VMBS Today - Shaping the Future: Advancing the Next-Generation of Veterinary Medicine

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VOLUME 24, NUMBER 1 // WINTER 2023

CT IMAGING TO DETECT INFECTIOUS DISEASE

INNOVATING HOST-DIRECTED THERAPIES

PULMONARY BANDING TO COMBAT CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE

PROGRESSING THE FUTURE OF MOTION CAPTURE

ANTICIPATING ROBOTIC-ASSISTED SURGERY RESEARCH TO BETTER UNDERSTAND AND DIAGNOSE PARASITIC INFECTIONS

CLINICAL TRIALS EXAMINING GLIOBLASTOMA

3-D PRINTED GUIDE USED TO CORRECT LIMB DEFORMITY

AI-BASED ALGORITHMS TO DETECT HEART DISEASE

USING EXISTING DRUGS TO TREAT CHAGAS DISEASE

In my 35 years as a higher education faculty member and administrator, I’ve learned that there is some truth to the saying, “time marches on.”

When I first joined the faculty at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) in the 1980s, the current Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH) facility was recently opened, and while it was the right space for the time, veterinary medicine was, in many ways, still in its infancy.

Since then, however, the veterinary profession has expanded and changed tremendously, predicated by the increasing number of veterinary specialties, the advancement of technology, the expansion of clinical trials, the surge in collaborative research, and the tremendous need for more veterinary professionals.

As a result, our current SATH facility—the state of Texas’ preeminent veterinary learning laboratory, which serves as the pinnacle of our Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) students’ education—is in dire need of an update to reflect both the quality of work happening there and the ways in which veterinary medicine is evolving.

This issue of VMBS Today highlights the ways that the school has remained committed to building on our traditions and past successes, while also showcasing how we are laying the groundwork for a better future for both animals and human beings.

Chief among these is our commitment to ensuring that our faculty, staff, and students are being prepared to be the next generation of leaders across all of the fields that encompass the One Health philosophy.

This starts with our campaign to build a next-generation small animal teaching and research hospital, which is listed high among Texas A&M President M. Katherine Banks’ priorities for the university.

That story and others in our WINTER 2023 issue provide a unique opportunity to explore the future of veterinary medicine and the role the VMBS is playing in defining that future—whether it be through potentially groundbreaking collaborative efforts, the extraordinary work being done by our faculty and students to improve health for both animals and human beings, or the technologies they’re harnessing in new and innovative ways.

As you read through these stories, I hope that you experience the same charge of excitement that we feel for the bold future that lies ahead for the VMBS and that you understand why now is the right time to make a very bold move, one that prioritizes building a new, next-generation small animal teaching and research hospital.

The time is always right to celebrate friends like you, to develop advancements that enhance animal and human health, and to honor the foundations laid in the past that empower the extraordinary work we are doing today. Excellence is a hallmark of Texas A&M, as is service above self, and the VMBS is proud to combine those values in a way that will place the school and Texas A&M at the cusp of cutting-edge research and at the forefront of advanced, compassionate care.

DEAN’S MESSAGE
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ON THE COVER:

The VMBS is shaping the future of veterinary medicine and building on the tradition of Aggie excellence. Research and clinical practices symbolized on the cover highlight our commitment to providing cutting-edge, compassionate care, while the tiles themselves represent building on the tradition of veterinary excellence with a new teaching and research facility.

*Artwork by Gabrielle Shreve, VMBS Communications

VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 CONTENTS HOSPITAL Banding Together 32 Picturing The Future 36 3D Medicine In Motion 40 The Art Of Surgery 44 COLLABORATION Putting Research Into Practice 48 Two Institutions–One Health 52 RESEARCH UTI-Lizing The Immune System ................................................. 14 A Host Of New Discoveries ........................................................ 18 Questioning Preconceived Notions .......................................... 24 Breathing New Life Into BRD Research 29 COVER STORY Building On A Tradition Of Excellence ........................................ 6 Dean’s Message............................................................................. 2 VMBS Information......................................................................... 4 STUDENTS A Range Of Opportunities .......................................................... 57 Uncovering The Unknown ......................................................... 61 At The Heart Of Innovation ........................................................ 64 GIVING A Crusade Against Cancer .......................................................... 68 6 18 44 48 68
Vol. 24, No. 1 WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 3

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:

Jennifer G. Gauntt

WRITERS:

Aubrey Bloom ’07

Rachel Knight ’18

Dorian Martin ’06

Megan Myers ’19

Alyssa Schaechinger ’24

Madison Semro ’23

Ashley Vargo ’21

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN:

Christopher A. Long

PHOTOGRAPHER:

Michael Kellett ’91

CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS:

VMBS Today

Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences

Texas A&M University

4461 TAMU

College Station, TX

77843-4461

vetmed.tamu.edu

VMBS Today is published by the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences for alumni and friends. We welcome your suggestions, comments, and contributions to content. Contact us via email at vmbs-editor@tamu.edu. A reader survey is available online at: tx.ag/VMBSTodaySurvey

Permission is granted to use all or part of any article published in this magazine, provided no endorsement of a commercial product is stated or implied. Appropriate credit and a tear sheet are requested.

SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION

THE CARL B. KING DEAN

Dr. John R. August

EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN

Dr. Ramesh Vemulapalli

ASSOCIATE DEAN, PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS

Dr. Karen K. Cornell

ASSOCIATE DEAN, RESEARCH & GRADUATE STUDIES

Dr. Michael Criscitiello

ASSISTANT DEAN, PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS

Dr. Elizabeth Crouch ’91

ASSOCIATE DEAN, VETERINARY EDUCATION, RESEARCH, & OUTREACH (VERO)

Dr. Susan Eades

ASSOCIATE DEAN, GLOBAL ONE HEALTH

Dr. Gerald Parker Jr. ’77

ASSOCIATE DEAN, HOSPITAL OPERATIONS

Dr. Stacy Eckman

ASSISTANT DEAN, CURRICULUM & ASSESSMENT

Dr. Kristin Chaney

ASSISTANT DEAN, FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION

Ms. Yolanda Veals

ASSISTANT DEAN, RESEARCH & GRADUATE STUDIES

Dr. William Murphy

INTERIM DEPT. HEAD, LARGE ANIMAL CLINICAL SCIENCES

Dr. Jennifer Schleining

DEPT. HEAD, SMALL ANIMAL CLINICAL SCIENCES

Dr. Jonathan Levine

DEPT. HEAD, VETERINARY INTEGRATIVE BIOSCIENCES

Dr. Todd O’Hara

INTERIM DEPT. HEAD, VETERINARY PATHOBIOLOGY

Dr. Albert Mulenga

DEPT. HEAD, VETERINARY PHYSIOLOGY & PHARMACOLOGY

Dr. Larry J. Suva

CHIEF OF STAFF

Ms. Misty Skaggs ’93

ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT (TEXAS A&M FOUNDATION)

ENGAGE WITH US

Mr. Larry Walker ’97

DIRECTOR, TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

Mr. Justin Ellison

DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA, & PUBLIC RELATIONS

Ms. Jennifer G. Gauntt

4 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 VMBS INFORMATION
@tamuvetmed

SCHOOL DIRECTORY

SCHOOL OF VETERINARY MEDICINE & BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES

Texas A&M University | 4461 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4461 vetmed.tamu.edu

DEAN’S OFFICE & ADMINISTRATION

979.845.5051

ADMISSIONS

979.845.5051

DEVELOPMENT & ALUMNI RELATIONS

979.845.9043

VMBS COMMUNICATIONS 979.845.1780

CONTINUING EDUCATION

979.845.9102

RESEARCH & GRADUATE STUDIES 979.845.5092

GLOBAL ONE HEALTH 979.845.8612

PUBLIC RELATIONS

979.862.4216

VETERINARY INTEGRATIVE BIOSCIENCES

979.845.2828

VETERINARY PATHOBIOLOGY 979.845.5941

VETERINARY PHYSIOLOGY & PHARMACOLOGY

979.845.7261

SMALL ANIMAL CLINICAL SCIENCES

979.845.9053

LARGE ANIMAL CLINICAL SCIENCES 979.845.9127

VETERINARY MEDICAL TEACHING HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATION

979.845.9026

SMALL ANIMAL TEACHING HOSPITAL

979.845.2351

LARGE ANIMAL TEACHING HOSPITAL 979.845.3541

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 5 VMBS INFORMATION

“This hospital will provide hands-on educational workspace for veterinary students and a state-of-the-art laboratory for animal health and translational research. Faculty members in the vet school will partner with colleagues across the university to develop innovative diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.”

“When something has a champion, it moves,” said Dr. Jonathan Levine, head of the Small Animal Clinical Sciences Department (VSCS) in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS).

What may seem like years in the making, the VMBS’ dream of a new, next-generation small animal teaching and research hospital has built momentum under Dr. John August, the Carl B. King Dean of Veterinary Medicine, and has quickly gained support from Texas A&M University President Dr. M. Katherine Banks.

“By having important conversations with the right stakeholders and administrators, Dean August has led these people who’ve been dreaming about a new small animal teaching and research hospital to develop it and run with it,” Levine said.

During her 2022 State of the University address, Banks referenced a new veterinary teaching and research hospital as a priority for the university, adding that the aspiration for this hospital is for it to be the best in the world.

“This hospital will provide hands-on educational workspace for veterinary students and a state-of-the-art laboratory for animal health and translational research,” she said during the address. “Faculty members in the vet school will partner with colleagues across the university to develop innovative

diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.”

With several key milestones reached, the VMBS has forged ahead with developing a vision for a next-generation teaching and research hospital that builds on the school’s 100-plus years of excellence in teaching, service, and research, while keeping at heart Texas A&M’s core, land-grant mission and, above all, the university’s focus on student success.

A SOLID FOUNDATION

Among the reasons VMBS faculty, staff, students, and administrators have dreamed of a new small animal teaching and research hospital is that this facility is more than just a building—it’s a symbol of what could be, of boundless opportunities and possibilities.

It’s a dream that is driven by the interconnection between student success, leading-edge patient care, and clinical trials.

“Our vision is building upon strengths we already have,” Levine said. “The beautiful thing about it is that a lot of the pieces are here.”

