Episode 20 DWP- Compounding Solutions for The Wild

Have you ever needed to sedate or use chemical immobilization medications for capture work or on your ranch? Cullen from Capture Labs Rx joins the Deer Wizard to discuss origins stories of Pharmacology, Cap Kits and more.

https://capturelabrx.com/

This podcast is built around real-world experience, collaboration with producers and veterinarians, and nearly three decades of hands-on work across North America. The goal is simple: provide practical insight that helps producers make better decisions for herd health, genetics, and long-term success. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Deer Wizard Podcast. Conversation shaping the deer industry. I'm your host, Josh Newton, the Deer Wizard. Through interviews, advocacy, and industry news, we deliver field-proven insights to help producers build better herds. So I got a question for everybody right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Have you ever sedated an animal before? So, for many of you that are watching, you're a deer farmer, rancher, you have elk, you have exotic species, have you ever had to immobilize an animal? I bet the answer is yes. And we have a really interesting guest today. We have Cullen from Capture Lab RX. Uh, they're based out of uh Larmie, uh Wyoming, and Cullen has a really interesting story about how Capture Labs came to be. We get into some detailed conversations relating to compounding, their pharmacy, some of their backstory, the research they're doing. Um I have uh quite a bit of experience in remote delivery, uh, specifically in the immobilization uh world. And so I add some stories in there that I've experienced out in the field, and we get Colin's take as a pharmacist on the why and the how that these things are happening. It gives you a much better understanding of some of these compounds that um that uh that we're working with, and it makes you ultimately a better um producer and uh propagator of the animals that we really enjoy. Uh we talk a bit about uh his his story and his partner Dan's story about the you know the the the birth of Capture Labs and their backgrounds, and you know, these guys are great guys. They're they're hunters, they were hunters long before they they got into uh any of this space, and so they have a direct passion for the health and well-being of these animals that I think uh you and I all share together.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

So I hope you enjoyed this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Colin, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Yeah, thanks, Josh. Thanks for having us on. We're it's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I see uh a bull elk shoulder um above there. I kind of wish I could I could see those antlers. I also see a cool bongo picture. Uh I'm assuming you're in your office. Where is your office?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, so we are located in Laramie, Wyoming, um, right at the kind of the edge of the Rocky Mountains. And this is where I grew up. Um, the other owner to the pharmacy, he grew up right at the edge of the mountains too. So to say that we are alcoholics and love hunting and being in the mountains is kind of an understatement. So we call I can I can move my camera and show that he is our office manager. Oh, I love it. So he sits he sits right above the uh right above my desk and right above Dan's desk and kind of keeps us in line throughout the day.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Sweet. All the folks listening on the podcast are gonna be a little jealous that they just didn't see that elk. Um I I'm a little jealous because like we have elk in Pennsylvania, but like it's a it's a lottery draw and it's it's hard to get an elk tag. You know, we don't we don't have the herds that Wyoming has. I think our I think our population last check was like 1680 or something like that. Um so it's not we don't have a ton, you know, there's like six or eight counties in in the like kind of west central northern part of Pennsylvania. Uh but interesting project because they like back in the I think it was night, I want to say like 1929, they imported a bunch of the genetics here in PA from Yellowstone. And so the predominant genetic strain um is out of the park there. And I want to say they killed four bull or uh seven bulls over 400 last year in PA. So like we have some we got some big, big elk. Um, we just don't have the the numbers, you know. So it's it's cool. Uh I don't want to tangent off into uh elk hunting stories, uh, because we'll we'll end up chatting for a couple hours about that and yes, sir, yes, sir, not chat about uh capture labs. So give us um give us a little rundown of of uh like what capture labs is and kind of maybe your backstory and Dan's backstory a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah, absolutely. So I am one of the pharmacists and part owner of a pharmacy called Capture Lab RX, uh the other owner and pharmacist, his name is Dan Hagerman. He and I, we have worked together for a really long time. So Capture Lab, yes, it's relatively a new pharmacy. However, Dan and I have been doing this, I've been doing it since before I even graduated pharmacy school. Dan was shortly thereafter. Uh we have been compounding medications in this industry for over a decade. We kind of cut our teeth at a pretty well-known pharmacy years ago called Zofarm or Wildlife Pharmaceuticals. I got an internship there even prior to graduation, and I knew within the first day that this is what I want to do. Uh, came home and I told my wife, I said, I just found my dream job, this is what I want to do for the rest of my career. Uh, that's where I met Dan. So, pretty quickly in that process, once I graduated, became a pharmacist, I kind of found my role as the lead compounding pharmacist there. And so if you purchased drug from Zofarm between 2014 and kind of summer of 2023, pretty good chance I compounded it. Uh and then Dan was the pharmacy manager, also known as the pharmacist in charge. So there he literally oversees every detail of that pharmacy. And a big part of that is the regulatory side of things. When an inspector walks in the door, he's kind of the man in the spotlight. His license is on the line for things. He's also licensed in about every state, you can imagine. So uh that's kind of how we grew and developed in this industry, and really pretty fortunate in all honesty in hindsight. Granted, we're probably both a little biased, but I would say Zofarm was kind of at the pinnacle as a pharmacy in in our industry and in the wildlife community. So, what a great place to learn, what a great group of people to learn from. Um, it was an amazing experience and really has kind of led us to where we are today, and just super grateful to now be doing our own thing and kind of bring a new new breath to our industry, kind of some new ideas and and want to kind of take off from where we we kind of stopped there at Zoom.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, that's awesome. I um I had the pleasure of meeting uh Dr. Lance and having dinner with him quite a few times. I suspect that you spent quite a bit of time with him. And he was uh he was a uh a really unique individual in the uh pharmacology space, right? Um and could you could you just I I I believe he's he like cut his teeth over in South Africa back in the in the I think a lot in the 60s. Um and like he he really was I think the impetus of uh for for us here in the States and at least in the whitale space, you know, a new class of drug that we were were able to use. Um give us give us a little bit of a story about maybe you know meeting meeting Dr. Lance and because like he was a he was a cool dude. Like uh uh I I just I enjoy listening to his stories. I suspect you might you might have one for us.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Yeah, so I'll tell you the thing that I remember most about Dr. Lance, because he would walk into that pharmacy, you know, he's not like big in stature or anything like that, but when he would walk in with a smile on his face, he could he could change a room, he could change an entire atmosphere. Um, and and so I will always remember that. And then I've actually read his book. He has a he has a book that he wrote kind of about his history, and and just a very well-rounded, interesting man. He was a helicopter pilot, he did all kinds of things, right? Uh, ultimately becoming a veterinarian. And the story that I remember most, and it's actually in his book, he was doing some work with Moose, right? Um it was a very high-profile project here in Colorado, or down in Colorado, I should say. And uh, I think one of them ended up dying. You know, they had done everything perfect, they'd done it by the book. Uh, the drugs that they had at that point just had limitations, and and the safety profile just wasn't the greatest. And he kind of has always kind of discussed that with that, was the turning point where he looked at himself and he said, there has got to be a better, more effective way to do this as far as immobilization of wildlife species. And that is what sparked everything else that he kind of worked at. And and because of his personality, and I think that you know, his intelligence and all of that, he got the right group of people around him and they started working on different drug combinations. Uh, he was able to bring ultra potent opioids like carfentinyl, dwarfine, thiafentanyl, introduce them into the United States, you know, develop protocols, work with some of the best in this industry to really reshape how we immobilize wildlife. I mean, he really uh, you know, again, I'm biased, right? But I would say that a lot of the work that he did revolutionized how we we look at immobilizing wildlife, whether that's free-ranging wildlife, captive wildlife, you know, the zoo community, all of it. He has touched it all in one way or another.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. I um uh I I came up in the area of of using xylosine, right? Like we had 100 meg per mil xylosine, like that's what we had to you know, sedate here. And uh it was not safe, right? Like, generally speaking, did it work? Sure, but like you know, I call it a rodeo, like it was a challenge, right? And uh I distinctly remember, you know, using my my first BAM kit, and I was just like, You probably made it, and uh I I was just like this is a game changer, right? Um so I I I want to get into that because like I I I know we've advanced even past that, and I know you guys are just doing some some cool work there at Capture Labs. Um, so I wanna I want to cover that. Before we do that, obviously taking on the task of building a new pharmacy is a huge undertaking, right? And so you've obviously you and you and Dan have shown a huge level of commitment, just getting that going.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Give us give us a little background on um what that's like, right? Because like we're talking like highly, highly like the most regulated thing that you could possibly do, probably one of the hardest things you could do um due to the regulations and and safety concerns. Um you chose to you chose to do it. What was that moment that you were like, we gotta do this?

