Palantir-backed startup plans US monkey breeding facility to aid pharmaceutical industry
Safer Human Medicine aims to breed 30,000 macaques over two decades to reduce dependence on imports.
A tech startup backed by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale plans to build a large-scale monkey breeding facility in America to address a laboratory monkey crisis, according to a TechCrunch report cited by the Times of India.
The startup, Safer Human Medicine, intends to breed 30,000 macaques over the next 20 years to help American laboratories reduce their reliance on imported animals used for pharmaceutical research and testing.
The shortage has intensified because artificial intelligence (AI) allows researchers to identify potential medicines more quickly, which increases the volume of experimental treatments requiring testing.
Before China banned exports in 2020, it provided nearly 60 per cent of America's laboratory monkey imports. Following this, laboratories turned to Cambodia, but a 2022 investigation found that wild-caught monkeys were being falsely identified as captive-bred.
The supply constraints have driven up costs. While macaques cost approximately $3,000 in 2019, prices have risen to more than $20,000, with China reportedly charging about $26,000 per macaque.
US laboratories import roughly 20,000 monkeys annually. Researchers use macaques to study the toxicity and safety of treatments due to their biological similarities to humans before starting human clinical trials.
