US Biotech Startup Eyes 2020 Avian Necrotic Enteritis Vaccine Launch

Founded in 2015, UF startup Curtiss Healthcare commercialized UF researcher Dr. Roy Curtiss III’s research into orally distributed Salmonella vector vaccines. The startup, a resident client at UF Innovate | Sid Martin Biotech, is developing a platform of vaccines for chickens with a view toward becoming the head of an antibiotic-free animal health industry in the future.

Dr. Curtiss, who in 1950 developed the chicken that appears on 95 percent of American dinner plates, has been developing vaccines to harness salmonella’s extreme virulence, using it to help rather than harm its host. He has developed a number of vaccines already and believes the technology has potential in preventing diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid, influenza, hepatitis and AIDS.

Vaccinating a chicken against disease means farmers can raise the birds without using antibiotics and without risk of infection.

An article in Animal Pharm, an online subscription magazine that aims to provide agribusiness intelligence, is titled “US biotech start-up eyes 2020 avian necrotic enteritis vaccine launch,” details Curtiss Healthcare’s plan to commercialize its first product by 2020. That initial vaccine would aim to eliminate mortality by necrotic enteritis, which currently kills 15-20 percent of birds in chicken farms.

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