July - 202019TECH OUTLOOKused by scientists regardless of their own expertise in microbiome research or access to gnotobiotic facilities. For instance, in cases where a customer does not have the facilities to maintain their germ-free models in a gnotobiotic state, the company offers contract gnotobiotic husbandry services. "Rather than a customer setting up their gnotobiotics facility, we partner with them to ensure that they don't have to worry about breeding germ-free animals and can focus all their efforts into research," adds Maue. Taconic Biosciences is currently using its strong foundation in germ-free animals and custom microbiota association services as a launchpad for a Taconic Microbiota Repository that will become a catalog of relevant microbiomes that researchers can utilize as per their needs. The company has acquired licenses for a wild mouse-derived microbiota as well as altered Schaedler flora to become the first entries in its repository.To highlight the efficacy of Taconic Biosciences' offerings, Maue highlights his company's early partnership with a biopharma organization, which led to the development of its now highly sought-after custom microbiota association offering. During this early work, the company worked with the client to create a microbiome research platform to facilitate the simultaneous evaluation of different microbiomes. After this project, Taconic Biosciences went on to develop a dedicated offering based on custom microbiota associations, which has assisted a multitude of firms in advancing research goals.Presently, Maue is expanding Taconic Biosciences' operations by further refining a platform that aids researchers in addressing reproducibility, increasing the nature of human predictive models, and evaluating therapeutics. "Microbiome effects likely significantly impact pre-clinical in vivo drug discovery. And through our portfolio, we want to allow all scientists, regardless of their area of expertise, to better access models that allow them to evaluate new microbiome-based therapies and control for unwanted experimental variability derived from microbiota," concludes Maue. Our strong foundation in providing scalable germ-free animal models and ability to derive new models allows us to develop transformative solutions for our clients
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