ISSUE FOCUS FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE March 2025 71 gain, livability and FCR that an endolysin-based product could deliver.” SO WHY THE EXCITEMENT AROUND ENDOLYSINS? Run any Google search on endolysins and three consistent messages emerge. Firstly, their efficacy in terms of the speed in which they will kill a pathogen; secondly, their specificity – they will only target the pathogen they have been designed to target and do not impact beneficial microbiota; and finally, the associated low/close-to-zero risk of their triggering antimicrobial resistance. For Axitan, what makes them truly unique is their robustness. Dr Miller explained: “When people talk about endolysins they often overly focus people’s attention on their mode of action – how they are purely a cutting device able to break key bonds in the peptidoglycan layer of the targeted cell wall causing it to burst and die.” “For us, what makes them special is how robust we’ve been able to make them so that they can comfortably withstand the commercialisation process. That means being able to grow them at industrial scale, formulate them with other synergistic ingredients such as mid- and long-chain fatty acids, and then ensuring they can be successfully applied in a feed mill.” “In short, whilst it can be helpful to think of endolysins as enzymes with antimicrobial activity specific to the pathogen being targeted, for any of this to be commercially relevant, they have to deliver consistently in real-world settings.” THE FEED EFFICIENCY AND ANIMAL PERFORMANCE OF FORC3® IN HEALTHY FLOCKS Axitan’s first endolysin-based product in commercial production is FORC3® which was developed to address Clostridium perfringens in poultry, the causative agent of necrotic enteritis which is estimated to cause $6b of economic loss to the global poultry industry each year. Whilst in vitro studies could point to the product being able to kill more than 99% of all CP bacteria within one hour, there was an initial reluctance amongst major producers to admit that they might even have a C. perfringens related issue. When Axitan was able to demonstrate that FORC3® was able to achieve improvements in healthy flocks of up to 2.75 percentage points in livability, 3 points in FCR, consistent live weight gains at harvest across production models and an economic uplift of up to 14 cent a bird, the nature of the discussions started to change.
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