New £4m agreement is no horseplay for Sheffield’s Benchmark Holdings

Benchmark Holdings PLC, the Sheffield-based aquaculture breeding, animal health, technical publishing and sustainability science group, has signed a £4m agreement with Swiss equine biotech company, Evax AG.

The agreement will see the development of a recombinant vaccine to prevent and treat the horse skin disease Sweet Itch, also known as Insect Bite Hypersensitivity (IBH).

Sweet Itch is thought to affect around 7.5% of the global horse population; the estimated total market value for treatment of the disease is over £100m per annum.

There is currently no preventative treatment or licensed vaccine available for controlling Sweet Itch in horses.

Benchmark expects the first commercialised product to vaccinate the disease to be made available for the European, US and Canadian markets by 2020-21.

Under the terms of the agreement, Benchmark will pay total consideration of £1.12m and is contributing up to a further £4m over the next 4 years towards development, which will be conducted part in-house and part externally.

Evax has granted Benchmark worldwide rights for sales, distribution and manufacturing of the product (excluding Switzerland) with royalties on net sales.

Manufacturing will be performed at Benchmark’s Braintree site.

Malcolm Pye, chief executive of Benchmark, commented: “We are delighted to be partnering with such a highly-regarded team to develop this much needed solution for an issue which currently has no licensed vaccine treatment available.

“We continue to invest in cutting-edge technologies and are seeing further benefits from our investment in vaccine manufacturing at Braintree, where much of the development and all of the manufacturing for this vaccine will take place.

“Our ability to collaborate with other teams in this technology space will enhance our own offering, both in the breadth of products we can provide and in improving the efficacy of our products currently in development.”