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Yeah, um, I think there was uh it was a culmination of a couple things for me, Dan, as well. Uh one of them was I had finally finished Dr. Lance's book, right? A legacy and a drive and a and a motivation to evolve and and grow in an industry. Um that tradition, that sense of this is where we want to go was something that we wanted to continue. We wanted to build upon that. And so I had kind of finished reading his book. Um it it also, you know, when Zofarm was purchased by a different company, you know, that the that brick and mortar store was closed. So I'd spent my whole career compounding these very unique medications, very unique products, very unique niche part of this industry. And you can't just go down the road to the next Walmart and find another job doing the same thing. Uh, in fact, there was at one point I thought, well, you know, I grew up welding. Maybe I go back to being a welder. I know I can make a living at that. My wife kind of kicked me. She goes, Are you serious? You've spent 10 plus years developing these skills that you can't learn in a school, that very few people on the pharmacy side of things know and understand. Uh, you should really try to give this a try. And I think Dan had a very similar path to saying, okay, let's do this. We can. We we think we can, we know we can, let's just do it. And I'll tell you, the the I'm a pretty faith-based person, I let that kind of guide a lot of what I do. What a challenge, right? What a leap of faith. You go from you know, supporting your family from a financial standpoint, all those things, and now you're not going to take a paycheck for potentially a year or more. That's a that's a huge leap of faith. And so I think the biggest part of that, maybe a benefit, an underlying benefit, is it's it's full commitment. Like you have no option other than success, and you are going to give it 110% to make sure you see that. And so Dan and I both have basically taken that by the by the horn, and and that's how we're we're approaching this. So when you think about all of the different nuances and challenges, I think first committing to it, like you said, having a good, strong faith in that we're doing the right thing, and and really putting that at the forefront, and then everything else you do just kind of falls into place from there. But you hit the nail on the head. This is an absolute challenge. Pharmacy in general is one of the most regulated industries in the United States. And then you take classic pharmacy and you make it a specialty pharmacy. So now you're a sterile compounding pharmacy, and you have a whole other book of regulations that go along with that. And every time they revamp that book, it gets tighter and tighter and tighter. And so that is the beauty of Dan. So Dan is a I he would never say this, he's way too humble. He is a regulatory genius, and and I think that's the the great thing about our dynamic, is that he has that and he has the ability to kind of I'll dream up all these ideas, and he kind of keeps me grounded and saying, okay, let's not chase every rabbit, let's chase systematically chase them so that we can actually catch a few, and this is how we're going to do it from a regulatory standpoint and make sure that that we can. The other benefit is this is not reinventing the wheel. I mean, Dan, as the pharmacist in charge, ran a very successful pharmacy for many, many years and navigated all that to a T. So we really kind of were able to take all of the wonderful things that we had learned and things that maybe didn't go so well, things that maybe went great, and said, okay, if we're gonna start from scratch today, how would we do that? And hence now we have we have capture lab.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

That's awesome. Um I'm curious because uh again, the the far from an outsider's perspective, the pharmacy is based around um wildlife, um, wild animals, captive animals, but you know, while wild as in deer elk, etc. Um do you think there's a tie or a bond that that you both have because you're you're hunters, um, that helps excel and drive that passion forward for the relationships that we as producers have and yourself with the animals?

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Yeah, I think you know, I've been asked similar questions to that in the past, and I think there is an absolute truth to that. You know, you so I I grew up in the mountains in Colorado, you know, we we rode horses into the backcountry, and those are some of my first memories as a kid, you know, following my dad, and there's elk on the side of the trail or a bear runs across the meadow. I mean, you just it's immersed and it's a part of what you do from the time you're a little kid. So, yes, I think the fact that we have kind of that relationship with with the wildlife and hunting, and you know, I'll tell you, I I love hunting. It in in school, it was an addiction, right? I probably would have done a lot better in school if it wasn't for hunting. But um the the thing is you learn an appreciation for it, it's not just about harvesting an animal. There is so much more to hunting when it comes to conservation and having respect and care for the animals that you can translate that into everything we do here at the pharmacy. Because in all honesty, Josh, we this pharmacy exists because of people like you, because of the ranching and wildlife community, the state agencies that are working with free-ranging animals, we are here because of you. And so we have to that and it can never be lost on us. We have to appreciate that fact, and everything we do has to be related to it. And so, if we also have the same love and appreciation for the wildlife and the animals that you take care of, that you grow and that you put your heart and soul into, that allows us to kind of have that same effect or that same passion into the products that we provide for your animals. So your success directly relates to our success, and your passion has to also align with our passion, these animals.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

