Animab is building a range of oral monoclonal antibody products against various gastrointestinal pathogens that will improve the health, wellbeing and performance of production animals

Despite the fact that disease control in production animals has made great progress, there are significant unmet needs. For one, vaccines cannot cover all pathogens and still leave immunity gaps. Moreover, there is a strong commitment to further reduce the use of antimicrobials without compromising health and wellbeing of animals and food safety. Fianlly, animal production should reduce the environmental burden and become more sustainable. Animab's solution is to provide first in class, affordable, monoclonal antibodies that can be simply mixed in feed to provide immediate immunity.

The work started as interdisciplinary research within the VIB, VUB and UGent research groups of Prof. Nico Callewaert, Prof. Ann Depicker, Prof. Eric Cox and Henri De Greve, led by Dr. Vikram Virdi. This has resulted in top ranking publications in PNAS and Nature Biotechnology, demonstrating the potential of this technology. To realize the value from this technology for the livestock industry, Animab was incorporated in June 2020, with the aim to translate the findings into a platform technology. Using this platform, Animab is now set to develop and bring to market products to control important livestock diseases. The team is led by CEO Alain Wille, and is composed of Dr. Vikram Virdi as Co-scientific founder and Scientific Director, responsible for the lead product on ETEC caused diarrhea in piglets, Dr. Katrina Koruza as Scientific Director leading the research and development of antibodies against new targets, and completing the team is Dr. Nesya Goris, Technical and Regulatory Director, to steer the project’s clinical development to regulatory approval.

In the next years, Animab aims to bring their lead product to market and to demonstrate the clinical efficacy of several new antibody products against variety of livestock pathogens.