Understanding the value of species-specific biotics for animals

CanBiocin was spun out of the University of Alberta by three university professors. One of CanBiocin’s goals is to develop probiotics for pets, and the team identified its first strains in healthy domestic dogs. What happened next was “actually more luck than sense,” Burlet said.

Burlet and his colleagues were on a canoe trip a few years ago and were fishing in a remote location. His colleague, equipped with a camera and a telephoto lens, noticed movement at the edge of the lake, where he spotted three wolves. Shortly afterwards, the team canoed to the shore after the wolves had disappeared. About 300 meters further along the trail of the animals, the team found a freshly excreted sample of wolf feces, which they collected.

“We took it back to our lab and repeated the process we had done in domestic dogs,” Burlet said. “We started looking for possible candidate strains that might be different from what we had seen in healthy domestic dogs. And lo and behold, there were some. It was a confluence of being in the right place at the right time and luck.”

CanBiocin highlights that the bacteria present in a species’ gut microbiome are optimized for that particular host, making them ideal candidates for probiotics. According to the company, “the diverse microbial population present in each of these hosts can differ dramatically due to differences in basal temperatures, dietary habits and immune systems. This, in turn, favors a unique microbial community that can survive and proliferate specifically in the gut of its host.”