So I I I love the um uh the longer that I'm I'm in this industry, the more I find it compelling when um companies kind of come along and their their core mission aligns with the animals themselves as opposed to the the dollars that are generated, right? Like I'm not I'm not anti-profit, like I like making money just like everybody else, and I got a family to feed. And um, you know, that's important, right? But you you have a um you have like more of a compassionate take towards the industry that you serve, and it all this stuff comes back to hunting and the the care for these animals. Um and like I I I suspect for people that that either don't hunt or are you know anti-eating meat or whatever that is, they just don't understand um that relationship because they they think that you know the harvesting of an animal or the killing of an animal is just bad on its face, right? And um it's so it's so interesting uh when I s when I see these companies kind of pop up and or uh participate for for long periods of time in the industry. You can kind of kind of weed some people out pretty quick. And um, you know, when we first met, I didn't I didn't sense that at all, right? Like you guys, you and Dan are like, you know, like three minutes in the conversation, you're like, yo, check out this elk, right? And I'm just like, guys are great. So I I appreciate what you're doing. Um I want to get into the compounding side of things, um, because this is the this is the behind the scenes action where all the all the magic happens. And so like for me as an end user, like I I I've used the uh I've used the cap kits and we're we're gonna get into that. And like I just know they work, right? I have no idea how they work, I don't know how they're built. Um walk us through what the heck a compounding pharmacy is, what you what you guys do on a day-to-day, and like how how these products are are developed for use.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Yeah, that's a great question. So in all reality, the bones of any pharmacy is going to be pretty similar. Whether you're a Walmart retail pharmacy, whether you're a specialty compounding pharmacy like us, the it the regulatory side of things requires it that way as a foundation, right? But then you get into the specialty side of things. We're a sterile compounding pharmacy. We further specialize in chemical immobilization drugs for wildlife, amongst a few other drugs, but that's really our kind of heart and soul. So the the breathing part, the heartbeat of our pharmacy is our sterile compounding suite. And I can actually turn the camera around and show you.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah, let's check it out for sure.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

So we have an we have an open concept to our pharmacy. The idea is for my desk right here, I can look into every room of the sterile compounding suite. I can monitor a technician if they're in their compounding. I can see them putting orders together on the counter in front of me. That was all by design. So I guess I could turn the turn the camera around and show you what the pharmacy looks like.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

So Oh, it's it's right there.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

So for those, for those listening, Colin just turned his camera around from his desk and like literally the the the uh secure part of the facility is like open uh open glass. It's all I'm assuming that's all sealed and everything, but like that's just wild. It's right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

So it's a there's no messing a lot.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

There's no messing around in the lab.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

No, no. I can we can see everything that goes on. You you you scratch your head wrong, and and the pharmacist can see it. So uh again, all by design, it's a plexiglass system. It is fully sealed, like you said. We have to keep pressure gradients between each room. So if you think about it in a most simple way, we have three rooms. The first room is where you gown, garb, wash your hands, and then you progressively get cleaner, so to speak, as you go deeper into the room until you get to the final third room where our hood is located, and then that's where the final step of the process happens. That's where things get sterilized and bottled into their final unit. So the middle room, we call it our middle room, that's where we're taking just raw powder, raw ingredients, and we mix it with our proprietary compounding processes, and we end up with a solution. And to me, that's kind of the one of the specialties of our pharmacy is that we're able to take drugs that if you Googled adipamazole, right, and you looked up the solubility of apamazole, meaning how much powder can I dissolve into water? You might get 30, 35 milligrams per mil at most, right? Maybe even 20. We can get it all the way to 60 megs per mil. So that's kind of the science and the fun part of the lab, so to speak, is we're taking these drugs that should not go into solution at those concentrations, and we're getting them to go into solution. And on top of that, we're making them very stable. So that was a big part of what we wanted to do is make something highly concentrated so you have lots lower volumes, right? And then can we make it freezer compatible? Can you put this thing in the freezer and have it not fall apart as a compound? And so far we've been really successful with that. So the idea is you're taking a product from just raw powdered ingredients, you're putting it into a solution, you're dissolving the powders, you're mixing them at the appropriate ratios, and then the final step is the sterilization. And then when it comes out, it comes out in its little individual vials, and then that's where the general process of the pharmacy starts with the labeling and then filling prescriptions and all of those things. So the idea is we're just taking it. Um and and it can it sounds as simple as just following it like a recipe, uh, but it is not. You can try it the same way every time. And if you're not able to make adjustments on the fly with pH temperatures and types of things, that really is kind of what makes makes this a specialty, is that you have to have that kind of intuition to make these compounds perfect every time.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

How many batches have you messed up?

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Hey, knock on wood. So we so I will tell you every batch we make, uh, it gets sent off to a third-party lab that tests potency, sterility, they test for presence of endotoxin, all those things, right? Uh in the course since 2014, we have never had to recall a batch ever. Uh one time and and this thing, this wasn't ours, they had labeled the powder of a particular powder. It wasn't the powder that was labeled in the container. So that's again part of why we do all that extra testing. Uh, it came back at like 20% potency. They said, there's no way. Like I weigh this stuff out to the hundredth of a gram. I mean, this is if I'm weighing out 150 grams of powder, I get it to the hundredth decimal point of perfect. I I know this is better than 20%. So we did uh we speciated it to see what actual product was in it. And of course, it was a completely different product. So other than that one instance, we have never had a failure of a of a compound.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah, that's awesome. How do you um how do you go about like uh I'm sure like you you've mentioned uh the antipemazole? The how do you go from the Google search, if you will, at 20 megs per mil um suspension to 60? Obviously, without sharing your proprietary information, like the that was kind of my tongue-in-cheek comment to you. Like, how do you how do you do that? Like uh like you gotta you gotta try some things. Like, are you mad scientists in the lab, or what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Sometimes, yeah. I mean, in all honesty, we will take uh raw powder, so ivermectin. I'll use ivermectin. Okay, we we got approached to try to make a super concentrated ivermectin. Ivermectin, if you do that same Google search, has zero water solubility, meaning it does not go into solution at all in water. You have to use some sort of oil-based um solvent to get it to go into solution. Well, the problem with that is it it most oil-based solvents are fairly viscous, they're thick, right? And you can't, they're hard to administer. You definitely can't administer through through a dart consistently, at least. Uh, and so we were approached by vet and said, can you do this? So we ordered some ivermectin and uh we went into the lab and we tried a handful of different solvents, different compounding processes. So you you do fail in that aspect, right? Until you kind of get your your your final compound solidified, there are a ton of failures, right? Uh there's times where you so order of addition is also very important in the compounding process. Like at what point you add each ingredient, okay? So there's been times where we've made it all the way to the final step, and you do that final step, and everything falls out of solution, and you got to start all over again. And it can uh you remember like Apollo uh was Apollo 13 in the movie? Yeah, and he's sitting and he's sitting in there trying all those little um processes so that they don't go over a certain amperage, right? And he fails and he fails, and then he finally does it in the right order and it works. That's kind of a similar idea to here. We're mixing different solvents, we're doing different orders of operation or addition and altering pH, altering temperature until we finally hit that home run of this is the compounding process that's gonna work for this product.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

