Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs

Epivara, a company ACC&D has been tracking for some time, is a start-up biotech company developing a single injection sterilant with potential for use in several mammalian species, including cats and dogs. Founder and CEO Jay Ko, who is also a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, shared exciting news at the ACC&D Council of Stakeholder’s Briefing in November: his company has been informed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant application for their product for female cats - iSpay-C - will be funded! Epivara, who have embraced ACC&D’s guidelines for ethical decision-making in innovation for animal welfare, is currently designing the guidelines for humane and ethical treatment of the animals it will be working with for the study.   In other exciting news, Epivara is also currently raising funds from VCs and angel investors to continue their iSpay-D study in dogs. https://www.epivara.com/

Senior Technical Consultant Paul Cashman recently presented at ACC&D’s Council of Stakeholders' Briefing on work he is doing with the Cornell Feline Health Center to automate our ability to create a census of free-roaming cat populations. Using artificial intelligence to scan images of community cats, his software is being trained to identify the number of unique kitties in any given group.    Interestingly, Paul found that pictures of socialized cats didn’t work well for training his software to identify community cats. His comments are insightful for understanding some important differences between socialized and unsocialized cats, and for understanding some of the challenges of training AI when it comes to animal populations. He says:   "A favorite assignment in computer vision classes is building a model to tell cats from dogs. There are many datasets containing images of cats and dogs on the Internet for training, but do these data sets, comprised almost exclusively of images of socialized animals, work when trying to detect cats or dogs in the wild? My experience with cats is that the answer is no, for a very simple reason: images of cats in the wild are very different from images of cats in typical datasets. For instance: - Community cat photos very often have many cats in them, while cat image datasets typically have one or two - Community cats are seen in pictures from various views (front, back, side, top), while housecat images usually show the cat from the front or side only. Free-roaming cats are very often partially blocked in photos (by other cats, rocks, trees, etc.); this is rarely the case with pictures of housecats Community cat photos often have cats cut off at the edges of the photo, so that we only see part of the animal; this is generally never the case in cat image datasets. - Community cat photos often have a great depth of field, so cats which may be the same size in real life appear large (if in front) or very small (if in the distance). - Community cats are often virtually identical due to inbreeding, and are often against background that matches the coat color, are much more frequent in community cat photos than in cat image datasets. - There seems to be a smaller range of poses of the cats in community cat photos than in the cat image datasets.   When training my machine learning model using the cat image dataset photos, I got good precision and recall statistics on the validation set, but poor performance against real test photos from the field. It was only when I began to notice the differences listed above that I realized I needed to build my own dataset with the specific characteristics of the problem I was trying to solve. The result was not only a model that performed well in validation, but also performed well against the real photos I got from the field. This dataset is publicly available.”

Dr. Gina Bowen, Director of Veterinary Services at the Winnipeg Humane Society, presented in November at the ACC&D Council of Stakeholders’ Briefing. She outlined her team’s use of Suprelorin, an injection-based contraceptive, to increase the amount of reproductive care they can provide for dogs – many of who live outdoors year-round – in remote areas of northern Manitoba. Describing her team’s efforts, Dr. Bowen shared, “The Winnipeg Humane Society has administered about 400 Suprelorin implants over the last several years. Advantages for us are being able to safely administer the implants year-round, reduced staff costs, reduced equipment costs, reduced time to sterilize each animal, better acceptance from owners with limited previous exposure to vets, less stress and healing time on the dogs.” Dr. Bowen’s pioneering efforts provide an important real-world demonstration of the value of non-surgical birth control when it comes to humanely managing cat and dog populations. Suprelorin is a subcutaneous implant that releases a slow and continuous dose of the drug deslorelin, which suppresses the reproductive endocrine system for a year or longer by preventing the production of pituitary hormones. Currently available in over 50 countries, it is unfortunately not available as a contraceptive in the United States. You can learn more about it in the link below. https://lnkd.in/emu_5KkT

Last week, ACC&D held our annual Council of Stakeholders Briefing, where industry leaders gathered to share information and the latest updates about non-surgical fertility control and related animal welfare topics. Thank you to our presenters, and everyone who joined us in person and virtually, for making this event so memorable and productive! We will be sharing an update from each presentation over the next two weeks. A special thank you to ACC&D Board Member, Betsy Saul, for hosting the event, and to all of our generous Council Members for making all the work we do, including this event, possible: PetSmart Charities, ASPCA, The Humane Society of the United States, Mars Petcare, Alley Cat Allies, Maddie's Fund Petco Love, The Regina Bauer Frankenberg Foundation, International Cat Care, and FOUR PAWS.

