Public Funding for Aramune Technologies Limited

Modern farming systems aim to produce the highest quality food at maximum volume and lowest cost. To achieve these objectives farmers actively manage the health and wellbeing of livestock to reduce disease. Employing modern husbandry techniques, farmers can prevent many diseases and infections that would otherwise cause distress to their animals and compromise the commercial viability of their herd or flock. Farmers have historically relied in part on the inclusion of antimicrobial compounds in animal feed to control bacterial infection. This has led to antibiotic resistance in livestock and fuelled resistance in humans. Additionally, some antimicrobial compounds such as Zinc Oxide (ZnO) pass through livestock in their dung and cause serious environmental contamination. Environmental contamination by ZnO has become so concerning that it will be banned in the EU from 2022 onwards, whilst use of antibiotics in animal feed is becoming more restricted globally. These regulatory measures deprive farmers of effective treatments to ensure herd/flock health and performance, and there now exists an urgent need for replacement therapies that are safe and effective. It is estimated that the ZnO ban alone will have a profound impact on the pig industry and could result in production losses of as much as £950m per year in the EU alone. Such financial losses will inevitably result in increased consumer prices. Prof. Brian Green and colleagues at Queens University Belfast (QUB) have discovered a natural polysaccharide (carbohydrate) compound found in plants that when purified and added to their feed, boosts the natural immunity of piglets. The compound enables pigs to fight gut infections and maintain optimum growth rates. In farm trials, the performance of the new compound was equal to that of ZnO. This breakthrough offers a timely lifeline to pig and other livestock producers. In a commercial feasibility programme, funded by Innovate UK, QUB research scientist, Gonçalo Rosas da Silva, discovered that there is equal need for dietary control of gut bacteria in companion animal species, e.g., dogs and cats, to avoid associated allergic skin and other conditions which otherwise would be treated with antibiotics. Aramune Technologies Ltd (ATL) is a QUB spin-out created specifically to exploit the new plant polysaccharide technology. In this project, ATL will develop a scalable process for commercial extraction of the compound, which will initially be used in pig feed and later in the diets of other livestock and companion animals.