Company Profile

Veterinary Immunogenics is a private limited company registered in the United Kingdom (No. 02776008). The company aims to establish itself as the premier producer of the finest animal plasma in the world and to promote the benefits of veterinary transfusion medicine by utilising passive immunity to prevent and treat septic and infectious disease in horses.

Incorporated in 1992, we have been manufacturing and supplying commercial equine plasma products to satisfied customers for over 10 years. We operate under the full scrutiny of the UK regulatory authorities:

Products

Our core product is equine plasma, HYPERMUNE which has been produced on site since 1992. The company has a closed herd of donor horses maintained to ensure its welfare and biosecurity. The plasma is harvested, stored, tested and distributed in compliance with Good Manufacturing Practice. The horses are hyper-immunised to ensure consistently high levels of equine IgG and different specific antibodies in certain products. The plasma is supplied to veterinary surgeons as a Prescription Only Medicine. More...

Background

The concept of transfusion medicine using human blood and its components has been well established in the human field for many years. Millions of people have benefited from transfusions of whole blood or its components such as plasma, platelets, clotting factors and immunoglobulins. In the veterinary field, however, development of this aspect of preventing and treating disease has not been well developed except for the transfusion of immunity from donor horses to foals. In the United Kingdom equine veterinary surgeons in recent years have crudely made their own equine plasma with little thought to quality control and product safety. In the USA, however, commercial supplies of equine plasma have been available for about 15 years. Veterinary Immunogenics Ltd has acquired and developed this technology for over 10 years.

Plasma is produced by removing all the cells, both red and white, from whole blood mixed with a suitable anticoagulant. It consists of fluid and proteins with the proteins falling into two main components of dietary protein and immune protein. The plasma produced by the Company is used for its immune protein content known as immunoglobulin more particularly immunoglobulin-G, which is augmented by the implementation of vaccination protocols, to enhance the recipient foal’s immune system.

Foals are born with a naïve immune system and little or no circulating IgG. Under normal circumstances nature provides for the foal to acquire its ability to fight and resist infectious disease by causing its mother to concentrate IgG in its colostrum immediately prior to giving birth and then for the foal to drink sufficient colostrum within a few hours of being born to absorb the whole molecules of protein. For various reasons this mechanism fails and the foal of 24 hours of age, although outwardly healthy, can have inadequate levels of circulating IgG, with no prospect of immediately improving the situation because further ingestion of colostrum or milk is broken down by the developing digestive enzymes. The only way this can be rectified is to transfuse equine plasma into the foal’s vein. It is well documented in veterinary literature the benefit that this provides in the prevention and treatment of infectious disease. More...

Activities

Although Veterinary Immunogenics produces HYPERMUNE for the purpose of boosting the IgG in the recipient foal it has also developed vaccination protocols to raise antibodies to specific foal diseases such as rotavirus and endotoxins from gram negative bacteria. Another such disease is caused by the bacterium Rhodococcus equi which causes an insidious debilitating pneumonia in young foals which is difficult and very expensive to treat. Many years of research in numerous countries have failed to find the definitive answer to this ubiquitous problem except to provide universal agreement that at present the only way to try to protect foals immunologically from this infection is to transfuse equine plasma from horses vaccinated with pathogenic Rhodococcus equi antigen.

Over the past five years Veterinary Immunogenics has responded to increasing market demand and supplied such plasma called HYPERMUNE-RE which on independent analysis compares with the best R. equi plasma in the United States. Customer surveys conducted in 2000 and 2002 support the claim that the use of HYPERMUNE-RE significantly reduces the incidence and severity of disease on endemic stud farms.

The company is now conducting a research programme to gather data in support of this claim for inclusion in a Dossier of Application for a full Marketing Authorisation from the regulatory authority. To that end a field study was performed in the 2003 foaling season on an endemic stud farm and a joint initiative has been created with scientists at The University of Sunderland under the country’s first government sponsored Knowledge Transfer Partnership which will result in the company’s own GLP laboratory where specific antibody Quality Control Tests will be carried out.