That's super cool. Um okay, let's uh uh uh uh I think we're at a good place. I want to jump right into um I'll call it your core product. Maybe it's not, but it's core product for me, and that's the the cap kit. Talk about the uh idea and the development of the cap kit itself, because it's it's um it's a new product for a lot of people, but similar components or same components, but the concentrations are are reworked. Um I think for the for the betterment of the animal and the the the user. Uh give us give us a rundown of that.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yep. So the our our cap kits, we there it's a capture kit, we call them cap kits for short. Uh so when you get one, it's gonna have a knockdown vial, and then the two reversal agents. We have some variations there. But the cap itself is a highly concentrated combination of utorphenol, azapron, and metatominine, uh, three drugs that are used in a whole variety of other chemical immobilization products. Uh, we just make them very, very concentrated. And the idea with that is a couple things. One, we can get smaller volumes, so smaller dart sizes, flight trajectory, you know, is is a little more efficient when you it's the difference between shooting a 250-grain bullet and a hundred grain bullet, right? It's the the trajectory is flatter, smoother. The also the idea is that we have uh less wound, you know, damage from the from the impact of the dart. Now, we're trying to do some studies to see if you know what the actual implications of that are, but in theory, we should be able to have success there. The other idea is you've got basically the same amount of drug, but in half the volume, and and so absorption rates we're finding are much more efficient, much more effective. We're saying time to first effect within two to three minutes. So these animals from a whole variety of species, they're already starting to kind of hang their heads, slow down, separate from the herd, sometimes within two or three minutes. And then we're getting time to recumbencies, again, depending on the dose, depending on the all the other variabilities. We have a we we did a whole group of I think 45 uh white-tailed deer. All of them had an average uh induction time or time to recumbency of five and a half minutes. So there are some a lot of innate benefits to those higher concentrations. The other thing we tried to do was really streamline the whole compound itself. We wanted to make it more robust. We wanted to have a compound that could withstand frozen temperatures, we wanted to have a compound that was also uh you could mix it with a variety of things, right? So we have a compounding process that also pairs with a lot of our individual drugs that we compound. Zoos sometimes will start with a cap type platform or veterinarians, but then they want to add their own extra drugs on top of that. So you have to be careful when you're starting to mix different products because again, we talked about order of addition, pH, all of those things can really affect a compound as far as coming out of solution. We wanted to make something that was really robust. So we kind of took all that and said, all right, how do how do we do that? What's our foundational product? Let's make it. And that's how we came up with our with our cat kits. We also had to kind of redo that with our reversal agents, so our adipamazole and our naltrexone. Adipamazole, we we don't want people to have to be giving large volumes of adepamazole for reversal, right? So we made that adepamazole equally concentrated so that for every one mil of the cap you give, you give two mils of the adepamazole. It's a very simple, easy reversal ratio, and it's not an excess in volume. Uh, and then one of the other things we did, which is really starting to catch on, is we combined naltrexone and adipamazole into one reversal bottle. Now, there's a lot of people that like to customize their own reversals, they want them separate, they want the adepamazole separate from the naltrexone. There's a lot of end users that say, I want simplicity. I want one, if I can have all the reversal in one bottle in one syringe, that's what I want. Historically, because again, I'll pick on adipamazole, it comes out of solution really easy. So historically, if you mix anything with adipamazole, you're flirting with it coming out of solution. Well, we developed a compounding process that we can take altrexone, combine it with adipamazole, and we have the appropriate reversal ratios built into those concentrations, and it's all in one. So you can either get a cap kit with the cap and then the adipamazole and an altrexone, or you can get it with an all-in-one reversal and it makes it more streamlined. So that's kind of the cap kit in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah, it's interesting because like there's I find there's like two types of users, right? You have you have your uh simplistic users where they just want it easy because they don't want to have to think about it. They want to know the ratios right off the top of their head. They're maybe working with dangerous game, right? And it has to be simple, fast, efficient, right? Safe. And then you have other folks that are maybe dealing with like really odd species, and they need custom ability to regulate all sorts of different products um as they're reacting to how the sedation's actually going for that species. And so to have that playbook and variety is is really great. Now, for reference, most of our users are you know, they're they're deer and elk guys. Um but with these, you know, with the uh you know, the the base of the cap kit being the butrophanol, uh Zapperon metatomidine, you have this really broad spectrum coverage across a whole bunch of different species. Um was that was that I'm assuming that was a design uh process that you guys you guys really embraced um because of the flexibility. Um what is that what does that look like kind of moving forward into the future? Because I I suspect that, you know, just given our conversation, how your your brain works, probably always in this futuristic mode, how how can we do things better? What are some new things that we we have coming on?

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah, uh you you're correct. So we call our cap as kind of our our our our foundational product, right? One of the things we've seen, especially as the exotic industry is growing, the number of species and the variety of species that we're we're seeing, a cap or a metatomidine utorophenoly zapro base product, I I for years kind of called it the F-150 of the mobilization drugs. It does a lot of things great.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Uh the Chevy and Dodge guys are raging right now.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah. Um and so in all reality, it does a lot of things great, right? But as we're and servids, so servids in general, when Dr. Lance developed some of these combinations and these protocols, those were at the forefront of what he was developing these products for. So what we've seen with the you know, all of the stuff that's going on in South Africa and having all the species that we have, just like you talked about, there's people that are that they like to tinker, they like to customize, they like to work at things. And so they found that, well, for Gems Buck, we like to add an additional two or three drugs, or for Black Buck, we avoid this particular product. You know, there's a whole variety of nuances there. Well, we want, instead of you having to mix drug A and B together in the field, and what kind of level of consistency are you able to achieve, all of those types of things, can we do that here at the pharmacy in a controlled environment with testing and all of that so that you get a finished product that's already pre-mixed exactly how you need it for that particular species? So now in comes a couple other products. We have our cap K. So that's basically we take our cap and we add 100 milligrams per mil of ketamine into it. And for certain species, like Ed mentioned, Gemsbach, uh, black buck, addicts, or even cerve species for certain procedures, right? When we had that ketamine, um, I guess to kind of take a step back, we we use terms like sedation, anesthesia, tranquilization, right? Those are all, even though we kind of use them interchangeably, they are may mean very, very different things, right? A utorphenol, a zaparon, metatominine type combo of a drug really is a deep, deep sedation, right? There are some that would argue can we get a deep enough sedation that we're actually in a plane of anesthesia? Maybe, but none of those drugs are considered true anesthetics. So when we add ketamine on top of that, that's literally what it is. It's a dissociative anesthetic. So we're getting a true plane of anesthesia when we add ketamine. We're getting you into a deeper state of immobilization so that you get less response to stimuli. And so a species like Gemsbach, that is notoriously difficult to immobilize with a standard cap, when you add that ketamine on there, the fight is pretty much over. You get your dosing right, there's no spontaneous arousal, there's no kicking at you, there's no trying to horn you when you, you know, when you are manipulating them or moving them. And we found that that has worked well for all of them. Like it started with a handful of species in mind, and it's like, wow, this works really great in all these other scenarios. What else can we do? So, in addition to that, we have taken cap, added ketamine, and then added midazolant to it. So now, if you look at a product like telazole, telazol under certain circumstances works really great. It just doesn't reverse very well, right? Or it takes a really long time. Uh, there's a a story that I've I've heard from a fishing game officer that they use for grizzly bears, they use telazole because they want them, you don't mess around, right? But they'll also have to sometimes sit there and watch the culvert trap for two or three hours before the grizzly bear wakes up and and get moves off. Well, that's not always practical in for the deer farming world and and in the in the captive setting. We we can't necessarily take two or three hours per deer when we're handling them. So if you look at the teletamine in the telazole, that's in the same drug class as ketamine. If you look at the zalazepam in telazole, that's the same drug class as midazolam. The differences are ketamine and midazlam are a little more short-acting, right? They still do the same process, they're just shorter acting. So we have kind of taken some of what we think are the best of all of the different aspects and the products that people use and see, can we make, can we meld that into one? Yeah, we're not 100% perfect in every aspect, but we're trying to avoid the long recoveries, the long sedations, but we're getting good immobilization, right? And so that's where the Cap KM with ketamine and aziline comes into play. There's species like um and Yala that are incredibly difficult to immobilize. And, you know, it's we've got a pretty small sample size because we're just starting with the field testing of the CAP KM, but that's working really well in some of those species. And so then you think about, well, I want to do a really long procedure, or I'm doing something that has a lot of pain stimuli. Being able to have kind of extra tools in that tool shed helps you hone the dose, hone the product, hone the dose, and get exactly what you need for that scenario and for that species. And those are just the first three that we've started with, right? The idea is we've got a drawing board around the corner that nobody can see because it's hidden behind the corner that has half a dozen ideas on it, two or three, if we can bring those to fruition, huge implications for our industry, right? But we have to have some sort of basis. We got to kind of get our feet underneath this before we can start exploring some of those kind of more experimental type things. Um, but yeah, we're we're excited about all of that. And and the idea to tailor the products is the idea for it.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Yeah, uh the uh that's a lot to take in. Um the I'm I'm curious, and I'm I'm I I think for the listeners, just for um for a baseline to work from. So um if I heard if I heard you correctly, the like for surgeries, now I'm in I'm inserting, I'm inserting myself a little bit. Um, you know, if you're if you're doing surgeries, let's just say like a lap AI, right? Like an invasive type surgery, um it would be warranted to have the added ketamine on board for that disassociative state um to be on a proper anesthetic plane. Is that accurate? Right?

