An Australian company is making itself at home in the Kansas City Animal Health Corridor before building its new global headquarters. Integrated Animal Health Inc., which has a few products on the market and more under development, in mid-March signed an agreement with Northwest Missouri State University and the institution’s Dean L. Hubbard Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Hubbard Center, a business incubator in Maryville, Mo., will work with Integrated Animal Health on the testing and developing of products designed to improve the health of cattle, sheep, swine, poultry and fish. Formed in December 2013, Integrated Animal Health makes horse fertility feeds and equine performance supplements. The company is designing feed additives to help control mastitis, reduce antibiotic use in dairy cattle, and improve weight gain in dairy calves and feedlot cattle. Also in the pipeline are an Oxycodone pain-relief patch for racehorses suffering from leg soreness, other feed additives, parasiticides, and a gender-selection technology for the breeding of hogs and dairy cattle. “Providing adequate protein to the world is one of the key challenges facing people and governments around the world,” said Blake Hawley, DVM, who will oversee the company’s U.S. operations after serving as chief commercial officer at Kindred Biosciences. “We see Integrated Animal Health playing a significant role in this endeavor because we will license out our technologies to provide the greatest exposure for improving livestock efficiencies globally.” Setting up in the corridor, a 300-mile stretch of Missouri and Kansas containing more than 300 animal health companies, is a natural move for Integrated Animal Health, which plans to select a headquarters location by summertime. “We see our 10-year partnership with Northwest Missouri State University as the beginning of bringing our Silicon Valley style of biotechnology and nanotechnology innovation to the ‘Farmacon Valley’ and the industry as a whole,” said company founder and CEO Rob Neely. Integrated Animal Health will partner with the university’s department of agricultural sciences and with professors and students at the 46,679-square-foot Hubbard Center. “Northwest Missouri State University is a natural fit for our U.S. rollout, as along with other species they also have a fully functioning and working dairy on campus,” Neely said. Students will tackle “hands-on, real-world issues and, in our case, with potentially disruptive technologies,” Neely added. “This cooperation will allow the students to play a big role in refining our cutting-edge science and existing technologies.”
