Animal health company with $5.8B in revenue, 10,000 employees partnering with CSU

Colorado State University just landed a major partnership with one of the world’s largest animal health companies.

Zoetis, a company that works to develop, manufacture and commercialize medicines, vaccines, diagnostic products and more, signed on to partner with the university to establish a research and development lab at the university’s Foothills Campus.

The company has about 10,000 employees, and in 2018 alone generated annual revenue of $5.8 billion, with products for sale in more than 100 countries, according to its website.

The move will bring 17 to 20 jobs to Fort Collins for investigators, CSU graduate students, and undergrads with a background in biology, immunology and the like.

This marks one of CSU’s biggest partnerships to date, said Ray Goodrich, executive director of the Infectious Disease Research Center.

Why Colorado State University?

The company looked at many different universities before choosing to partner with CSU, said Rob Polzer, Zoetis' senior vice president of Global Therapeutics Research. Polzer said CSU stuck out because of the existing combination of research, scientific capabilities, talent and skill. 

"We realized CSU would be a great potential collaborator as we focus on trying to develop livestock immunotherapies," Polzer said. "CSU represents a great hub in Fort Collins, near Denver and Boulder, and it's really emerging as biotech center of excellence."

CSU has traditionally partnered with smaller companies and startups, often with close ties to the university, such as Vivaldi Biosciences, a company researching universal flu vaccines, and SiVEC Biotechnologies LLC, which is developing antiviral applications for treatment and prevention of avian influenza, or bird flu.

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The private companies are located on the second floor of the Research Innovation Center at CSU’s Foothills Campus. The first floor is lab space for faculty and students.

If all goes according to plan, Zoetis will move into its new space in early 2020. Its Incubator Research Lab will span about 3,000 square feet, or about 40% of the office and lab space on the second floor.

Zoetis will focus on understanding more about livestock animal immune systems. With a better understanding of how those immune systems work, Zoetis wants to develop better products and treatments for various diseases.

"This is early exploratory research where we're trying to better understand the basic biology of the cattle immune system," Polzer said. "We're really looking for intervention points in order to help animals maintain sense of wellness as they are moved through and around the United States."

As it stands, Polzer said, there aren't many alternatives to antibiotics when animals get sick — but the market is ready for alternatives. 

By developing treatments that don’t rely on antibiotics, Zoetis products could help reduce the spread of drug-resistant diseases. There's also growing demand for antibiotic-free meat. 

“It’s ambitious,” Goodrich said, “but it’s worth taking on.”  

What Zoetis does

Zoetis sells products for all kinds of animals, ranging from companion animals such as cats and dogs to livestock animals such as pigs and cattle.

According to its quarterly earnings report, Zoetis rakes in most of its revenue through U.S. companion animal products but is looking to expand into the livestock market.

"This is demonstrating our commitment to bringing new therapeutic options to marketplace," Polzer said. "This is a great way of balancing internal expertise with science going on in external community."      

Partnerships between universities and corporations aren’t new.

According to MIT Sloan Management Review, General Electric, Siemens, Rolls-Royce and IBM have collaborated with universities for years. So have companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Uber.

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But it’s an experiment for Zoetis, Goodrich said.

Zoetis has partnered with universities before, but this is the first time it will have its own lab on campus, Polzer said.

Goodrich said he hopes the partnership will show what can be accomplished through collaboration between academia and corporations.

“We’re hopeful this will become a model of success,” Goodrich said.

The partnership will give Zoetis access to students and faculty with ideas on how to solve big problems. It will also give students and faculty access to the means to make real change in the world, Goodrich said.

“So, who benefits? People in Colorado, the U.S. and the world,” Goodrich said.

To learn more

To learn more about Zoetis, visit zoetis.com/.

Zoetis will be recruiting qualified candidates at Colorado State University’s Career Fair Sept. 24-25. For more information, go to career.colostate.edu/events.

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