Today, Gubra announces the acquisition of the Danish minipig service provider MiniGut ApS. MiniGut ApS is a fully equipped minipig contract research organisation (CRO) located at DTU Science Park in Hørsholm, Denmark, next to the headquarters of Gubra. The acquisition enables Gubra to perform minipig studies and adds a large animal model to Gubra’s CRO services. This includes both pharmacokinetic studies and microbiome studies, and over time additional minipig research models covering the disease areas within which Gubra operates.
Niels Vrang, Chief Scientific Officer at Gubra A/S, is very pleased with the transaction because it adds an important large animal model to Gubra’s CRO service portfolio.
“We are excited to make this small, yet important acquisition that adds the expertise and capabilities of MiniGut into Gubra. We have been on the lookout for the possibility to add minipigs to our model catalogue for some time because they constitute an excellent large animal model when bridging from rodent to human pharmacokinetics and efficacy. The facility at MiniGut is perfectly suited for conducting advanced microbiome studies under tightly controlled conditions. Since the gut microbiota in minipigs closely resembles that of humans the minipig model is an important translational model for microbiome studies.”
Co-Founder and CEO of MiniGut ApS Professor Christian Kapel at University of Copenhagen sees the transaction as the optimal way forward for MiniGut ApS:
“We have been working with minipigs over the past 15 years and have developed an extremely attractive facility that can run minipig studies in high-containment, individually ventilated holding rooms. We are experts in not only maintaining the high health status, but also microbiome stability when working with the Ellegaard Göttingen Minipig. We in the MiniGut team are happy that these activities can be continued and expanded by such a well-respected CRO and pre-clinical research powerhouse as Gubra. We will be actively engaged in transferring our knowledge of the minipig models and our network of partners and clients to Gubra and look forward to developing new research models in minipigs over the coming years”.