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Yeah, that's a yep, that's a very great um assumption or uh assessment. So I've actually spoken to uh a gentleman that does a lot of AI, and what he will tell me, um, and again, I'm sure everybody kind of has their own perspective, what he will say is if he's using a product that's just kind of got the base of sedation, right? So Dorconolys Aperometatonin type product, when he starts to enter the ovaries, right, they'll get a little twitch or a little jerk, right? Because I'm sure that's probably painful or whatever that may be, causes a stimuli, right? If he has a protocol that adds ketamine to that, all of a sudden there's no more movement, right? So his ability to enter into the ovaries, do all of that kind of procedural thing is much smoother with the addition of ketamine, and that's because again, we're we're reaching that true plane of anesthesia, it has additional uh pain relief aspects to it, but there's a whole variety of benefits. The caveat to ketamine is that ketamine, in all honesty, would be a wonderful product. It's Achilles tenon is that there's no reversal. You can't give a reversal agent for it, it's just time and the animal's metabolism of that drug. So if you have a protocol that is too heavy on the ketamine side and relies on that too much for the immobilization and the anesthesia, well, now you've either got a really prolonged recovery, there's a lot of other side effects like seizure activity, those types of things. Um, there's it's a dissociative anesthetic, right? So I've always learned in school there's kind of three planes to ketamine, a smaller dose of it, it's it's causes some sedation, you know, lethargy, that type of thing. There's this middle phase where they're awake-ish, but they are disoriented, they're dissociated that you know with their surroundings, they get ataxia, which is a fancy way to say they stumble over themselves, they have no balance, and that's where you kind of get those rodeo situations that are associated with ketamine. Uh, and then if you go deeper to that, well, now we get the true plane of anesthesia that we're looking for. So the goal is that the animal is not waking up walking around in the pasture in that middle phase. Because if they are, you really run the risk of them slamming into the fence or you know having all of those negative associations with it. So relying on ketamine just enough to remove some of the things we we don't want out of the procedure, some of the benefits of ketamine, but not so heavily relying on it that then we get the all the downsides to it for the reversal. That's the idea with kind of like our Cap K. And one of the things we've noticed is you're still getting really good immobilizations, you're getting quality um sedation and anesthesia. They're they're solid, they're still, and then when you go to reverse them, if it's been anything over 15, 20 minutes, enough of that ketamine has metabolized that they're mostly out of that middle phase, and we get really good reversals. Now, I have yet to have anybody use it on laparoscopic AI, so I can't speak specifically to that, but your head is absolutely on the right track, and that there are certain scenarios where you want specific drugs. And so we've got a lot of ideas and a lot of research that's that we would like to do tailored towards not just specific species, but specific procedures. Like, can we come up with an AI-specific combination that gives you, to the best of our ability, kind of the brighter side of all aspects of the drugs that are being used. We don't rely too heavy on anything so that you get the best of what you want.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Yeah, I I like that a bunch. I know that I mean I don't know how many sedations I have under my belt, but it's thousands and thousands, and I've experienced all sorts of different things. Like uh I I always have this conversation um around nutrition, right? And like we're you know, we have herd animals, we're feeding herds, and people sometimes like outside of the bacteria conversation, um, they're like, well, why does this animal have diarrhea or loose stool consistently? And for the most part, there's there's something in that feed that just is it's jacking up their systems. They can't process either the fat or the fiber or the or the protein, right? And you'd look at like you and I, and like you may operate way, way, way better on salmon, and I may operate way, way, way better on beef, right? And you're like, well, I I like beef too, and I I I want to have beef. That's okay, right? But like the same thing goes is is true for drugs, right? And so when you're looking at these, I I think this is a a really good takeaway for for folks that are listening. Keeping detailed records um on individual

