Liège-based Bio‑Sourcing and Roanoke-based The Tiny Cargo Company inked a strategic collaboration to co‑develop orally delivered monoclonal antibody (mAb)-based therapies formulated using goat milk-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs), including exosomes.
The new partnership will combine Bio‑Sourcing’s BioMilk® technology for producing high-quantity, low-cost monoclonal antibodies in transgenic goat milk, along with goat milk EVs, with Tiny Cargo’s cGMP-ready industrial platform for extracting exosomes from milk and loading them with complex therapeutic payloads. The firms say the technology combination will support antibody enrichment within exosomes to enhance their concentration, potency, and suitability for oral delivery.
Oral delivery of mAbs could offer real benefits for patients and health systems, including no needles, fewer hospital visits, and a path to stable, shelf‑ready formulations, the firms suggest. Milk‑derived exosomes are naturally designed to survive the gastrointestinal tract and deliver antibodies to the bloodstream, making them an especially promising carrier.
Through the collaboration, Bio-Sourcing and Tiny Cargo will work to associate Bio‑Sourcing‑derived mAbs with goat‑milk EVs and evaluate orally delivered therapeutic applications. The goal is to create a new class of patient-friendly, stable biologics. To date, there are no approved oral mAbs, which the companies suggest highlights the innovative potential of their alliance.
“The development concerns a platform for the oral delivery of biologics,” Bertrand Mérot, Bio-Sourcing founder and CEO, explained to GEN. “The Bio-Sourcing and The Tiny Cargo Company technology may allow for the formulation of oral presentations of biologics produced through the Bio-Sourcing platform. Currently, two developments are ongoing: (a) the oral presentation of adalimumab (Humira), a monoclonal antibody against Crohn’s disease and other chronic inflammatory conditions, and (b) the oral presentation of trastuzumab (Herceptin), a monoclonal antibody against HER2+ breast cancer.”
He added, “With Tiny Cargo, we’re pairing two outstanding product platforms—Bio‑Sourcing’s high‑yield, sustainable goat‑milk manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies and milk EVs with Tiny Cargo’s industrial‑scale milk exosome isolation and loading—to unlock true oral delivery for biologics. We are eager to create a successful and long‑term strategic alliance with mutual benefits; one that broadens Bio‑Sourcing’s access to other American collaborations, while offering Tiny Cargo a strong foothold in Europe. Together, we will make patient‑friendly biologics more accessible worldwide.”
Alan Gourdie, CEO of The Tiny Cargo Company, stated, “Milk-derived exosomes are among the most resilient delivery systems in nature. The ability to source both the antibody and the delivery vehicle from the same biological starting point is a rare and powerful advantage. For the hundreds of millions of patients currently reliant on injectable mAbs, transitioning to an oral format would fundamentally transform how biologics are prescribed, distributed, and accessed globally.”
Bio‑Sourcing’s platform combines CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing and IVF techniques to express monoclonal antibodies in the milk of a particular breed of goats at an industrial scale, enabling purification of the antibody and also producing milk EVs. The platform offers cost and scalability advantages over conventional bioreactor-based manufacturing, which the company said will broaden access to and enable more sustainable manufacturing of mAbs.
In January, Bio-Sourcing and Copenhagen-based drug formulation firm Zerion announced the award of an EUREKA Eurostars grant in support of their joint project focused on the development of an oral formulation of the monoclonal antibody therapy, trastuzumab, used to treat breast cancer. The €1.3 million, 36-month project is leveraging Zerion’s protein-based Dispersome® technology for enhancing the bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs, with Bio-Sourcing’s BioMilk platform, and aims to optimize an orally deliverable trastuzumab biobetter, produced in goat milk, and progress the candidate through preclinical validation.
“Bio-Sourcing is developing the biosimilar and its oral presentation sequentially,” Mérot commented to GEN. “The most advanced biosimilar is adalimumab, for which the CTA Phase I should be submitted in early 2027. Development of the oral presentation (Oralimumab) follows a few months later. The second biosimilar is trastuzumab, for which the CTA should be submitted in early 2028, followed by TrastuzOral, its oral presentation. The collaboration with Zerion concerns development activities for TrastuzOral.”
The Tiny Cargo Company is harnessing a proprietary technology to isolate exosomes from cows’ milk in large quantities, in combination with processes for incorporating into milk exosomes a wide range of complex payloads, from small molecules and peptides to monoclonal antibodies, mRNA, and antisense oligonucleotides. The platform is designed for pharmaceutical-grade production and supports applications across therapeutics, nutraceuticals, and advanced skincare. The company has established what it describes as the world’s first cGMP-ready industrial manufacturing capability for highly purified milk-derived exosomes. The $1.5 million manufacturing facility in Roanoke, VA, opened in February 2026.
