BIOFRACTAL

A functional index: Moving beyond biomarkers For decades, scientists developing solutions for animal nutrition and health have been searching for biomarkers to evaluate the efficacy of their solutions. Things are changing. High-throughput biology, AI, and massive computing power are fueling a revolution. We’re no longer limited to a few biomarkers — we can track thousands at once, capturing the full functional status of an animal with unmatched precision. Instead of guessing complex systems from a single clue, we now read the entire functional signature of a treatment — whether it is a problem or a solution. However, the real challenge lies in translating the complexity of biological systems into a clear, actionable metric that reflects true functionality. That’s where we recently got a significant breakthrough. Earlier this year, we introduced the Gut SAVVY Index (GSI) for chickens and pigs — a first-of-its-kind advancement that transforms gene expression profiles into a quantitative, functional assessment of gut health. GSI evaluates treatments based on their mRNA signature, comparing them to profiles of poor gut health across six essential pillars: Digestion & absorption; nutrient metabolism; immune function; intestinal integrity; oxidative balance; microbial metabolites. The result? Quantitative functional insights that drive smarter decisions. We are seeing great use-cases in new product development programs, including the selection of candidates, product optimization, and the basic understanding of drivers or limitations of product performance. A functional index makes it easy to compare effects of products side-by-side, building real confidence in decision making. Once you see the big picture, you can dive deep into the molecular mechanisms without drowning in data noise. The applications go well beyond R&D. Imagine the difference these tools will make in the evaluation of products and the optimization of performance in the field. This is what precision nutrition is about! We are just getting started. #animalnutrition #animalhealth #precisionnutrition #precisionfarming #guthealth BIOFRACTAL

🚀 If your on farm animal diagnostics aren’t easy… they’re broken!

Performance Diagnostics promises to unlock the synergies of feed additive technologies. The feed additive market is maturing, marked by intense competition and numerous overlapping and differentiated technologies. Margins gradually reflect this evolving reality, pushing companies toward critical strategic decisions. Service has become essential for differentiation and value creation, particularly for companies with robust portfolios and technological access. A natural complement to a strong product offering is a diagnostic tool that identifies problems and directly links them to effective solutions. Currently, nutritionists and veterinarians lack precise tools to gain accurate feedback from animals in the field, limiting informed decision-making and targeted interventions. Addressing this gap, a new category of services, Performance Diagnostics, is emerging. Performance Diagnostics utilizes biological samples to accurately identify and quantify sub-clinical limitations affecting animal performance, enabling precision nutrition. These diagnostics provide insights into root causes such as nutritional imbalances, sub-clinical diseases, oxidative stress, toxicities, and metabolic or immune challenges. Given the broad detection scope, artificial intelligence, high-throughput analytics, and software-as-a-service models are key enabling technologies for effective Performance Diagnostics platforms. The category is still in early development, with industry leaders investing strategically in technology platforms, although no clear market leader has emerged… yet. BIOFRACTAL was created as an independent Performance Diagnostics platform powered by mRNA data, initially positioning itself as a product development partner for technology-driven feed additive suppliers. This initial experience allowed us to build a robust technology foundation capable of connecting functions to performance and problems to solutions. Now, we are ready to lead this emerging category alongside visionary partners. In front of us, there is an amazing window of opportunity to reshape the industry! #animalnutrition #animalhealth #precisionnutrition #precisionfarming BIOFRACTAL

🐷✨Better Gut Health, Better Outcomes! Explore how Gut SAVVY is transforming pig gut health through advanced AI and gene expression insights. With better insights, comes better decision making! 👉 Swipe through our carousel to see how it works and why gut health matters! Ready for better results? 👇Connect with BIOFRACTAL today! #GutHealth #PrecisionNutrition #AnimalHealth #PigProduction #SustainableFarming