“Our faculty, our students, and our staff—we can’t underscore the staff piece—are so passionate about what they do; their love for animals and the human-animal bond shines through,” said Dr. Stacy Eckman, associate dean for hospital operations. “Clients see the rapport you build in the

6 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 COVER STORY
- DR. M. KATHERINE BANKS
The VMBS’ vision for a new, next-generation small animal teaching and research hospital is driven by the school’s rich history of student success, leading-edge patient care, and impactful research, while anticipating what the future of veterinary medicine might hold.
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 7 COVER STORY

hospital, the expertise, and the passion when they walk in the door; they leave feeling like somebody deeply cared about them. It’s hard to put into words, but it’s a shared love for something; whether it’s healing the dog or the dog itself, it’s a shared passion.”

“The fact is that people do remarkable work in our Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH),” August said. “That’s the quandary (in needing a new teaching and research hospital)—the quality of work is amazing.”

That quality of work can be witnessed in many ways.

Chief among those are the exponential growth in caseload, which is more than six times higher than it was in 1981, when the current SATH was opened; the expansion of clinical research, with at least twice as many services offering clinical trials now compared to 10 years ago; and the increase in services themselves, from two in 1981 to 16 today.

All of these factors reflect the trust that clients have for SATH clinicians in caring for their beloved companion animals and the importance of the specialized care the SATH offers patients that is unavailable anywhere else.

Perhaps most importantly, these factors work together to ensure that VMBS students receive the exceptional education one expects from one of the most elite Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) programs in the country.

“It’s really all about the students. The teaching hospital is the pinnacle of their learning, and we have the only

veterinary medical teaching hospital in Texas,” Eckman said. “We do an exceptional job of teaching clinical medicine.

“We gather a diverse caseload at the tertiary-care level, and while a lot of the cases are not necessarily things that students are going to be seeing in private practice, the exposure they get to a lot of different scenarios gives them the opportunity to practice everything all at once,” she said. “That is really critical when teaching students.”

A BOLD VISION FOR THE FUTURE

Capitalizing on that good work and synergy means weighing how the SATH can both better serve Texas’ citizens and animals, as well as the students who begin their careers as Aggie veterinarians within the hospital’s walls—while also looking to the future.

“There’s this tremendous opportunity to do so much more,” Levine said. “We continue to innovate in the clinic with our interventional radiology, with our minimally invasive surgeries, with some procedures you can’t get anywhere else in the state and the U.S. This is about doing more of that; it’s about access.”

Programs like the VSCS’ Underserved Communities Internship—created to broaden the SATH’s reach across the state—and the Roach Family Student Community Outreach Surgical Program—which allows students to gain more surgical experience while offering free procedures for

8 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 COVER STORY
Clinical associate professor of neurology Joseph Mankin preps a patient for brain surgery.

the pets of low-income Brazos Valley residents—are good examples of ways a new teaching hospital can combine education and patient care while looking to the future.

“Dean August has been particularly good about reminding us about the importance of the external impact we have through our students, through serving our state, and through innovating,” Levine said. “Where we see gaps, we’ve got to fill them. We must be thinking of big ideas; we should be working on a few each year that build on top of one another.”

Part of that impact, too, comes from research and clinical trials, which offer students insight into non-clinical veterinary career paths and showcase how research can offer real hope to animal owners, while also supporting the advancement of medicine that impacts animals and human beings.

For August, this combination of ideas prominently places the VMBS within Banks’ vision of a Texas A&M that stands at the forefront of medical and technological innovation.

“If we look at the Small Animal Teaching Hospital as a research-intensive tertiary care center, we can aspire to become a teaching and research hospital comparable to MD Anderson,” he said. “Nobody worries that MD Anderson is a research-driven hospital. You go there to be part of a clinical trial. You go there because it is the best in the world. You go there because it is cutting-edge. You go there because of the high level of compassionate care. People understand that’s the role A&M should have in the care of companion animals.”

Likewise, with other health- and medical-focused schools, colleges, and departments at Texas A&M, there is an abundance of mutually beneficial opportunities to collaborate on topics like medical devices and issues that directly impact both animals and human beings.

“We have an opportunity to look at what role a small animal teaching and research hospital should have within our research-intensive, land-grant institution that focuses on the life sciences, as Texas A&M University does,” August said.

“Since the Small Animal Teaching Hospital has opened, the number of referral hospitals in Texas and in the nation has exploded; we no longer need to view ourselves as just a referral hospital,” he said. “We have a very unique opportunity to collaborate with others at our university in those disciplines who share our interest in animal and human health and to develop a model for a small animal teaching

A BOLD VISION: EIGHT PRIORITIES FOR A NEW, NEXT-GENERATION SMALL ANIMAL TEACHING AND RESEARCH HOSPITAL:

1. Provide exemplary primary care education for DVM professional students

2. Provide traditional referral services for veterinarians

3. Focus on a level of leadingedge, research-driven patient care not available regionally

4. Provide advanced care with compassion

5. Promote well-being for all occupants of the building

6. Focus on clinical trials, biobanking, and disease surveillance

7. Focus on telehealth and remote digital monitoring

8. Expand outreach to underserved communities

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 9 COVER STORY RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
“If we look at the Small Animal Teaching Hospital as a research-intensive tertiary care center, we can aspire to become a teaching hospital comparable to MD Anderson. Nobody worries that MD Anderson is a research-driven hospital. You go there to be part of a clinical trial.”
- DR. JOHN AUGUST

and research hospital that is quite different from everything else that has been developed nationwide in the last decade.”

