New Approaches for a Healthy Immune System in Animals

Immune System Strengthening Product Portfolio

Attacks by viruses, bacteria and parasites are part of everyday life of all living things. As animals age, the cancer threat also increases. Conventional therapies directly target the pathogen or tumour. However, an effective defense against diseases by the body’s own immune system is essential for staying healthy and a healthy recovery. A healthy and active immune system very often can keep the pathogen or tumour out of the body or immediately eliminate it without ever being noticed. When the immune system is intact, the course of a disease is less severe with fewer complications. Far too few therapies are available that improve the immune status; we want to change this. The target and success strategy of 4 Animals AlsterScience is namely to eliminate the underlying cause for failure of the immune system to avert, for example, viral diseases. In collaboration with leading experts we are developing a product portfolio for urgent animal needs – for common, but also rare and serious diseases.

Our products for strengthening the immune system are based on natural mechanisms. We use immune modulators like interferons and interleukins that normally occur in the body as proteins. Proteins can also be used in food-producing animals, for they are completely degraded without leaving residues or polluting the environment. We have products that are effective in many animal species, making it unnecessary to develop immunomodulatory proteins individually for each animal species. Most natural immune modulators are species-specific and their effect is limited to one or just a few species. This narrows the market and significantly increases development costs. We develop for many animal species immune enhancers (adjuvants) that support the specific immune response to vaccination. This makes it possible to considerably improve vaccines that by themselves are unable to trigger adequate immunity (too short, too weak). A future work area will be development of cell therapies for animals. Initial results obtained in humans with these highly innovative therapies are impressive.

A large number of scientific publications confirm the immune system strengthening effect in diseases like tumours and infections in the veterinary area. 4 Animals AlsterScience takes new active substances developed for human drugs and optimizes and modifies them with veterinary formulations for veterinary applications. Preclinical studies on treatment of sarcoids in horses are in progress and the results extremely promising.

Applications, Innovative Strategy

Too little research is done today on the effectiveness of this immunological potential, and especially in animals it is hardly utilized. Classical vaccination strategies are currently limited in their action to a few defined antigen(s). This has led to large gaps in immunological protection because (really) effective vaccines against a great number of very important pathogens are still not available and of course not every vaccine (can) be given preemptively. Moreover, classical vaccinations are ineffective if an infection is present. These therapeutic gaps urgently need to be eliminated.

4 Animals AlsterScience develops innovative strategies to fill these gaps with the aim of:

  1. preparing the immune system to fight existing infections and tumours,
  2. preparing the immune system for attack by new pathogens (prevention),
  3. successfully enhancing weak vaccine antigens and making them “inoculable“, and
  4. restoring a weakened immune system (e.g., after use of antibiotics, increased stress in animals, in very young and older animals).

Methods of Application

4 Animals AlsterScience develops therapies that positively influence the immune system. Depending on the disease, we use stimulation, substitution, suppression or modulation methods.

Stimulation methods

  • Active immunization and
  • Administration of immune stimulants to activate a weakened immune system in an active, nonspecific immunotherapy for tumours

Substitution methods

  • Passive immunization through administration of antibodies
  • Passive immunization through cell therapies

Passive immunization through cell therapies

  • For autoimmune diseases
  • For allergies (anaphylaxis)
  • Hyposensitization for allergies