Tharos began with scientists looking at digestion from different perspectives — and a shared belief that better understanding of the gut could be translated into genuinely useful nutritional technologies.
The roots of Tharos lie in a collaboration between biochemist Dr Rosemary Waring and gastroenterologist Professor John Hunter in the fields of gut health, digestion and the microbiome. Their different scientific perspectives helped create the thinking from which Tharos would eventually emerge.
Tharos did not begin with a product brief. It began with two scientists approaching gut health from different disciplines and asking what might be changed earlier in digestion to influence what happens later.
Professor John Hunter brought a gastroenterologist's view of the digestive system. Dr Rosemary Waring brought expertise in biochemistry and metabolism. Together, their work explored the relationship between digestion, the nutritional environment and the microbial community living within the gut.
Professor Hunter published a comparison of human and equine digestion. The work highlighted pancreatic enzyme activity as a possible area of interest in understanding some of the digestive challenges seen in horses.
Hunter and Waring identified enzyme-rich malt extract as a potential source of naturally occurring digestive enzymes and began exploring how that enzyme activity could be applied to equine digestion.
The next step was to move beyond theory and see what happened when the approach was tested in real horses — beginning the sequence of research and development that would eventually lead to EquiNectar and Tharos.
A scientific idea only becomes useful when it survives contact with reality. The next stage was therefore simple: take the approach into horses and observe what actually happened.
In 2012 the enzyme-rich malt extract was tested in horses at a UK flat-racing yard ranked among the country's leading operations. Improvements in condition and racing performance were reported, while faecal analysis showed changes in acetate that encouraged the research team to continue investigating the digestive effects.
Following the initial work, the racing yard moved from testing the extract in selected horses to using it across the yard. What had begun as a scientific trial was starting to demonstrate practical relevance in everyday management.
Further pilot work expanded the scientific programme, including investigation of digestive and metabolic markers in horses. At the same time, related work was exploring the enzyme-rich malt approach in other biological contexts.
By 2016 the work had progressed beyond an isolated scientific idea. Tharos Ltd was established to develop and commercialise the enzyme-rich malt technology and to create a focused platform for scientific solutions in animal digestive health.
The following years were used to consolidate the science, optimise the product and build the development programme that would become EquiNectar. This was the point at which research, formulation, production and commercial development began to converge within Tharos.
Years of work around digestion led Tharos towards a broader principle: the microbial community in the gut does not exist independently of the nutrients reaching it. Change that nutritional environment and the existing microbiome can respond.
Microbial communities depend upon substrates — the nutrients and compounds available to them. Digestive processes earlier in the system help determine what reaches those communities later. Tharos therefore looks at the relationship between digestion, substrate availability and the microbial environment as one connected system.
Feed introduces starches, fibres, proteins and other nutrients into the digestive system.
Enzymes help determine how nutrients are broken down and transformed earlier in digestion.
Those digestive processes influence which substrates remain available to microbial communities further along the gut.
The existing microbial community responds to the nutritional environment and substrates it encounters.
The gastrointestinal microbiome is already an enormously complex ecosystem. Anabiomics starts from the principle that the environment surrounding that ecosystem matters just as much as the individual organisms within it.
The aim is therefore not to define one universally “correct” microbiome. It is to understand how nutrition and digestion can influence the conditions in which an animal's existing microbial community functions.
Anabiomics helped shape the way Tharos thinks about digestive health: looking upstream at digestion, downstream at the microbial environment, and at the nutritional connection between the two.
EXPLORE THE SCIENCEThe purpose of Tharos was never simply to create interesting science. It was to translate that science into products capable of being used every day. EquiNectar was the first major expression of that idea.
Years of equine research and development were translated into a daily nutritional digestive product built around enzyme-rich malt extract. EquiNectar became the foundation of the Tharos equine range and the first major commercial expression of the company's scientific approach.
The work later expanded into dogs through CaniNectar, applying enzyme-rich malt technology within a product developed specifically around canine nutrition, digestive physiology and the practical needs of dog owners and professionals.
Tharos now brings together scientific research, nutritional formulation, product development, manufacturing expertise and commercial delivery. The portfolio has expanded beyond its original product while retaining the same underlying principle: start with a worthwhile biological question, then develop the most appropriate nutritional solution.
Tharos began by asking whether changing digestive processes could alter the nutritional environment further downstream. That question led to research, a company and ultimately specialist animal-health products.
Today, the same curiosity drives what comes next. New evidence creates new questions, new questions create new research, and sometimes that research becomes the next Tharos product.
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