Last week, ACC&D held our annual Council of Stakeholders Briefing, where industry leaders gathered to share information and the latest updates about non-surgical fertility control and related animal welfare topics. Thank you to our presenters, and everyone who joined us in person and virtually, for making this event so memorable and productive! We will be sharing an update from each presentation over the next two weeks. A special thank you to ACC&D Board Member, Betsy Saul, for hosting the event, and to all of our generous Council Members for making all the work we do, including this event, possible: PetSmart Charities, ASPCA, The Humane Society of the United States, Mars Petcare, Alley Cat Allies, Maddie's Fund Petco Love, The Regina Bauer Frankenberg Foundation, International Cat Care, and FOUR PAWS.

We are thrilled to see Dr. Jay Ko and Epivara getting press for their work developing non-surgical sterilants! We are excited about Epivara’s work, and honored that Dr. Ko will be joining us next week for the ACC&D Council of Stakeholders Briefing, where he will discuss his company’s latest progress. https://lnkd.in/ekVchaEb

We are very excited about the work of ACC&D Board Chair, Dr Elly Hiby of ICAM (International Companion Animal Management Coalition), and all the brilliant and caring minds redefining how we address humane cat and dog population management globally! It's inspiring to see this level of international collaboration and enthusiasm for such critical work.

ACC&D President, Gary Evans, recently spoke with Rachel Smith at the AWIP Podcast, discussing updates on current developments in the world of non-surgical sterilants, the importance of systems thinking when it comes to scaling up access to care, and why working with animals is such a rewarding career choice.

ACC&D is thrilled to celebrate Dr. Mark Prausnitz's recent appointment to the National Academy of Medicine! Dr. Prausnitz and his team are long-time ACC&D partners, leading technical development of our microneedle tattoo system, designed to instantly, painlessly, and safely tattoo animals to indicate sterilization status. As non-surgical options become available, this technology will be crucial for identifying sterilized animals, as traditional methods like tattooing or ear-tipping rely on anesthesia – something that won’t be required with non-surgical sterlizations. Congratulations on your appointment, Dr. Prausnitz – it’s a pleasure and an honor to be able to work with your group, and we appreciate your commitment to using your technology to help animals as well as people! https://lnkd.in/gddvh6Sp

Exciting news in the world of non-surgical birth control for dogs: Egalitte is a new, injectable dog contraceptive developed in Chile. It is currently only available in that country. It is reported to suppress fertility and hormone-driven sexual behaviors in both male and female dogs for one year.   The labeling states that the product requires an initial injection, followed by one-month booster; after that, it needs to be administered once annually to maintain effectiveness. Each injection costs the equivalent of ~$54 USD.   Egalitte is a GnRH vaccine. GnRH, sometimes called the body’s “master hormone,” helps control reproduction processes in both male and female mammals. A GnRH vaccine is an immunocontraceptive, which means that it triggers the creation of antibodies that bind to GnRH, preventing it from interacting with its receptor on the pituitary gland. This, in turn, prevents the production of the hormone, which renders an animal infertile. GnRH vaccines under the brand names GonaCon and Improvest are currently used in different species such as wild horses, wild burros, white-tailed deer, and male pigs. However, prior to Egalitte being introduced to the market, there was not a currently available version for dogs.    Egalitte’s website indicates that they are conducting trials in cats, though it does not specify when a feline version of their product might be available. They also share that they plan to seek approval for their dog product in additional countries, and that it is currently patented in 40 countries (though it does not specify which ones).   Due to Egalitte's temporary effectiveness and requirement of multiple injections, ACC&D does not currently envision the product being a viable solution for most free-roaming animals, but it could be an effective way to contracept animals awaiting spay/neuter appointments, or for animals that are unable to safely undergo surgery. https://lnkd.in/gTyKGw8Y