SPEAKER_02 44:00

animals makes you a a better producer, caretaker, animal husbandry, um uh person in the long run because those those records of how these animals like there are certain animals like whitetails I've watched them walk through stuff that like other animals absolutely do not and like you could have animals that are like allergic to something you know and they have a bad reaction whatever that is um look generally speaking you know uh uh uh uh 999 out of a thousand it's it's fine right but you you you get to learn all these things and like it's super cool that um that you guys have started integrating these different planes of of uh anesthesia or or capabilities of anesthesia into your into your work you touched on research a little bit so I'd like to segue into that um when you first uh started to develop the the cap kits obviously you had some concentrations and um you did some field work is my understanding um tell us tell us a little bit about some of those experiences that you had working with uh folks out in the field yeah so initially again you can dream up ideas in the lab but until it gets boots on the ground you never really know how how things are going to work and initially we tried to manipulate some of those concentrations and see if we could so one of the one of the big downsides to metatomidine which is your big heavy hitter for the immobilization side of things is that it can cause respiratory depression right you get slow breathing uh and that's its downside so we wanted to try to see if we could offset that by manipulating the concentrations of things still get good immobilization but less of that respiratory effect and when we first set out to do it well we we went a little too far we dropped the metatominine a little too much had those ratios off we were still getting great immobilizations it's just we're having to use higher doses than what we wanted right so we kind of went back to the drawing board came up with some different concentrations and found kind of through initial research that yeah this seems to be this seems to be it right and we have teamed up with a whole variety of ranchers researchers um there's a PhD that we work with that has that's a big part of what he did was study chemical immobilization trucks at Texas AM so we have spent some time with Texas AM and some vet students doing research in fact we're finally starting to compile some of that data uh for access deer uh Arabian orcs a whole variety of different species so that will be published soon hopefully the idea is in a in a perfect world we would have a published study for about every species we could just on the immobilization side of things right and then fast forward we're here at Nadifa right and Dan and I are excited about that because we were always the nerds behind the pharmacists and you know you you you talk to people every day but you never get to see them and and be around them and that was a big part of what we were excited about with Capture Lab. So we were excited to go to the Nadifa show and resounding one of the things that we we we got especially from talking to you and and all the other producers how is this going to work in semen collection? How is this going to work in AI? Well how does you know how does this compare to another product well that sparked another research idea. So we are fired up about looking at semen collection and a variety of different drug combinations because for every person that would walk up and say I like uh a utorphenol azapron metatomidine combo for semen collection works great for me that's all I ever use 10 minutes later somebody else would come up and say I'll never use that and I don't think it works. I'm a I'm an MK guy right well let's answer why why the variability there? Why is it working well on some ranches and not others? What are some of the other variations there? What specific component or drug is it? We want to be able to answer those questions. And to be honest with you if if it's not if CAP isn't the best drug for semen collection I want to know that because I don't I don't care what it is we'll compound it. Like if we have to make a semen collection specific compound that is what we will do. And that we will know that those are the three or four drug combos that consistently work the best for semen collection. Those are the things that we want to know unfortunately it's it's a seasonal thing to be able to test this. So as you know we're we're in the process of trying to get all the pieces to the puzzle together so that this fall we can do a study that's unbiased. We want to involve uh you know a research institution to kind of write up the study. Capture lab itself wants to be you know distanced from it in a sense of no bias from because truly if if we determine that MK is the best product for semen collection, what we make MK. I have no problem with that. And I will be able to correctly guide our clients in picking the right drug for the right scenario. So that's one thing that we're really excited about as far as the research into things. And then what the other thing we found is that research begets more research ideas, right? Every time you start that down that rabbit hole um you you find okay well we answered this one research question that's great but we we rose two more in the process so that's the exciting part about being an independently owned pharmacy somewhat smaller our ability to adapt and pivot is is super fast super efficient and and it's a big part of what we're excited about doing here.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

I'm gonna jump around a little bit um yeah so I I want to talk about uh and I don't know if I'm using the right terms but absorption and the the importance of deep muscle injections and and I'm I'll tell a little story. So I was using butorphenol zaparone menatomanine way back when and at that point I was I was using um three quarter inch needles and one inch needles depending on size of animal etc seasonality that kind of thing. We're talking whitetails here. And so I was getting I but I was using side port triport darts. And so I was getting fairly regular resedation. And so if you're not familiar with resedation basically you dart the animal you do what you got to do let's say you cut some antlers off them you wake them up they get up everything's fine you walk away just like you normally would and you come back 20 minutes later and the sucker is flat out snoring away again and you're like oh my gosh I killed first the first reaction is oh my gosh I killed this animal right and I could not figure out why this kept happening right and so you give them some more it took a little bit to figure out that you had to give them some more reverser you give them some more reverser they wake right up everything's fine. What is it and so uh I was I was chatting with a a guy that um was uh repping for another company we were having a steak at Texas Roadhouse or something like that and we were going through this whole thing and so we called Dr. Lance and Dr. Lance is like uh again terminology uh lipotrophic uh is that correct is that the correct term lipotroph it in in a sense and and you I'm glad you asked this question because this is a we we deal with this all the time talking to clients so go ahead and finish but yeah you're on the right track yeah so so basically what was happening is uh one of the components I I think it was the butorphanol was latching on to the the fat right we were getting some sub-q injection um and we weren't getting all of the uh medicine down into the muscle for you know circulatory nature into the body or whatever and it was metabolizing much slower so we're given a shot it was reversing the agent in the in the muscles the the the um circulatory system everything was fine and then the body started metabolizing whatever latched onto the fat or that sub Q layer slower later and they were resedating um can you fill in the gaps of what I missed from a technical standpoint um hopefully that that cued it up for you I just remember that and it was like it was a big problem for a while and people still have that issue. I really want to touch on the importance of a deep muscle injection when using these compounds.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

Yeah so resedation uh a lot of people call it renarking there's a lot of different terms for it that is a huge problem um and so that's why you know Dan and I from a pharmacology perspective again we're not veterinarians there's the physiology of things you've already kind of talked about that with Dr. Lance but from a pharmacology perspective Dan and I had to really know this flat out because we have to be able to explain it to end users when they talk about this thing. So in its simplest form when you talk about any uh chemical immobilization drug you have two barriers for it working right it's got to get into the blood which then takes it into the brain right so you've got that I am injection getting into the circulatory system and then it has to cross what's called the blood brain barrier which is kind of a protection aspect of our of our whole system to keep not just any old thing going into our brain right so if we can get it to go into the blood quickly into the circulatory system it makes it into to our brain it passes the blood brain barrier and gets into our central nervous system that's when the drug actually excuse me causes the immobilization okay those drugs can act peripherally right so metatomine is the prime example it has there are receptors that it acts on that are centrally in the central nervous system and then other places throughout the body we call that peripheral leaves they do completely different things right so we want it in the central nervous system. Well when we talk about that very first barrier getting it into the blood right the subcutaneous space or the fat has a completely different blood supply and absorption rate than that of deep muscular injection. So in an ideal world we'd be able to walk up and give it IV because IV is 100% bioavailable meaning it goes right into the system there's no um it's not metabolized before it reaches its receptors it just goes right into the system well we can't always do that the next best thing is an IM injection because the blood supply is super well in those areas and there's as you probably know as well there's certain muscle groups that have less blood supply than others there's certain like a nice deep muscle has a lot of blood supply you're not going to risk getting it into that subcutaneous space or fat layer uh we do see absorption rates differ from a hindquarter shot versus a front quarter shot or a or a neckshot and again now we're starting to get into the realm of veterinary advice right but if you get any portion of that drug into the subcutaneous space that absorption profile if you looked at it graphically is completely different and so the hard part is you don't always know so there's a built into a product like CAP you can get immobilization from three quarters of a mil you can get immobilization from one mil and you're not going to really see any any much difference. It's a nice buffer zone let's call it that right well if you drop one mil and you know one mil will knock them down so will three quarters of a mil but you you do you like to use one mil well what if 20% of that drug goes into the subcutaneous space well now you've basically effectively given 0.8 mils into the muscle and 0.2 mils into that subcutaneous space well that 0.8 mils knocks the animal down you have the immobilization process you do your procedure you reverse them what you're reversing are the drugs that are bound currently bound to the receptors right so that's what the adepamazol is working on the the the metatomidine that's bound to those receptors. Well an hour later that metatomidine is already starting to be metabolized and and the metatomidine that's in the blood in the circulatory system is being metabolized and removed from the system. One hour later here comes this metatomidine from or you know the cap from the subcutaneous space and it's not that it's now being metabolized it's that it's just now entering the circulatory system because that absorption rate is so much slower. Well now you've got this 20% hit now of it's like it'd be like walking up and giving them another 0.2 mils injection oftentimes that is enough to resedate the animal and so what you talked about as far as a deep intramuscular injection is absolutely key to making any immobilization drug work as it's intended. You can get a little sub Q here and there and you may not even know it, right?

