Animal Health | Headline Analysis
US start-up Vetigenics has set up companion animal therapy partnerships with leading veterinary medicine players. However, at the recent Animal Health, Nutrition & Technology Innovation USA conference in Boston, the company told S&P Global’s head of animal health Joseph Harvey about efforts to build its own pipeline of drugs.
Vetigenics first started ramping up its efforts to develop companion animal therapeutics during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this unexpected hindrance, the company secured R&D partnerships and has now started work on its own pipeline of drug candidates.
Adriann Sax, the president and chief executive of Vetigenics, told S&P Global Animal Health: “Together with my fellow founders – Dr Don Siegel and Dr Nicola Mason, who are professors at the University of Pennsylvania – we weathered the initial storm with tenacity, creativity and a shared vision. As a result, we attracted large strategics such as Merck Animal Health and Kyoritsu Seiyaku as partners, advanced three products in clinical trials in pet dogs and another three in preclinical development. The company’s intellectual property portfolio is growing with many important patents pending as well as new intellectual property being generated.
“I think we’ve made tremendous progress and I am proud of what our team has accomplished. We’ve come a long way from sitting within the University of Pennsylvania to the independent company we are today.”
The Philadelphia-based start-up has leveraged its proprietary, entirely canine phage display platform that generates single-chain variable fragments (scFvs) or ‘Canibodies’. These are isolated from canine genetic material, making them 100% canine in origin and structure, minimizing the potential for immunogenicity. Vetigenics’ current clinical trials in pet dogs are for malignant melanoma, urothelial carcinoma and other solid tumors. Ms Sax said the firm’s phage display platform is flexible enough to work beyond the realm of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). It can also function as a growth engine in the biotherapeutic areas of bispecific antibodies, mRNA and CAR-T cells.
Ms Sax pointed out Vetigenics was established after a $2 million Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Cancer Institute enabled it to discover and develop antibodies for use in dogs as a ‘parallel’ patient population for humans. The start-up began identifying new cancer treatments in dogs that could form the basis of new human therapeutics.
However, Ms Sax noted oncology is an incredibly challenging indication and an area where it is hard to raise money in animal health, unlike in human health. So, in addition to outlicensing some of its noncancer targets to partners, the firm is now generating a few of them for its own pipeline.
Towards the start of 2025, Vetigenics secured seed funding to support its pre-clinical candidates. The start-up said the funding reflects the confidence of investors in the firm’s ability to achieve considerable progress in a capital-efficient manner.
Vetigenics is now building a pipeline that covers cancer and chronic diseases. The company is targeting areas such as autoimmune disease, allergy and obesity. Ms Sax suggested the indications are “a bit different to pain and atopic dermatitis” – segments that are already witnessing growing competition among the industry’s top players. She said the firm’s ability to differentiate its pipeline has shown it is “more than just a cancer company”.
As well as progressing its own pipeline, Vetigenics continues to collaborate with multiple partners.Vetigenics describes itself as the discovery engine for generating new antibody therapeutics candidates,while partners take on the validation and development work. The start-up derives upfront research payments, milestones and royalties from its partnerships.
Ms Sax explained: “Early on, we focused on partnerships to validate our platform and generate cash flows. Now, we’re further along we can focus even more on value creation and on our own pipeline.”
Funding despite constraints
Ms Sax noted she has helped start-ups in the human health space secure hundreds of millions of dollars in investment throughout her career. However, she suggested raising money in the animal health sector is “one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done”.
The animal health industry suffers from a lack of traditional venture capital funds dedicated to the sector. This means many young companies require bootstrapping to survive in their early years.
“There is not a large group of investors supporting animal health,” Ms Sax observed. “We’ve had to rely on an emotional connection with investors. Many of them have lost a pet to cancer or they’ve had a pet that’s suffered from a chronic disease. These aren’t traditional animal health investors.”
Stephen Lesser is on the board of directors for Vetigenics. He is the chief executive officer of Tairbhe Ventures, which provides management consulting services to life sciences companies and funds.
Mr Lesser has experience investing in animal health and human health start-ups from his time at NovaQuest Capital Management and Leaps by Bayer. He said he has been impressed with “what Vetigenics has been able to do over time with less” – pointing out a $6m funding round in the current economic climate and the continued development its pipeline has been outstanding achievements by a small, world-class team.
The next step for Vetigenics is the recent launch of a combination trial of its VGS-002 (anti-cPD1 mAb) and VGS-001 (anti-cCTLA4 mAb) in pet dogs with a variety of solid tumors referred to as the Checkmate K9 study – the name is taken from the landmark studies in human cancer using dual immune checkpoint therapy.
Ms Sax said the company will conduct a multi-site trial across the US in collaboration with some of the country’s top veterinary oncologists, who urged Vetigenics to commence the study due to the impact this targeted combination had in human oncology. Vetigenics is the only business in the animal health sector with both antibodies enabling their combination evaluation, according to Ms Sax.
Analyst Contact Details: Joseph Harvey