Bactana Animal Health Completes First Funding Round
New Canaan, CT (PRWEB) March 29, 2017 -- Bactana Animal Health, a company developing natural products aimed at reducing the use of antibiotics and hormones in the world’s food supply through enhancement of the gut microbiota, today announced the closing of its first round of funding.
Investors in the round included Connecticut Innovations, New York-based Sustainable Income Capital Management, LLC and a number of private investors. The company will use the financing proceeds to complete additional studies using its FPS-4™ product platform, hire personnel, establish commercial manufacturing capabilities, and prepare for its initial global product launch.
"It is generally accepted among the scientific community that antibiotic use in animals contributes to human resistance, posing a significant public health threat. FPS-4 promises to deliver safe, effective and inexpensive alternatives to antibiotics—a global addressable market that exceeds $3 billion,” said John Kallassy, chief executive officer of Bactana. “This investment will allow Bactana to further validate our previously published trial results, expand our product pipeline, and begin preparing for commercialization.”
FPS-4 is based on a naturally occurring collection of Pioneer Gut Colonizers™ selected from the Faecalibacterium prausnitzii bacteria species that were initially identified by Bactana’s research team for use in food producing animals.
In a previously published field trial, researchers demonstrated that an FPS-4 treatment administered to calves only at birth was associated with:
- A 13.2 percent increase in weight gain;
- A 46 percent reduction of scours, a devastating digestive disease that affects as many as 23 percent of all dairy calves; and
- A 66 percent reduction in the mortality rate associated with severe diarrhea.
Additionally, the treated calves produced significantly more milk during their first lactation compared to control animals. These clinical findings were observed in a controlled, peer-reviewed published trial that studied 554 calves and published by Cornell University researchers. The complete publication can be downloaded at http://bactana.com/published-results/.
Bactana plans to launch its first nutritional product for calves into the U.S. market in early 2018 and begin testing FPS-4 derived products as anti-diarrheal agents for companion animals soon thereafter. The company is also expanding its R&D capacity to perform additional studies of swine, beef, and poultry, where similar benefits are anticipated.
Bactana was founded in 2016 by Kallassy and Dr. Rodrigo Bicalho, a professor at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and Bactana's Chief Scientific Officer. The company has an exclusive global license from Cornell University for its FPS-4 product platform.
“The gut microbiota plays an essential role in determining many aspects of an animal’s health and growth, including contributing to immune system development and energy expenditure and storage,” said Bicalho. “We have been researching FPS-4 in vitro and in vivo for more than four years and believe our research will continue to demonstrate unprecedented benefits.”
About Bactana
Bactana Animal Health is a global development stage animal health company. Its product development platform (FPS-4) is initially being developed for food animals and has demonstrated increases in yield efficiency, weight gain, and improved gut health through enhancement to an animal’s microbiome. For more information, please visit http://www.bactana.com or contact info(at)bactana(dot)com.
John Kallassy, Bactana Animal Health, http://www.bactana.com, +1 203.716.1230, [email protected]
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