SPEAKER_01 57:16

But depending on how much you get that really can add a substantial variable to the the efficacy and the effectiveness of any immobilization product yeah is there um I I don't want to sway too far into the the veterinarian uh space is there a have you seen folks out in the field that maybe you've worked with that uh will give uh we'll call it a buffer shot so if the if the you know it's a two to one reverser they're you know they're they're doing their knockdown with a a one mil dose and they're giving their their two cc's a reverser if they're taking you know to the two cc recommended amount giving that uh IM and then you know maybe do another half cc sub Q or something along those lines um especially on you know in your free range settings where you you you kind of lose control if you will afterwards uh do you find some practitioners that that are kind of working in those those spaces like that yeah so we have had a lot of people discuss the idea of it and discuss the theory of it I have yet to see any research done on it or anything substantial discussed about that process.

SPEAKER_03 58:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

But what you've just described I mean in theory is a perfect a perfect opportunity for another research project because in all reality we talked about the buffer zone and cap. Well atapamazole also has a buffer zone right um so you have some leeway to give a little extra dosing than what you know as far as if you needed to give a little extra portion of that reversal. In theory if you were worried about sub Q injection the absorption rate from sub Q space from a pharmacology perspective whether you're talking cap rate adipamazole is likely not going to be drastically different. So if you did get a little bit of sub Q of the cap and you purposely give a sub Q injection of apamazole the theory would be you are correct those absorption rates would kind of counteract one another right um I feel like that's that that is a kind of an answer to it but maybe more of a band-aid than anything the true solving problem is to make sure that you're using the the appropriate length needle that is got the gel collars you're avoiding bounce back those types of things to avoid that altogether but I have heard people talk about looking at suppositories looking at sustained release injections all kinds of things without a pamazole to try to avoid exactly what you said with with the resedation yeah um because because it is it is a problem. Yeah um oh I lost my train of thought I had a good one queued up it was just I I'm I'm I'm I'm running through like some of my experiences that I've I've kind of seen out in the field um and I I I know if I'm seeing them others are as well uh relating to these these different types of products um you mentioned uh the uh semen collections um kind of in that that research uh space I'd like to you shared with me um uh a mule deer project that you you worked on that I thought was pretty cool um which I think was one of the first times that you had put cap to test out in the real world um could you could share that story with us yeah so kind of to start from the very beginning along the lines of Dan and I being able to participate in the Nadifa conference and being out with our community we feel like the better we can relate to the end users of the product the better we can do our job here in the pharmacy the better level of customer service we can provide and I can know a lot of things in theory right but without putting boots on the ground and actually being involved in it it's it's not the same. So Dan and I when we decided we were doing this we took a chemical immobilization course from a guy that's been teaching them for 30 years. In fact a pharmacy inspector commented just the other day they're like well that's a unique certification to have we have a board that all of our certifications are on and all of our licensures so they review that um so anyway we we did that um I've spent some time with Wyoming Game Fish taking their version of the same course and so to put boots on the ground and get involved with actually using our drug was kind of this culmination of all this hard work right we've done so much in the lab we've done so much to build this pharmacy which is an astronomical task and now we get to go out in the field and I get to see this file that's got basically our initials written all over it. We compounded it we labeled it we did everything and this biologist is going to take it out there and I'm gonna sit right next to him while he immobilizes this this mule deer and so uh it's a it's a pretty unique research um project where these animals are wild animals right but they're on this facility and they really shouldn't be so they have to be immobilized and removed and so we uh he set up a ground blind and it honestly just like hunting from a ground blind he set up ground blind now he gets to put out feed right and we are in there and it had to have been the coldest day in January Wyoming had seen in a while and I am freezing. I ice fish and do all that I I can handle the cold I was freezing and he's like well I guess we're putting your drug to the test to see if it can withstand frozen temperatures and uh sure enough the mule deer herd comes in he picks out the animal that he wants to immobilize and uh I think we were at 15 yards he he darts the the mule deer in the hind quarter and then this was the cool part you know we're in the wild but it's on right at the base of a hillside that's empty so we got to watch the entire immobilization process take place how the herd interacted with that mule deer buck um how the other bucks interacted with it and in all honesty that that buck was ready to lay down after about three minutes and the bigger buck kept pushing him from behind and encouraging him to keep going keep going and he ended up making it another hundred yards up the hill finally laid down uh and when we climbed up there and I got to you know help track respiratory rates take temperatures do all those things again it was a humbling experience to kind of have all of that hard work come full circle and and then again being able to look at dart wounds and those types of things that's another part of this project that we're working on um and so yeah it was it was quite an experience to to be able to do that and it's still an ongoing project today.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:00

That's awesome um it's a good it's probably a good feeling right because like like you said it's uh it's kind of this sort of intangible aspect of your job right you're like I make these drugs and you know I put my life into this thing and I never get to see them work.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

I think they work people tell me they work and then you know you get to get to see that firsthand and like you said your your initials are on the bottle and oh talk about it yeah talk about accountability like I'm literally sitting next to the biologist and if it doesn't work he doesn't have to deal with it and then an hour later call me and go hey this product didn't really work he's literally just turning to his right and going what happened what'd you do so yeah there was a lot of a lot on the line for that one for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