As Texas’ human and animal populations grow and projected spending within the pet industry nationwide swells to $250-300 billion by 2029, it will be more important than ever to have a flexible space where students can excel, clinicians can continue to provide leading-edge patient care, and basic and clinical scientists can come together to unravel some of life’s most pressing medical mysteries—while still being conscious that these increased needs will require more and more people to achieve these goals.

“Even though we are a tertiary care hospital, we want to keep looking for opportunities to impact the whole state,” Levine said.

CRAMPED SPACES

Eckman graduated from Texas A&M’s veterinary school in 2001, 20 years after the current SATH building opened. As a faculty member and now associate dean, Eckman says that a lot has changed at the SATH, but there’s one thing that hasn’t.

“The hospital is the same hospital,” she said. “That’s important because our faculty and staffing have grown exponentially and our student numbers have grown considerably, but we’re in the same exact footprint.”

August shared a similar experience when he joined the VMBS as head of the of the Department of Small Animal

“We will need exceptional primary care space for client, patient, and student interaction, to provide adequate space for veterinary medical students to develop the foundational competencies needed before entering the profession with immediate confidence.”

Medicine and Surgery in 1986.

“In some ways, the building was already outdated when I came here, even though it was quite new at that time,” he said. “It was designed to provide more space but not necessarily designed for the future. So, today, we have a 40-year-old building that doesn’t reflect the quality of the work going on inside.”

While those in the SATH are doing tremendous work, the current facility ranks at the bottom in nearly all criteria compared to peer institutions; the VMBS’ nationally ranked curriculum and exceptional patient care are being accomplished in cramped spaces that present both challenges in managing increasing caseloads and potential safety and biosecurity challenges that impact the school’s aspirations in teaching, patient care, and research.

That the SATH continues to literally push its boundaries speaks to the resiliency of the faculty, staff, and students,

There has been an exponential increase in the number of visits to the SATH over the last 40 years, reinforcing the need for a new hospital.

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& NOW
SMALL ANIMAL TEACHING HOSPITAL: THEN
NUMBER OF STUDENTS 1981 (73) 2021 (162) 2025 (180) 220 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 The number of services that the SATH now provides is eight times the number offered in 1981, all while still operating in the same space. NUMBER OF SERVICES 2 (1981) 16 (2021) 84K sq./ft. 147K sq./ft. Texas A&M Peers Peer institutes are currently outpacing the SATH in size of facilities by over 40%. SQ./FT. SIZE SQ./FT. PER CASE SEEN Texas A&M 4.2 sq./ft. Peers 8.01 sq./ft. CASELOAD 3,304 1981 22,839 2022
DR. JOHN AUGUST

according to Levine.

“Our faculty, our students, and our staff are very flexible; they meet challenges with a can-do attitude,” Levine said. “That’s a little bit cliché, but to be able to achieve what they’ve achieved in those spaces, hats off to them.”

But the limitations that faculty, staff, and students experience are sometimes more than just an inconvenience.

“We do have to divert cases periodically—every seven to 14 days, and sometimes more frequently—because we don’t have enough room in our ICU; we try to limit that as much as we can and our ER, of course, is still open for emergencies,” Eckman said. “But if we only have so much space, we can only see so many cases; above all, we need to guarantee that we have adequate space and resources to ensure we are providing the highest quality care.”

Weighing the impact of an overcrowded hospital on students is especially important, because it can be directly related to student success.

“As a clinician, if I think about a caseload I had when there were 132 students, I need to increase my caseload so that the 180 students get the same learning opportunities,” Eckman said. “If we’re limited on how many cases we can bring in and where we can put them, we have to be creative about how we’re teaching students. And if we have to say no to cases

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 11 COVER STORY RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Annie Newell-Fugate and Dr. Adam Patterson with fourth-year veterinary students Morgan Martin

wanting to come in because we don’t have the space for them, it’s a lost opportunity.”

The limitations the SATH experiences are compounded by the increase in technology that has occurred in medicine since the 1980s.

“In the 80s, our operating rooms weren’t built for all of the scope towers and monitors,” Eckman said. “By the time you add equipment, the room has shrunk considerably; we have just far exceeded our capacity.

“Our ability to teach is still awesome. Our patient care is awesome,” she said. “But we can’t build on that right now. We can’t see more patients. We can’t teach differently. We can’t do any more research. We can’t do any more innovative surgeries. We can’t do any more in our current footprint.”

ROOM TO GROW

August sees the new small animal teaching and research hospital as having a unique opportunity to play a central role in the next phase of Texas A&M’s growth and stature.

“There was an attempt back in 2013 to expand the Small Animal Teaching Hospital. In the end, the finances weren’t there; they had to be put into the educational complex,” August said. “In many ways, it’s a godsend that we didn’t

“This new teaching hospital has the potential to have tremendous impact not only within Texas A&M but outside as well. Institutions exist for the positive impact they have on society at large.”

update or replace it 10 years ago, because it probably would’ve already been out of date.

“We have to make sure that the new hospital is designed in a way that we have flexibility over the next decades for handling the sickest, most complicated patients and not be faced with a situation where in five years we’re wishing our ICU was bigger,” he said.

“At the same time, we will need exceptional primary care space for client, patient, and student interaction, to provide adequate space for veterinary medical students to develop the foundational competencies needed before entering the profession with immediate confidence,” August continued.

