Imugene gets OGTR tick for poultry booster

Livestock vaccine developer Imugene's (ASX:IMU) chicken immune-system booster has crossed a major intersection on the road to market by receiving approval from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator to trial its genetically modified product outside full laboratory containment.

Planet Chicken awaits. Imugene chairman Graham Dowland said there are at least 40 billion chickens in the world -- six for every human. Profit margins are wafer-thin, and Dowland said anything more than a 5 per cent productivity gain could transform the economics of production.

In laboratory trials in 2004, Imugene's virally-vectored Chicken Productivity Enhancer boosted weight gain by an average of 13.75 per cent.

Dowland said Imugene's commercial partner, animal health products giant Merial, of Duluth, Georgia, which has taken an exclusive global licence the Imugene Chicken Productivity Enhancer, estimates the addressable market at between 20 and 35 billion birds. America's biggest producer, Tyson Foods, has 25 per cent of the broiler chicken market, and produces 8 billion birds a year.

"Merial took a very early interest in this product, and they're thrilled," Dowland said. "They understand how hard it is to get the first national gene technology regulator to sign off on the product. It will help everywhere.

"Merial has to go through the hoops in the US, and it would be very difficult to go there without having Australia ticked off. As the country of invention, it was very important that we demonstrated that our own gene technology regulator is satisfied with what we're doing."

Dowland said the dossier that Imugene prepared for the OGTR licensing process will now be replicated in other countries where Merial seeks regulatory approval, and should answer most queries by national regulators.

Once the Poultry Productivity Enhancer reaches the market, its uptake is likely to be very rapid, according to Dowland. "The poultry industry is probably the most advanced of the intensive animal production industries, and they're always ready to try new any new technology that might increase profit margins."

Avoiding antibiotics

Imugene's product will kill two proverbial birds with one stone: it should fatten profit margins, and make redundant the controversial practice of adding antibiotics to chicken feed formulas to boost productivity.

Research has convincingly linked the indiscriminate use of antibiotics as growth enhancers in intensive livestock production to the emergence of lethal, multi-resistant strains of bacteria in the world's hospitals.

In the case of the poultry industry, it was a major consumer of avoparcin, an antibiotic cousin of vancomycin. Vancomycin-resistant bacteria, carrying an identical cluster of resistance genes to that found in avoparcin-resistant bacteria, now haunt the world's hospitals.

Imugene's Poultry Productivity Enhancer is neither an antibiotic nor a vaccine. It is a genetically modified fowl adenovirus, engineered to express gamma interferon, a potent immune-system booster.

It was developed to protect young chickens against low-level viral and bacterial infections that depress productivity. Dowland likens the young chickens' exposure to these infections to the episodes of infection that sweep through families when young children go to child-minding centres or school for the first time.

"Even with the best animal husbandry practices, these low-level infections are inevitable," he said. "It takes only one or two infected birds among thousands to spread an infection."

By boosting the immune response very early in life, the Poultry Productivity Enhancer reduces low-level infections that impair productivity and slow growth rates. The healthier chickens have improved food conversion rates, and reach marketable weight earlier.

"We've done the research and early development, Merial will finalise development and determine the pricing and rollout strategy. It's perfect," Dowland said.

Imugene is now considering tests to determine if its immunity booster, which is delivered via drinking water or as a spray, can protect chickens against a far more virulent poultry disease: H5N1 avian influenza.

"We haven't done it yet, and our view is that the virulence of the virus is such that PPE won't protect. But if the virus mutates to a less virulent form, it might work."

Imugene is developing a similar adenovirus-based productivity booster for the international pig industry, but delayed seeking OGTR approval because it preferred to move ahead with the poultry product.

The company is continuing work on an oral avian influenza vaccine for chickens, but Dowland said the technical challenges are formidable. "The gold standard is to be able to deliver it in water or food, and induce immunity very early in life. If you can't get immunity until week three or four, it's too late."