I remember uh my thought again we're we're jumping around folks I'm just I'm popping popping things into my mind um the you had mentioned metatominine and and respiratory rates and so um I think for for almost everybody maybe not everybody but the the vast majority of of uh uh the deer farming industry at least for the past call it 10 solid years um metatominine has been a a core component of of our our uh arsenal if you will um prior to that it was xyosine and so like you had mentioned respiratory rates and membatominine and i i i chuckled internally because like xyosine is just like way way worse and and i know there's folks that are are still using xyosine and there's nothing wrong with that but can you talk about some of the differences between those two drugs um and at least in my eyes the importance of using metatominine over Xylozine.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Yep. So when we look at metatominine and xylozine, they're in a drug class called alpha 2 agonists, right? So what that means is we have these receptors in our body, and they are classified and they're called alpha-2 receptors. So these drugs bind to those alpha-2 receptors and they activate a downstream effect from binding to those receptors. Well, we don't just have alpha-2 receptors. Think of a receptor kind of like a lock and a key, right? The receptor is the lock, the drug is the key. Well, in this instance, metatomine and xylosine, they those several receptors that that key will go into and work on. Alpha 1 is an example. There are alpha-2 receptors centrally. Remember, we talked about that that central nervous system, and then there's alpha two receptors that are peripherally. So in an ideal world, we would have a drug that only acts on alpha-2 receptors and only acts on those receptors within the central nervous system if we if our goal is to mobilization. Okay. When we look at one of the biggest differences between, and there's a lot of differences, but from kind of a simplistic form, if you look at xylosine and you compare it to metatomidine, metatominine is much more selective for the receptors that we want it to bind to. Xylosine has a lot of negative side effects and things that we don't want, that we don't need, and it's because of that additional receptor activity that it has that metatomidine doesn't. So metatominine is more selective. And we see that when a lot of drugs in a drug class kind of each generation they refine the drug more to make it more selective for the appropriate receptor to elicit the appropriate response. And that's really what you're seeing between a xylozine and a metatomidine is it's more selective for what we want. Uh and that's the that's probably the biggest take-home for users.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

Gotcha. And so um I'm leaping a little bit, but like when I look at it, I think it's safer, it appears safer to me in the field, right? Because like I I've watched how animals react. I I I call these obviously non-technical terms, but like I just call I call xyosine like a like a dirty drug, right? And because of how it acts in these animals, and metatomines a lot cleaner. That's how I look at it, and that's just based on the the the symptoms that I'm I'm seeing, right? So like um heart rate is not generally increased when I'm in comparison between metatominine and xyosine. Body temperature stays a little bit lower, respiratory rates are much more stable, and so like these are all things for me when I look at animal health that provide me with a sense of confidence that the animal's safe, right? And so I know like a lot of folks that are working out in the field, like, you know, they don't have O2 meters, like they're they're you know, they're not gassing these animals when they they get them there and putting them on oxygen or anything. Like it's uh it's in-field work, right? And so, you know, the better and more targeted that these drug combinations can be, the easier and safer it is for all that are involved. Um, are you as you as you continue to to test and compound and use different um combinations, are you finding more and more things? And maybe maybe those are things for the whiteboard. Um, but like are you seeing some of that? Are you are you picking up on these things? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:40

100%. So two of the top things on the whiteboard uh target safety or efficacy, right? So how how you know the effectiveness, this the strength of the immobilization, and then the safety of the immobilization. How can we hone that from a pure pharmaceutical standpoint? And there's other things. So like there's nothing wrong with we would love if if people if end users could buy a little small oxygen tank, you buy the little nose cannulas, it's super simple, it's not expensive, and having supplemental oxygen in the field is easy to do, especially if you have a buggy or something that you're you know, side by side that you're out there with. Oxygen is an easy additive to your immobilization process that drastically helps animal husbandry, right? Um, but so there's a lot of things outside of the drugs that can be done, but what can we do within the drug to make it safer? And a lot of those we've already touched on a little bit with ratios of things. So ketamine, ketamine, xylazine is a combination that had been used for years prior to you know cap type products. And there, some of the variability that you would see is the ratios that they're using of xylosine to ketamine. How heavy are you relying on the xylosine for the immobilization versus the ketamine for immobilization? And then what do you see side effect profile-wise there? If you're too heavy on the ketamine side, you're gonna see really slow reversals, they're gonna kind of everything's just super slow and lethargic. But you won't see a lot of those respiratory side effects because ketamine doesn't really impact respiratory rate the same as xylosine does. So you'll get really good breathing, um, but the recovery is gonna be super rough, right? You can even have seizure activities because that's associated with ketamine. If you rely too heavy on the xylosine side of things, well, now you start getting into the inconsistencies and and and the the repeatability isn't as good because of all the variability and receptor activity, um, but you have reversibility, right? So again, finding that balance is just one simple way, but we're going deeper, and we have some some research ideas, and so I wish I could share them on here, but it's just too much of the infancy side of things to do that. But yes, we have goals to make the drug itself safer and more effective.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:50

Yeah, I love that. I um you you guys make my life so much easier out in the field, and um, and I I I appreciate that. I know my my veterinarian does as well. Um you know it's it's uh it's like a it's like an animal first kind of um kind of core goal, right? And we have the the privilege to be able to work with these animals, whatever the animals are. And so when we have technology, I figure, you know, these compounds are are technology. Uh when we have these technologies that make everything better, um it it's better for it's better for all, right? So I I appreciate what you guys do. Um what did we miss? We we we jumped all over the place and we covered a whole bunch of stuff. Um what did what did we miss before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:47

And I, you know, to be honest with you, I we did we did cover a lot of things for for me, um a lot of it, and it's the same way for Dan. You you touched on it in your last little bit here. The idea is I call it an interdisciplinary approach to animal care, right? So we want as pharmacists to be as much integrated with the veterinarians that are prescribing the drugs and the end users that are using the drugs. Because the better we can develop that relationship, that's how we drive the industry forward, at least from our perspective, right? Because the more I know about the challenges you face as an end user, the better I can I can help out with that. The more you understand, and you don't have to be an expert on this, but the more you understand about some of the challenges of a pharmacy and how do we bring a product to completion, why are the beyond use dates why they are? Like all of those little regulatory nuances, you can have an appreciation to know that the pharmacy really is doing everything they can to take care of you. We just sometimes have our hands tied from a regulatory stance. Um, and and in all reality, we've we said this earlier in the podcast, this pharmacy lives and breathes by the end users and the veterinarians in this industry. And and we want to just build upon that and build upon those relationships. We 1000% mean it that if you have questions and you don't even buy products from us yet, right? Give us a call. We're happy to visit with you and develop these relationships uh because that is really the key to gonna be the key to our success. Our relationships like you and I are building now. I hope that we continue to build with other you know people within this industry and and just continue to expand on.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:25

Yeah, I appreciate that. Uh I'll make sure that I link up the Capture Labs Rx uh website down in the uh in the show notes there if you want to get a hold of of Colin or Dan over there. Um Colin, he's he's serious, he he wants you to call him. So give give him a call. He wants to chat with you if you have questions about these things. Um I really appreciate you coming on today. Um, hopefully, here uh in the near future, we'll yank one of those items off the whiteboard and have a conversation about them because you're uh you're you're tickling my fancy and my brain about what kind of cool stuff you have going on. So uh I appreciate you coming on today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

Yeah, thanks, Josh. We appreciate it. Humbling experience, appreciate it all.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

You bet. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned for another episode of the wizard podcast.