Cat Health Corp. pursued a non-traditional multi-API drug strategy, overcoming investor resistance and building a faster path to clinic by leveraging existing compounds and novel combinations. This session will explore why unconventional drug models face pushback, how existing molecules can accelerate development timelines, and what founders need to do to bring investors along on non-traditional strategies.

HPAI costs hundreds of millions per outbreak. PRRS circulates persistently through the most biosecure swine systems in the world. The science to prevent both exists. Yet delivering solutions at a commercial scale is limited by challenges in demonstrating ROI and operational capacity.  

• How the economics of prevention need to be reframed around visible, near-term financial return rather than disease avoidance alone
• How data, diagnostics, and early detection are shifting biosecurity from reactive to preventive, and what tools are genuinely changing producer behavior
• The role of vaccination and emerging biological tools in building more resilient production systems at commercial scale
• What designing prevention systems for real operational conditions, consolidating herds, untrained workforces, and hostile environments, actually requires
• What collaboration across producers, industry, and regulators needs to look like to make progress at scale

Therapeutic nutrition is one of the largest underleveraged opportunities in companion animal care. The evidence base is growing, new data infrastructure is making outcomes measurable for the first time, and pet owner appetite for nutrition-led health solutions is clear. This panel explores what it takes to make nutrition a more integrated, measurable, and commercially sustainable part of clinical practice.

• The evidence base for therapeutic nutrition: where it's strong and where the gaps are
• Using outcomes data to make the clinical case for nutrition recommendations
• Pet owner demand and how practices are, and aren't, meeting it
• Communicating value and price in a category where D2C competition is growing
• What a genuinely integrated nutrition strategy looks like inside a practice

Synthetic data enriches clinical datasets and simulates alternative scientific scenarios through computer-generated subject data, synthetic placebo groups, digital twins, and more. Combined with AI across target identification, trial design, and sample size modeling, a new toolkit is emerging that could shorten the time from idea to decision, and animal health may be better placed than human pharma to use it.

• AI-driven target identification, trial design, and exploration of inclusion criteria
• Synthetic placebo groups, digital twins, and enriching underpowered datasets
• Real-world evidence and PIMS data as a development input
• Addressing small, fragmented datasets in guiding product development decisions
• Replacing, reducing and refining animal use through computational approaches

Climate volatility, policy instability, and structural labor shortages are raising operational risk and reducing investment confidence across livestock production. This session explores how animal health innovation and agtech can serve as genuine strategic tools, building resilience and helping producers navigate a rapidly changing global market.

• How tight-margin decision-making shapes what producers actually adopt
• How animal health and agtech reduce operational risk and deliver visible financial return
• How coordinated supply chains and verified quality reduce systemic risk and unlock the global protein opportunity
• What collaboration, associations, and policy need to do to stabilize the commercial environment and make long-term investment rational

This session will share specific examples of how data is unlocking economic and medical advancement across the value chain and for the pet owners we serve.

• Product Launch: Derrick will share how they leveraged their data to undertake a product launch roll out with a partner. How expectations were aligned and how ROI was achieved for both practice and partner
• Clinical Outcomes: Jennifer will discuss how Arista are combining PIMS data with client and clinical team surveys to measure clinical outcomes.
• Operational Effectiveness: Paula will share how data is at the heart of their client communication and engagement strategy

In 2025, only four of the top ten animal health companies made acquisitions, the joint lowest on record. M&A spend fell from $8.8bn to $1.7bn. Deal volume dropped, but diligence quality went up. Acquirers and licensees are more selective, more data-driven, and more focused on development-stage risk than at any point in the last decade. This session pulls back the curtain on what drives deal decisions, and what founders and development teams need to build in from day one.

• What a diligence-ready data package looks like
• What kills deals: the most common data gaps, red flags, and avoidable mistakes
• Licensing vs acquisition vs co-development: which structure fits which stage
• How acquirers are pricing development-stage assets as valuations shift from revenue to data
• What investors are underwriting and how to de-risk your development plan before the pitch