19 November 2024

4 minute read

By: Lee Williamson

North America

Dean Warras, CEO at Veterinary Pharmaceutical Solutions (VPS) and Diamond Animal Health, recently spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, United States.

Dean, tell us about Veterinary Pharmaceutical Solutions (VPS).

VPS is a compounding pharmacy, which basically means we provide customized medicines. The pharmacy is a fifth-generation human pharmacy, but in the mid-1990’s, the founders partnered with a couple of veterinarians. One of them happened to be a swine veterinarian. He would come to the pharmacists and say, “I have a problem on a farm, could you make something for me?” They tried it, and it worked. They did it again, and it worked. For the next 30 years now, that's what the pharmacy has been. It's 100% dedicated to the livestock industry. It's mostly for pigs and some cattle.

In December 2023, we acquired a company in Des Moines, Iowa, called Diamond Animal Health, which is a more traditional animal health company. This was intentional. We wanted to be a broader-based animal health company. This company provides vaccines and traditional pharma products for multiple species. So now, we have the compounding pharmacy, and we have vaccines and pharmaceuticals.

How do you serve the swine industry with these two distinct types of businesses?

VPS is mostly swine centric. Those are customized medicines. A compounded product always starts with a finished dose form of an FDA-registered product, and we change it somehow. We might simply add a flavor, or we might add two drugs together where we need to do research in terms of the chemistry and the pharmacokinetics to determine if they work together.

Obviously, there's a lot of safety and research that goes into it, and that's essentially what we do. That's how we serve the swine industry. But our process and our service are all about innovation, and it always starts and ends at the farm.

A farmer talks to a veterinarian, then a veterinarian will talk to us. Our business is 100% prescription-based, so the vet is always involved. They'll say, “VPS, I have a problem. I can't find a product on the market that will work for this, or I've tried something that is supposed to work, but it doesn't work very well.” They come to us, and one of the best things about our pharmacy is the speed to market is incredibly swift. We'll do safety research, perform efficacy research with our customers’ formulation, evaluate the chemistry, and complete all the lab work. We can have a product in the market in six to nine months where a traditional registration path is five to seven years and $10 million dollars. The veterinarians and producers love the speed of our process.

Dean, you called it 'customized medicine'; is this the path forward?

I'm not saying it's the only path. I think it's a great path. I think we'll always have traditional pharma and vaccines as tools in the tool belt. However, in big pharma, there is clearly a trend where more investment dollars are flowing into the companion space, and especially our company, VPS. We do have some companion products on the Diamond Animal Health side of the business, but VPS is 100% dedicated to livestock. That's all we do every day. The fact that it is customized, and it is going to be different from a registered product.

It's simple things like taking a powder and making it into a water-soluble solution or taking a liquid and making it into a gel so you can use it topically or taking something topical and making it oral. That uniqueness is incredibly valuable to a veterinarian and a producer. It's always going to be a growing tool in the tool belt.

What does the future look like for VPS and Diamond?

VPS will be more of the same, but I would say it will serve a broader set of species. We'll take these tools and these processes heavier into the cattle and poultry industries.

At Diamond, historically it has been a contract manufacturing business only, both on the vaccine and the pharma side. In the future we're going to hold on to that and we are not going to compete with our customers, but we intend to bring proprietary products that we can sell through VPS into that business.

It sounds like VPS might be a valuable resource for customers who have a problem that they haven't been able to solve. Is VPS the place to call for answers?

We think we are. Call us. If you need a customized medicine solution or a compounded solution, or if you want to look at contract manufacturing, Diamond's been in business for 72 years. It is a great business with great people.

Customers, producers, and veterinarians can look at the website for VPS or Diamond and we have several people in the field for VPS, both veterinarians as well as key account managers. They're well known in the swine industry so call them and they can bring us your issues.