Now that the project has support from Texas A&M’s president, the Texas A&M University System, and the Texas Legislature, the VMBS is looking ahead to the pieces that

12 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 COVER STORY
Students and faculty provide extraordinary care in an overcrowded SATH space.

need to be completed before breaking ground—including submitting a program of requirements for approval by the Texas A&M System Board of Regents in February 2023, which will move the project into the engineering and architectural planning phases.

As the VMBS administrative and development teams work toward bringing the school’s dream to fruition, with the hopes of hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony by 2026, the support of donors will be critical.

“This new teaching hospital has the potential to have tremendous impact not only within Texas A&M but outside as well. Institutions exist for the positive impact they have on society at large,” Levine said. “We’re going to be able to change not only the educational landscape for students preparing to enter the workforce, not only the pet health care landscape, but, also, there may be some real scientific innovation that comes along with it. So, I think it’s going to be amazing for donors as well.” ■

Join Texas A&M and the VMBS in laying the foundation for the next generation of exceptional student success, leading-edge patient care, and impactful research. Together, we can share the Aggie spirit with the world through the advancement of medicine that impacts animals and human beings. You can support the school’s mission through endowed funds for research, faculty, and student scholarships. Additionally, naming opportunities starting at $25,000 abound in the new facility, and spaces can be named in memory or honor of a special person or pet. If you’d like to be part of pushing veterinary medicine to new heights at Texas A&M, contact:

A&M Foundation

lwalker@txamfoundation.com

800.392.3310 or 979.458.4032

Support construction with gifts of $25 or more online at tx.ag/NextGenVetHospital

Dr. James Bilof with veterinary students
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 13 COVER STORY RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Sarguru Subash 14 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 RESEARCH

“To specifically target one host immune effector and see therapeutic outcomes of boosting a host immune response, that’s something that we are actually unique in and that sets us apart from some of the best of the UTI research community.”

Dr. Sarguru Subash works to develop novel approaches to circumvent antibiotic resistance.

If you wake up with a persistent urge to run to the restroom and a burning sensation when you urinate, you may have a urinary tract infection (UTI). If you do, your doctor will likely prescribe you a dose of antibiotics and send you home, assuring you that you will be just fine.

But that solution may not work if the bacteria causing the UTI are resistant to antibiotics.

Some doctors have found that certain antibiotics are no longer enough to eliminate infections caused by antibioticresistant bacteria, making those infections particularly dangerous to patients. As bacteria become more resistant to current antibiotic treatments, options for dealing with these infections are becoming fewer and fewer.

“Right now, it’s pretty scary,” said Dr. Sarguru Subash, an associate professor in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Department of Veterinary Pathobiology (VTPB). “We are almost looking at a post-antibiotic world, where we may not be able to use antibiotics anymore like we used to do in the past.”

REVOL-UTI-ONIZING ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENT

Subash and his lab group have honed in on studying UTIs, which occur when bacteria in the urinary tract multiply and lead to inflammation. UTIs are some of the most common bacterial infections in the world, responsible for more than 8 million doctor visits per year in the United States alone, and, in some cases, can lead to kidney damage and lifethreatening complications.

Because these infections are common in several mammalian species, UTIs are a great model infection for Subash and his team as they work to understand both the extremely common infection and how bacterial infections function more broadly.

As with many other bacterial infections, antibiotics are the primary treatment methods for UTIs. However, just like with other antibiotics, antibiotic resistance is limiting how effective this treatment is for afflicted patients.

Decades of past research have shown that this resistance can occur very quickly—sometimes within the course of a few weeks; once this resistance has developed, it cannot be undone and, in its most extreme cases, can render a specific antibiotic useless.

So, Subash and his team are currently working toward developing a host-directed therapy—a treatment method that circumvents the development of antibiotic resistance and can positively impact both human and animal health.

By targeting the immune system, which has innate mechanisms to fight infections, and helping it do its job better, host-directed therapies would allow physicians to treat bacterial infections without needing to use an antibiotic. These treatments should give the immune system the boost it needs to be able to eradicate the infection on its own.

“I’m very excited about the concept of host-directed therapy, and that’s the area in which I see myself 10 years from now,” Subash said.

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 15 RESEARCH RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT

A THERAPE-UTI-C APPROACH

Host-directed therapies work like traditional antibiotics; these therapies rely on the host’s response to a pathogen rather than affecting the pathogen directly, such as by changing the environment in which the pathogen exists to make it less favorable to live or grow.

An example of this is the body’s use of metals such as copper; many animals, including human beings, rely on copper when carrying out important processes in the immune system. When infected by a pathogen, the immune system can restrict life-sustaining metals from the bacteria, and at the same time, it can pump copper, which is toxic to bacteria, into the bacteria’s cells.

This mechanism of simultaneously depriving the bacteria of essential metals and pumping copper into the bacteria allows the host’s immune system to prevent the infection from spreading, possibly even killing the infection altogether.

Previous research has established that a protein named ceruloplasmin releases more copper in the urine during UTIs, but there is still much to learn about the exact mechanisms of copper in immune functions.

In the next few years, Subash and his team aim to determine how copper is getting into the bladder during UTIs so they can boost this specific aspect of the immune response—a clever idea to outsmart antibiotic resistance.

“To specifically target one host immune effector and see therapeutic outcomes of boosting a host immune response, that’s something that we are actually unique in and that sets us apart from some of the best of the UTI research community,” Subash said.

