These expert-led masterclasses offer participants hands-on guidance and strategic insights into critical topics in animal health innovation. Each 45-minute session is designed to deepen understanding, build skills, and support actionable progress in the development, funding, and commercialization of novel technologies. The sessions are particularly valuable for entrepreneurs, researchers, and early-stage companies navigating the animal health innovation pathway.
The following topics will be covered:
- How to approach clinical trials in oncology for pets:
When companies are looking for veterinary clinics to perform clinical trials with pets with cancer, the roadmap is often unclear. This masterclass will share an overview for companies on what clinics can offer, and which rules should be followed.
Speaker for this session: Laetitia Cicchelero (UGent)
- The Unified Vaccine Platform: A Standardized Framework for Versatile and Rapid Animal Vaccine Development:
Analogous to a Swiss Army knife, where a single standardized design supports multiple functions, the Unified Vaccine Platform (UVP) applies one coherent technological framework to a broad range of veterinary vaccine applications. The core of the UVP is an antigen capsule technology that enables end-to-end process standardization—from antigen design through regulatory submission to industrial-scale manufacturing—while preserving pathogen-specific immunogenicity.
The UVP has been validated across seven vaccine programs targeting both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses, demonstrating robustness, transferability, and manufacturing compatibility. As a key case study, VeroBlue-3, a recombinant bluetongue virus serotype 3 vaccine, progressed from concept to EMA dossier completion within nine months, highlighting substantial acceleration over conventional inactivated virus vaccine development.
Beyond supporting “traditional” vaccine programs, the platform directly addresses a major unmet need: the rapid generation of field-adapted vaccines targeting variants of highly mutating pathogens, as well as precisely geography-matched vaccines tailored to regional strain diversity. This capability is expected to impact pipeline design and lifecycle management across portfolios.
This presentation will provide validation data, development workflows, and manufacturing performance of the UVP, and will outline how its standardized, recombinant approach differs from mRNA-based vaccines. By combining scientific versatility with predictable, scalable processes, the UVP targets high medical need and offers substantial economic potential through faster development, platform re-use, and more agile response to evolving pathogen landscapes.
Speaker for this session: Hanjo Hennemann (Verovaccines)
- Ruminant Livestock Vaccine Development from Concept to Commercialisation:
This masterclass will cover the journey from initial proof of concept to vaccine commercialisation, describing the challenges often found along the way with examples of how these have been tackled to ensure that much-needed veterinary vaccines are able to find their way to market to address increasingly complex disease challenges faced by the livestock industry.
Speaker for this session: Stewart Burgess (Moredun)
- Illuminating Mechanism of Action in Veterinary Antibody R&D: From Biology to Functional Bioassays
This Masterclass will present a joint Promega– Boehringer Ingelheim session focused on illuminating mechanism-of-action (MoA) strategies in veterinary antibody research and development through the application of luminescent bioassays. The session will demonstrate how MoA-driven assay design can support veterinary antibody programs from discovery through early development, bridging biological understanding with translational decision-making.
Participants will learn how luminescent reporter, binding, and functional bioassays can be leveraged to generate sensitive, robust, and biologically relevant data that inform target validation, functional potency, and early development decisions. The session will integrate scientific perspective with practical, real-world experience drawn from industry case studies.
In addition, the Masterclass will highlight Promega Tailored Research Services (TRS) as a collaborative partner in co-developing and optimizing MoA-relevant bioassays tailored to program-specific needs. This session is designed for animal health R&D scientists seeking innovative, scalable bioanalytical approaches to strengthen MoA confidence and accelerate veterinary antibody development.
Speakers for this session: Jennifer Serriere-Di Bartolo (Promega) and Jens Radzimanowski (Boehringer Ingelheim)
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Beyond Monoclonal Antibodies: Next Generation Therapeutics for Animal Health - Multi-specificity for Complex Disease and Other Opportunities
Speakers for this session: Charles Owen (272Bio Limited)
