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Australian innovation – translating discovery to commercial success
Staff writers
To bring new products to market in any industry generally involves a significant R&D investment followed by the complex navigation of industry and government regulations. Nowhere is this more true than in agriculture, and particularly the animal health sector.
The R&D process in the Australian animal health sector is a lengthy one, with pharmaceutical products taking an average of six years to progress from conception to market, and biological products (such as vaccines) even longer.
This is complicated by our strict biosecurity laws which – while commendable for preventing many foreign diseases and pests from entering the country – make it difficult for companies to import the biological products necessary to develop certain vaccines. The regulatory requirements of the sector can also be challenging, and it often takes 18 months to get an animal health product registered. As a comparison, in New Zealand the regulatory process has a legislated timeframe of just 40 working days.
One company deeply invested in the animal health R&D environment in Australia is French multinational Virbac, the seventh-largest animal health company in the world. Virbac has a significant presence in Australia, with 250 staff including a specialist Australian R&D team developing products solely for the Australian animal health market.
Robert Dempster, Research Development and Licensing Director at Virbac, believes that one of the key factors limiting innovation in animal health (and in agriculture in general) in Australia is the disconnect between researchers and industry.
“Researchers often have a limited view of what is required for the commercialisation of their inventions,” says Dempster. “It’s not that we on the commercial side try to pour cold water on innovation, but I think in many cases the innovation is not well-directed. This problem is to be expected as academics live in a very different world with different drivers.”
“Industry and academia need to work more closely together to fund real-world problems and create products that have genuine commercial potential.”
The gulf between the capability and funding of researchers and the commercial needs of companies is one that is often difficult to bridge. One solution is to encourage an atmosphere where companies and research institutions, such as universities, partner together earlier to fund innovation that has a clear commercial goal. This allows for the mix of skills and experience needed to bring innovative new products to the market.
This could be achieved by incentivising academics and applying commercial outcomes to the research rankings that drive the direction and undertaking of innovation at universities. If signing a deal with a commercial company gave an academic as many points towards their research ranking as a publication in a well-respected academic journal, then perhaps more research would result in commercialisation.
“Industry and academia partnering early is so important because although Australia does discovery really well, we do commercialisation poorly,” says Dempster. “Agricultural innovation is no different to any other type of industry in Australia – private industry doesn’t invest enough in R&D, we aren’t close enough to academia and academia isn’t close enough to us.”
It is this the distance between researchers and companies that is hampering relevant innovation in the Australian industry. It is something that needs to be tackled by government policy makers, research institutions and industry bodies in order to ensure Australian R&D delivers and Australian products can be commercially successful on both a global and a domestic scale.
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Trace minerals are required for optimal growth, reproduction, and immunity. Optimising trace mineral status relying solely on oral supplements across a herd may fail because of variation in individual intake and reduced absorption due to antagonism of other ration components and minerals. The use of injectable trace mineral supplements has been associated with positive reproductive outcomes including improved conception rate, increased odds of pregnancy and greater final in calf rate. A study conducted on 2,168 dairy cows, administered injectable trace minerals, four weeks prior to calving and again four weeks prior to the start of mating showed treated animals had a 3.3 per cent greater final in-calf rate, and a reduced time from start of mating to conception, compared to control animals 1 . The Importance of B12 Dr Carl Eden, Technical Services Veterinarian with Boehringer Ingelheim says “Vitamin B12 is sometimes referred to as a ‘super vitamin’ because it is only required in very small amounts but vital to many essential metabolic pathways. However, demand for B12 can vary considerably during the year and we see serum levels of B12 fall at critical times, such as the first few months after calving.” Vitamin B12 contains cobalt, so deficiency in cobalt can lead to deficiency in vitamin B12 because ruminants get most of their B12 as a byproduct of ruminal fermentation where the bacteria in their rumen assemble B12 from cobalt for use by the cow. Sub-optimal trace mineral and vitamin B12 status at calving, mating, and drying off has been shown to negatively impact growth, reproduction, and immunity. Using a trace mineral injectable containing vitamin B12 can improve trace mineral and vitamin B12 status at these critical times. Marks-Min with Vitamin B12 – The Evidence In the largest trace element study to date, Marks-Min Injectable Trace Mineral with Vitamin B12 demonstrated remarkable results when compared to a reference trace mineral injection. “Given the differences between Marks-Min and other products on the market, we wanted to generate a compelling data set to demonstrate how effective it was compared to the pioneer product. We entrusted this work to a third-party research company” says Dr Eden. “We chose farms that were at the top of their game from a reproductive perspective. We made sure that the farms had no evidence of trace element or vitamin B12 deficiencies or excess.” Across all outcomes of interest, Marks-Min demonstrated clear non-inferiority when compared to the reference product. Outcomes measured included submission, pregnancy and conception rates, and six week in-calf rate. Marks-Min demonstrated it is highly suited as an alternative treatment to the reference product. Reference: 1. Hawkins, D., and B. V. S. Franklin. New Zealand Dairy Veterinarians Newsletter 24 (2007): 12-16 Company website: livestockfirst.com.au Company email address: CustomerCare.Australia@boehringer-ingelheim.com Company video: https://vimeo.com/1138807630?fl=pl&fe=cm
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