The novel treatment method Subash is working toward would allow physicians to treat bacterial infections without fear of contributing to the development of antibiotic-resistant strains.

Because their alternative could lead to fewer secondary infections, and, thus, improve patient outcomes, Subash and his team are currently supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

“If we did detect a specific receptor or a transporter within that cell type that’s involved in the mobilization of copper, then we can pharmaceutically modify how much copper is released into urine,” Subash explained. “Then, we can play with the modulating site during infection, so we can make it less hospitable for bacteria to grow.”

EVOL-UTI-ON FROM VETERINARIAN TO RESEARCHER

Subash’s interest in veterinary medicine began at a young age on his grandparents’ farm in a small town in southern India, where he helped care for the animals. That interest drove Subash to attend veterinary school at Madras Veterinary College of Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences

University in India, where he learned that he also had a passion for science.

“Very soon, I realized that by studying animal health, we can address more broad problems in human health as well,” Subash said. “So, it took me away from practicing veterinary medicine more into hands-on science and research.”

Subash moved to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. in comparative medicine and integrative biology at the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine, which he completed in 2011. There, he said he got his first real research experience.

Following his Ph.D., he started to look at potential pathogens and infection models that could impact both human and animal health in a wide-reaching way.

“That’s when UTI research really caught my attention. It’s a very broadly applicable disease that can still help me retain some aspects of connection to my previous life as a veterinarian by addressing a problem that is relevant to human and animal health,” Subash said.

Subash then completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Dr. Harry Mobley at the University of Michigan Medical School, where he began studying UTIs. In 2015, he completed his fellowship and got his first faculty position at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

But Subash felt that something was missing in the medical school environment; he had wanted to eventually get back to his veterinary roots, so he decided to move to Texas A&M, where he could work on developing biochemical and genomic approaches to address his research questions about UTIs.

CONTRIB-UTI-NG TO THE FUTURE

Since joining the Texas A&M faculty in 2018, Subash has become an integral member of the Aggie community.

“We recruited Dr. Subash for his top-quality research program in infectious diseases and his passion for mentoring the next generation of scientists,” said Dr. Ramesh Vemulapalli, VMBS executive associate dean and former VTPB department head. “His research and teaching accomplishments have been outstanding.”

Each spring, Subash teaches a graduate-level course called Bacteria in Health and Disease about the various impacts bacteria can have on different organ systems. He also mentors students in his classroom and his research lab.

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“We recruited Dr. Subash for his top-quality research program in infectious diseases and his passion for mentoring the next generation of scientists. His research and teaching accomplishments have been outstanding.”
- DR. RAMESH VEMULAPALLI

“Mentoring is something that is very close to my heart because I benefited tremendously from having great mentors in graduate school and during post-doctoral training,” he said.

Subash takes an individualized approach to working with students, meeting them where they currently are and helping to fill in their gaps. Whether they require training in laboratory techniques or help writing grant proposals, Subash is happy to help—and if he can’t, he will connect his students with someone who can.

“For every student, my mentoring style is trying to understand what they’re comfortable with, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and developing a personalized mentoring philosophy,” Subash explained. “I don’t have a boilerplate approach to mentoring because I don’t think it will work. So, it’s trying to find out what they need and also being flexible.”

That mentorship style is exactly what drew Kaitlin Casanova-Hampton, who recently completed her Ph.D., to join Subash’s lab when she started graduate school in 2018. Casanova-Hampton was interested in microbiology and signed up in Subash’s lab to fill her last rotation spot.

After spending time in the lab, however, she knew she found the ideal mentor in Subash.

“When it comes to your Ph.D. program, finding a principal investigator with whom you are on the same page is the most important decision you can make,” Casanova-Hampton said. “It was really important to me to find somebody who cared about my personal well-being. I knew that since I was having a family, having somebody who cared about me as a person, as opposed to what I could do for them, was everything.”

Casanova-Hampton became Subash’s first student to earn her Ph.D. During her four years in graduate school, she published three papers, presented at conferences, and went on maternity leave—twice—to start her family.

“Because of Dr. Subash, I had a supreme grad school experience,” she said. “I was able to check all of the boxes, all while still being able to check a lot of personal boxes.”

Casanova-Hampton said Subash’s kindness and understanding are what make him a great mentor; by combining these qualities with his scientific expertise, he can be whatever his students need him to be, fostering strong relationships and creating a supportive lab environment.

“Dr. Subash is really great about putting the needs of the lab first but also putting my needs as an individual first as well,” she explained. “He tries to make it to where everybody’s winning—where a win for the lab is a win for me, too.” ■

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Graduate students Iris George, Braden Hanson, and Michael Treve with Subash in his lab.

“Worms are my life. They’re pretty important, of course, in the medical and veterinary fields. But beyond that, they’re diverse and complex.”

Clinical assistant professor Dr. Guilherme Verocai uses his passion for parasitology to fuel his research projects, serve veterinarians across the country, and teach students that success comes from doing what you love.

GUILHERME VEROCAI
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Dr. Guilherme Verocai and former postdoctoral researcher Dr. Caroline Sobotyk de Oliveira

While many veterinarians will admit to having a favorite animal, worms are usually not at the top of the list.

