Elanco Animal Health Inc. has entered into an agreement with South Dakota-based Medgene to leverage the company’s vaccine platform technology.
Elanco Animal Health Inc. has entered into an agreement with South Dakota-based Medgene to leverage the company’s vaccine platform technology. The agreement includes commercialization of a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) vaccine for use in dairy cattle.
Medgene reports the vaccine has met all requirements of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) platform technology guidelines and is in the final stages of review for conditional license approval.
While the poultry industry has developed interventions and processes to reduce the spread or eradicate HPAI, those efforts have continued to be challenging as the current outbreak enters its fourth year. Dairy producers have worked quickly to protect their herds without the same tools and biosecurity options to tackle this devastating disease. The cross-species transmission of the disease into nearly 1,000 dairy herds across the U.S. since March 2024, along with zoonotic transmission to people, shows that more interventions are quickly needed, Elanco said in a press release. This virus is prevalent and predicted to persist over time, thus a cattle vaccine will be critical to slow virus spread between birds and cattle.
“As egg prices soar and milk production wanes in infected dairies, the need for new solutions to curb disease spread is evident,” said Jeff Simmons, president and CEO of Elanco Animal Health. “Elanco is pleased to partner with Medgene to bring customers options to fight this devastating disease and believes this product will become part of a routine vaccination protocol for the U.S. dairy industry. This partnership further strengthens our diverse dairy portfolio and advances our One Health platform of animal health solutions, not only benefitting our dairy customers, but helping curb disease spread for our poultry customers, and working to improve egg prices for consumers.”
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