Opening the Door to Smarter Nutritional Solution Design The market offers hundreds of feed additives and active ingredients, each with unique functionalities. Meanwhile, production environments and challenges are nearly limitless. This creates a significant opportunity for tailored, field-specific nutritional solutions. Traditionally, solution design has been more art than science—blending experience, published mode-of-action knowledge, practical considerations, and sometimes small-scale testing. But with the advent of technologies providing in-depth animal physiological insights, we now have powerful tools to design precision nutrition solutions. We’re excited to see how our customers are using the insights from BIOFRACTAL´s platform to develop more effective, targeted solutions. Here are some key takeaways from applying this data-driven approach: 1. Core vs. Indirect Effects: Additives have consistent core effects across conditions, but also cause indirect physiological responses. Understanding both is essential for optimization. 2. Context Matters: Product performance often depends on specific conditions—such as enteric challenge levels, nutrient profiles, or environmental stress. These interactions can be tested and fine-tuned. 3. Efficacy Varies Widely: Even within the same category (e.g., probiotics), product benefits can range from mild to substantial improvements on functionality. 3. Formulation Matters: Product form changes like encapsulation can significantly impact a product’s mode of action and effectiveness. We can now quantify those changes in functionality. 4. Overlap and Synergy: While many products share similar mechanisms, there are valuable complementarities and synergies across and within categories. 5. Literature Gaps: Published data are often biased and overlook surprising benefits—or limitations—of certain products. Identifying these hidden factors is critical for optimization. The good news? Many feed additive technologies are already well-developed, and tools to unlock biological insights are now mature enough to uncover their full potential. The next step is collaboration—between innovators, technology developers, and those solving real-world problems every day. We’re here to help make that happen! #animalnutrition #animalhealth #precisionnutrition #precisionfarming BIOFRACTAL

Ever wondered what it takes to revolutionise animal nutrition and health? Developing a new innovative solution can be a 3-7 year journey that’s cost between €3-20 million! It begs the question, what would it take to reimagine the strategy behind these breakthroughs to solve animal producer challenges faster and more efficiently? Take a look below for 5 ways to accelerate the innovation journey. #innovation #performancediagnositics #functionalsignature #precision

The Liver: A Key to Understanding How Solutions Affect Performance In recent years, our transcriptomics studies on intestinal health and related products have led to a key insight: the liver plays a crucial role in linking mode of action to performance outcomes. The liver is more than just an indicator of gut integrity and nutrient absorption—it provides a comprehensive view of an animal’s metabolic health. It reveals how efficiently energy and amino acid metabolism functions, which is influenced by long-term factors like inflammation and oxidative stress. While assessing intestinal health on its own provides valuable insights, especially for enteric challenges and intestine-specific products, the liver offers a broader, complementary perspective on how solutions impact overall performance. In our research at BIOFRACTAL, we have uncovered both positive and negative effects on liver integrity, oxidative balance, and energy metabolism—factors that explain why certain products succeed or fail in specific conditions. We believe that understanding liver function in response to challenges and interventions is central to precision nutrition! Rather than viewing the liver simply as part of an axis (e.g., the gut-liver-brain axis), we see it as a metabolic hub where multiple axes between the intestine and other organs—such as the brain, lungs, kidneys, and immune system—intersect. With this in mind, our next step is the development of a metabolic health index, building on the initial success of our first gut health index. Stay tuned. #animalnutrition #animalhealth #precisionnutrition BIOFRACTAL