For Dr. Guilherme Verocai, however, worms—specifically those that live parasitically inside another organism—are the most fascinating animals on the planet.

“Worms are my life,” said Verocai, a clinical assistant professor in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Department of Veterinary Pathobiology (VTPB). “They’re pretty important, of course, in the medical and veterinary fields. But beyond that, they’re diverse and complex.

“They’re animals living in, on, or off another animal,” he continued. “They’re much more intelligent than viruses and bacteria. Evolutionarily speaking, they’re very evolved organisms; they had to adapt to this parasitic lifestyle, which, arguably, is the most successful lifestyle on Earth.”

Verocai’s fascination with parasitic worms, also known as helminths, has influenced his entire career, which has taken him from Brazil to Canada to Africa and, finally, to Texas A&M, where he keeps a busy schedule as an educator, researcher, and diagnostician.

FINDING A PASSION

Helminths first caught Verocai’s attention during his first year of veterinary school at the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

“Early in vet school, I had courses in parasitology and I fell in love, basically,” he said. “I started doing parasitology research and I was a teaching assistant in parasitology, and I never left the research and teaching aspects.”

After earning his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree in 2005 and a Master of Science degree in veterinary parasitology in 2008, Verocai decided to expand his horizons, quite literally, by enrolling in a Ph.D. program in Canada.

“Parasites are trying to survive like all of us and, most of the time, killing the host is not an ideal strategy for them to continue on. But there is still a big impact on health and general well-being, as well as an economic burden on the infected humans.”

At the University of Calgary, he chose to pursue a secondary interest in wildlife medicine—while still keeping his focus on worms, of course.

“I ended up in a very nice university at the right time,” he said. “The graduate program in veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary was brand new, so there were a lot of excited professors coming in full of ideas, as well as a lot of grad students coming from a bunch of different places on Earth. It was a pretty fun, diverse, and inspiring place to be.”

Verocai’s research project there focused on discovering a new species of lungworm that scientists believed to be living in large mammals above the Arctic Circle.

“Before I got there, they had found larvae in feces of caribou, moose, and musk oxen, and we knew it was something new because they didn’t match the genetics of any related worms,” Verocai said. “I really wanted to discover one of the adults and describe this new species, and I had no doubt that I would find them.”

Native hunters, including the Inuit and Dene ethnic groups, sent the Canadian research team samples of lung tissue from caribou and musk oxen to search for adult specimens of the new species.

“It was like working in the dark because the worms didn’t cause any obvious pathology or any lesions in the lungs,” Verocai said. “We were cutting through, washing, and sieving the tissue samples to look for the hairlike worms, which were only a few centimeters long. It was a big moment when we found the first adult worms in the lungs of musk oxen from Northern Quebec.”

During the project, Verocai also spent a lot of time in Arctic regions, talking to native peoples and collecting samples.

“I’m from Rio de Janeiro, a beach town, and here I was collecting poop by helicopter and chasing musk oxen and caribou in sub-Arctic and Arctic areas,” he said with a laugh.

“We went from village to village, talking about veterinary medicine, wildlife health, and the importance of parasites,” he said. “Everything was being translated into their native language. It was a pretty interesting experience.”

When it came time to name the new species, Verocai’s team decided to credit the Sahtu Region of Canada’s Northwest Territories, where the lungworm larvae were first detected.

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Verocai teaching in Canada

“We wanted to name it something meaningful for them in their native language because of the importance of caribou in their culture,” Verocai said. “In North Slavey, one of the dialects for the Dene people, they call the Arctic ‘elegu nene,’ or ‘cold land.’ Varestrongylus is the genus of the parasite, so we named it ‘Varestrongylus from the cold land,’ or Varestrongylus eleguneniensis.”

BACK TO WARMER WEATHER

Once Verocai earned his Ph.D. in 2015, he moved south to begin working as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of South Florida’s Department of Global Health, where he could study a pair of related parasites that he found especially interesting.

His main project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, involved traveling to the West African country of Burkina Faso to study a nematode called Onchocerca volvulus

that causes onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, in people. This disease is one of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) top 20 neglected tropical diseases.

Verocai also went back to his veterinary roots and spent his spare time studying Onchocerca lupi, an obscure zoonotic parasite that causes a similar disease in dogs and cats.

He has continued to study O. lupi since he began his career at Texas A&M in November 2018; to this day, those searching the parasite on Google will find Verocai’s publications as two of the top three results.

“Parasites are a neglected part of biodiversity because, well, it’s tough to study them,” Verocai said. “Internal parasites, especially, are even more challenging to work with than external ones like fleas and ticks.”

Continuing to rise to this challenge, Verocai has taken on several new projects at the VMBS, including studying Dracunculus medinensis, also known as the Guinea worm.

The Guinea worm is similar to O. volvulus in that this nematode also causes one of the WHO’S top 20 neglected tropical diseases, dracunculiasis (Guinea worm disease). The project is also funded by another well-known organization, The Carter Center.

“The scientific community once thought it was strictly a human parasite, but then we realized that dogs; to a lesser extent, cats; and, in some countries like Ethiopia, baboons

Verocai in Burkina Faso
“Parasites are a neglected part of biodiversity because, well, it’s tough to study them. Internal parasites, especially, are even more challenging to work with than external ones like fleas and ticks.”
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- DR. GUILHERME VEROCAI

were acting as reservoirs and helping cycle the parasite,” Verocai said.

