Elanco Announces R&D Collaboration with AgBiome for Swine Nutritional Health Innovation

GREENFIELD, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Elanco Animal Health Incorporated (NYSE: ELAN), announced today a new global R&D collaboration with AgBiome, Inc. to develop nutritional health products for swine. The collaboration further demonstrates Elanco’s commitment to antibiotic stewardship and bringing alternatives to producers’ most difficult challenges.

The research and development collaboration with AgBiome is intended to deliver innovative probiotic solutions to some of swine producers’ greatest gut health challenges. The collaboration will leverage AgBiome’s proprietary strain identification system and provide Elanco access to AgBiome’s extensive and growing collection of bacteria, viral and fungal strains. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Elanco will combine AgBiome’s success in crop science with its expertise in animal health to bring innovative new solutions. This agreement furthers Elanco’s targeted, value-generating IPP strategy (Innovation, Portfolio and Productivity), bringing a consistent, sustainable flow of innovation in the fast growing nutritional health market.

“AgBiome’s vast strain library and unique knowledge and methods for strain identification and development are particularly interesting to Elanco,” said Aaron Schacht, executive vice president of Innovation, Regulatory and Business Development at Elanco. “Identifying and developing new products and tools to help manage the animal’s microbiome, control infections, and reduce gut inflammation, while decreasing the need for medically important antibiotics is a top priority for Elanco.”

“We are excited to be creating novel products for animal nutrition using the microbial technology and data science tools in our Genesis™ platform,” said Eric Ward, co-CEO of AgBiome. “Elanco’s entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitment to developing novel solutions for animal health make them an ideal partner for AgBiome.”

Elanco is committed to bringing greater clarity and collaboration to issues around antibiotic stewardship. The company released an aggressive, multi-faceted 8-point Antibiotic Stewardship Plan in 2015 that includes 1) increasing responsible antibiotic use; 2) reducing the need for shared-class antibiotics; and 3) replacing antibiotics with alternatives to help livestock producers treat and prevent animal disease. The plan includes a commitment to deliver antibiotic alternatives, such as vaccines, enzymes and probiotics. The collaboration with AgBiome will drive additional progress toward that commitment with solutions for conditions in swine.

About Elanco

Founded in 1954, Elanco provides comprehensive products and knowledge services to improve animal health and food-animal production in more than 90 countries around the world. We value innovation, both in scientific research and daily operations, and strive to cultivate a collaborative work environment for more than 5,800 employees worldwide. Together with our customers, we are committed to raising awareness about global food security, and celebrating and supporting the human-animal bond. Our worldwide headquarters and research facilities are located in Greenfield, Indiana.

About AgBiome, Inc.

AgBiome partners with the microbial world to improve our planet. AgBiome’s core business discovers and develops innovative biological and trait products for crop protection. Our proprietary Genesis™ platform allows us to efficiently capture and screen the most diverse and unique microbial collection for agriculturally relevant applications, coupled to industry-best screens for insect, disease and nematode control. Through its commercial subsidiary, AgBiome Innovations, Inc., the company develops and sells proprietary crop protection solutions. The first of these, Howler™, is a revolutionary biological fungicide for disease control in a broad variety of specialty crops. LifeEDIT™, an AgBiome subsidiary, deploys proprietary genome editing systems to address human genetic diseases and high value crop traits. For more information, visit http://agbiome.com.

This press release contains forward-looking statements (as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) about a collaboration agreement between Elanco and AgBiome and reflects Elanco’s current belief. However, as with any collaboration, there are substantial risks and uncertainties in the process of development and commercialization. Among other things, there can be no guarantee that this collaboration will be commercially successful. For further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see Elanco’s most recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Elanco undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.

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