell me more, so I'd like somebody from either elenco or or cortiva. Maybe not cortiva. They're more on the the seeds and and that side of agriculture and things. But you know, perhaps somebody from that world, I'd love to know what they think about this new they're saying it's not really an antibiotic. Is that accurate or is it really? The A marketing ploy to say oh ours is a probiotic, not an antibiotic. I don't know. And so I would love an expert to weigh in on that. Somebody smarter than me might say $20 million is nothing in the Agri business when you have a product that's been has had these preliminary safety approvals by USDA. Maybe they would say no. It's just natural to put your. There. So if you read the article links in the show notes, tell me what you think. Tell me where I got it wrong. Fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I sure would appreciate it if you like these like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Go to thelivescienceeffect.com. You can e-mail me at Steven dot. [email protected] as always, thanks to BPM associates for sponsoring the show bpm-associates.com and let me know if you like. These. Active ingredient featured episodes. As always, thanks for listening. Stay strong out there.