Protia completes development of the world's largest allergy testing kit for horses.

Preparing to enter the horse healthcare market following the pet healthcare market.

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<2024-07-11>

Protia Inc.(Konex 303360), a company specializing in in vitro diagnostic medical devices, announced on the 11th July 2024 that it has completed the development of a multi-diagnostic test kit (Anitia Equine IgE I/ Anitia Equine IgE II) to diagnose allergic diseases in horses. Protia's 'ANITIA Equine IgE I/ II' applies the PLA (Parallel Lines Array) method to provide high accuracy in a short testing time to frequently cause allergens such as vegetation, pollen, mold, mites, and insects. With 120 types, it can test the largest number of allergy types in the world among existing horse allergy products. This product is scheduled to be introduced along with human allergy diagnostic products at the ADLM (American Association for Diagnostic Laboratory Science) exhibition hall in Chicago, USA, at the end of July this year.

Just like humans, horses can be allergic to airborne substances such as pollen and certain substances (hereinafter referred to as allergens) contained in food. Representative allergic symptoms observed in horses include atopic dermatitis, summer seasonal recurrent dermatitis, and insect bite hypersensitivity.

The existing allergy diagnosis method, the skin irritation test, was inconvenient because it involved shaving the fur and directly injecting the allergen to observe the reaction. However, Protia's 'ANITIA Equine IgE', which replaced the existing method, uses a small amount of serum and makes it hassle-free. Allergy testing is possible, and it is easy to make a diagnosis and prescription by combining the test results and the veterinarian's opinion.

In fact, the number of horses raised around the world is approximately 60 million, of which 10 million are distributed in the United States, which has the largest market size, followed by Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. The horse industry, such as horse racing and equestrian sports, plays an important economic role and has formed a large market in various fields, reaching tens of billions of dollars in size. The horse industry is very active around the world, and the equine healthcare market for the health and welfare of horses is also showing continuous growth. Protea introduced a horse allergy diagnostic kit to enter the steadily growing market.

According to a report published by Zion Market Research, the equine healthcare market is expected to reach 3.5 trillion won in 2023, and the average annual growth rate is expected to be about 6.1%, creating a market worth 6 trillion won in 2032. Although the number of animals raised is significantly lower than that of dogs or cats, they are expensive animals and awareness of the importance of horse health and welfare is increasing among horse owners, trainers and breeders, so they are sparing no investment in healthcare such as allergy diagnostic tests.

Protia has developed allergy diagnostic products for horses as well as companion animals such as dogs and cats. In particular, we began development of horse allergy products based on requests from our overseas business partners and the potential growth of the horse healthcare market and succeeded in commercializing them. It has been done. We plan to actively expand our horse allergy diagnostic product business targeting 14 countries, including the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, China, and Japan, that are exporting existing pet allergy diagnostic products, and in Asia-Pacific, where potential customers are distributed. We plan to promote the product in countries in Europe and South America. We are also expanding production facilities to ensure smooth supply to meet the increasing demand for products.