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Kansas City tests positive for Synbiotics By Rob Roberts New product development is the lifeblood of animal health companies, and Synbiotics Corp. officials decided that Kansas City was the best place to feed the beast. A poster child for a new effort aimed at expanding a base of more than 100 animal health companies in the region, Synbiotics will move its headquarters and research and development operations from San Diego to the Northland early next year. In town for Aug. 28 events aimed at promoting the KC Animal Health Corridor effort, Synbiotics CEO Paul Hays said San Diego was great for beaches and biotech. "But we have a hard time hiring people in San Diego who know anything about animal health and production animals in particular," Hays said. Synbiotics, on track for $20 million in sales this year, manufactures tests for about 45 animal and zoonotic (animal-to-human) diseases, with an emphasis on food-animal diagnostics. Therefore, the Kansas City region's veterinary colleges and large pool of workers trained in veterinary sciences were key factors in Synbiotics' decision to move here, Hays said. The company, which employs 112 globally, initially will employ about 35 in Kansas but will build its R&D team here to take advantage of growth opportunities. One of those opportunities, which will involve partnering with some of the leading animal vaccine-makers that have a headquarters in the area, is the growing demand for DIVA diagnostics. "That's an acronym for Differentiating Infected from Vaccinated Animals," Hays said. "As people become more concerned about food safety, there is a need for tests to determine why animals have developed antibodies to certain diseases. Is it because they were exposed to the disease or because they were vaccinated for it?" Another growth market Synbiotics will pursue here is avian flu testing. In January, Synbiotics became the first company to receive conditional approval for an avian flu test from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hays said. "We also just got approval in Germany," he said. "That's very exciting for us because McDonald's Germany has dictated that all of their poultry are to be tested with our test. We hope we can roll that out to McDonald's in other countries, as well." Meanwhile, Synbiotics is seeing increased demand for its vaccine antibody titer tests, which indicate the amount of an antibody in the bloodstream. The tests were developed in response to concerns that too-frequent vaccination of pets was causing adverse health effects. "Veterinarians traditionally have recommended vaccinating dogs and cats once a year for various pathogens," Hays said. "But some people question whether that's appropriate because there's been some indication of cancers, particularly in cats. So we've come up with a titer-checking test, which allows the vet to see if the animal actually needs to be revaccinated." Synbiotics was founded in 1982 as a human immunotherapeutics company but swerved into the animal health arena a few years later, after stumbling onto one of the first heartworm tests for dogs. In addition, the lower cost of living here will allow several Synbiotics employees to pay cash for homes with the equity they have built up in San Diego residences, he said. Don Marvin, CEO of Lawrence-based IndentiGEN Ltd., which makes DNA-based products for tracing meat through the supply chain, said other industry drawing cards include the region's large concentrations of livestock, user-friendly airport and professional sports teams. IndentiGEN, the newly formed U.S. subsidiary of an Irish company, announced that it would establish its headquarters in the region in July. A month later, the Kansas City Area Development Council, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute Inc. formally launched the KC Animal Health Corridor initiative. A subsequent study by Brakke Consulting Inc. found that the region between Columbia and Manhattan has the largest single concentration of animal health assets in the world. Nearly one-third of the $14.2 billion global animal health industry is attributable to companies with headquarters in the region, the study found. |
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