Nutrition and Resilience to Viral Challenges As the global livestock industry continues to battle persistent and emerging viral diseases, there is a growing opportunity to harness nutrition to enhance farm animals' resilience against viral challenges. Viruses themselves are metabolically inert, relying entirely on the host cell’s metabolism to produce their components and replicate. This presents an opportunity to develop targeted nutritional strategies that modulate metabolism and immune function, counteracting the metabolic hijacking tactics of viruses. Here is a fascinating review by Sumbria et al., published in the early days of COVID-19, exploring the key mechanisms and evidence supporting resilience through metabolic modulation during viral infections. How Viruses Hijack Host Metabolism Viral infections trigger a cascade of metabolic changes in the host to support their replication, including: »» Increased glucose metabolism (Warburg effect) – fuels rapid energy production. »» Shifts in lipid metabolism – favors fatty acid synthesis for viral envelope formation. »» Dysregulation of calcium signaling – impacts cell survival and immune responses. »» Amino acid reprogramming – supports viral protein synthesis and immune evasion or channels amino acids for energy production. While vaccines and biosecurity remain central to disease control, nutrition provides a complementary, proactive strategy. Effective interventions will depend on the metabolic strategies employed by specific viruses and may include optimizing micronutrient intake (e.g., Zn, Se, and Vitamin E), supporting mitochondrial metabolism and oxidative balance, modulating lipid metabolism, or regulating calcium homeostasis. A interesting example of metabolic hijacking is Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV), a major challenge in the swine industry. PRRSV manipulates calcium signaling to facilitate its replication, triggering cellular stress and opening store-operated calcium entry channels. This influx of Ca²⁺ fuels autophagy—a process the virus exploits for its own benefit. See https://lnkd.in/e7pH5hXm. At BIOFRACTAL, we recently reanalyzed mRNA data from an experiment comparing gilts with high versus low fetal mortality in the presence of PRRS infection. Our findings revealed clear differences in calcium and parathyroid hormone signaling, and oxidative stress in blood samples in more susceptible gilts, raising important questions about potential nutritional interventions. Maria Walsh will be presenting these intriguing results at the Animal Science Midwest Meeting in Omaha, US, this week. We are eager to continue working with partners breaking boundaries of precision nutrition for animals! #animalnutrition #animalhealth #precisionnutrition #precisionfarming BIOFRACTAL

The Evolution of Animal Nutrition and Health: A Shift to Agile, Customer-Driven Innovation Developing cutting-edge nutrition and health technologies is a monumental challenge. The complexity of regulatory requirements and inherent technical risks often result in 5-10 year projects, with investments reaching several millions—and a relatively low probability of success. Only a handful of global companies have the resources to sustain a pipeline of novel technologies that consistently deliver long-term value. However, the landscape of existing nutrition and health technologies has evolved dramatically and competition has become tougher in categories that are reaching maturity. Today, there is an abundance of active ingredients available, which means that: 1) it can be more challenging to identify technologies that truly bring new value to the market, and 2) there’s immense potential to unlock value by injecting application knowledge into these existing technologies. In particular, combining existing technologies into unique solutions offers exciting opportunities for innovation. The old approach of simply mixing products based on customer appeal and narratives is being replaced by a more robust, science- and data-driven approach to solution design. These new approaches allow innovators to harness true synergies from base technologies and deliver new value to customers! This shift will drive the consolidation of leading companies in this part of the value chain, who deliver the combined value of advanced nutrition technologies and application knowledge, working very closely with the end customer. At BIOFRACTAL, we have seen great potential in using our AI-powered gene expression platform for the optimization of solutions. By understanding how different technologies—both individually and in combination—affect outcomes inside animals, we can design truly differentiated solutions in a fraction of the time and cost. The feed additive market is at an inflection point. The rules of the game are changing. There are exciting opportunities to redesign R&D. It is becoming a strategic imperative! #animalnutrition #animalhealth #precisionnutrition #precisionfarming #innovation BIOFRACTAL

Expanding Our Global Reach! We’re excited to announce a major expansion of RESEARCH SAVVY, our AI-powered gene expression analysis service, into key global markets for animal nutrition and health innovation. With an extended laboratory network, BIOFRACTAL can now deliver cutting-edge insights into the mode of action of nutrition and heath technologies and their impact on animal performance in Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand—broadening our presence beyond Europe and the U.S. This expansion strengthens our ability to support global innovators in developing and launching next-generation nutrition and health solutions tailored to poultry, swine, and ruminant producers in key markets. A major step forward in our mission to drive innovation, sustainability, and competitiveness in the industry through science and technology. New regions. New possibilities. Same commitment to innovation! #animalnutrition #animalhealth #innovation #precisionnutrition #precisionfarming BIOFRACTAL