While the Guinea worm does not usually kill its host, it can cause blindness, blisters, and swelling, all of which negatively impact an individual’s livelihood, both physically and socially.

“Parasites are trying to survive like all of us and, most of the time, killing the host is not an ideal strategy for them to continue on,” Verocai said. “But there is still a big impact on health and general well-being, as well as an economic burden on the infected humans.”

This aspect of parasites translates to animal hosts as well, including pets and food animals.

“That’s what a lot of parasites will do with our pets—the hosts are not dying, but they could be healthier; they’re not living their best life,” Verocai said. “Thinking about animal production, every infected animal is producing less than it could. That’s billions of dollars that go to waste because of parasites impacting production animals.”

Because of the far-reaching negative impacts of parasites on animals, one of Verocai’s roles at the VMBS is directing the Parasitology Diagnostic Laboratory, which helps veterinarians diagnose parasitic infections in companion animals, exotics, livestock, and wildlife.

“Diagnostics is a big portion of my appointment here,” he said. “It’s figuring out which parasites are present, plus triaging the biodiversity of parasites and figuring out what

“Teaching and mentoring are very rewarding. I’m trying to convince everybody that parasites are the most amazing things on Earth. Even though I think I might not be convincing enough, showing how much I care shows that parasites matter.”

we don’t know. We will only know how to properly deal with things that we know about.”

These diagnostic services tie in with his research mission; one of Verocai’s current projects involves looking for new diagnostic markers for heartworms, a mosquito-borne parasite of dogs, and other helminths of veterinary and medical importance.

“Diagnostic markers, which are secretory/excretory products of the parasites, will be found in the organism they’re inside, circulating in biofluids like blood,” he said. “Right now, there are diagnostic markers for cancer and various other human diseases, but they are less explored in parasitology and veterinary medicine. There’s a whole world out there to be studied.

“We’ve had projects with heartworms and other filarial worms, trying to figure out which microRNAs they are excreting/secreting,” he said. “Then, for the Guinea worm, we’re adapting and expanding what we were doing for heartworms in a more global health direction. Ideally, we can use the same test to screen samples from any host species.”

TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION

One final aspect of Verocai’s role at the VMBS is educating and mentoring students, from the veterinary students enrolled in his Agents of Disease courses to the graduate students and postdocs working in his lab.

“Teaching and mentoring are very rewarding,” Verocai said. “I’m trying to convince everybody that parasites are the most amazing things on Earth. Even though I might not be convincing enough, showing how much I care shows that parasites matter.”

During the summer of 2021, as a mentor in the VMBS’ Veterinary Medical Scientist Research Training Program (VMSRTP), Verocai spent 14 weeks working with third-year veterinary student Hannah Danks to characterize a new species of lungworm in North American bison.

Recent research by the VMBS’ Dr. James Derr suggests that all bison in North America have some cattle DNA, so a logical assumption would be that the two species share the same parasites as well.

“Bison almost went extinct. How could they keep cycling their own parasites?” Verocai asked. “But when we looked at

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Verocai and recent DVM graduate Andrew Brown

samples from different herds, they were not the same as the cattle lungworm. It seems that the bison lungworms are a success story of their own, a parasite that, like bison, survived from the brink of extinction.”

Verocai’s continued promotion of parasitology among Texas A&M’s DVM and graduate students and parasitology residents has already resulted in the formation of the Texas A&M Student Chapter of the American Association of Veterinary Parasitology, which he co-advises with clinical assistant professor Dr. Meriam Saleh.

“We’re trying to fill the gaps and make sure parasitology is there as a career opportunity,” he said. “Did I know I would be a parasitologist when I got into vet school? Of course not. If students do not perceive it as an option, it’s never an option.

“This is why I also have a commitment to diversity,” he continued. “I happen to be gay, I happen to be Brazilian, and that’s part of who I am. It matters. You need to see diversity to be able to respect it. It’s all about finding that passion.” ■

The Verocai Lab, summer 2021
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Verocai at a bison ranch in Texas

For decades, research has blatantly ignored the potential impact a father may have in his child’s development of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, choosing instead to focus on the mother’s contribution; Dr. Michael Golding’s research is changing that.

Ranchers have long realized that environmental factors have a significant effect on livestock quality. For example, a drought will place significant physiological stress on a prized bull—and if the bull is bred during this timeframe, his offspring will not inherit his stellar traits.

However, this situation is reversible.

“It’s a standard practice in animal husbandry to let the animal recover for 60-90 days. In a bull, that represents two complete sperm cycles, during which he will be able to make a completely new wave of sperm,” said Dr. Michael Golding, an associate professor in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS). “The general practice has been to leave that bull alone, to not let him breed until he repopulates his sperm, because when we don’t do this, we see that the offspring are rather lackluster.”

Because Golding grew up on a farm in Southwest Ontario, Canada, and did his graduate work on assisted reproductive technologies and embryo development in cattle, he has long

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been familiar with the importance of this practice. Today, as his VMBS research laboratory works to understand the mechanics of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), he’s taking the philosophy behind that practice a step further, questioning whether there are similar implications for human reproduction.

“It was really striking to me that this common knowledge and bedrock foundational practice never made its way into human medicine in any consideration whatsoever,” he said.

Golding’s research focuses on better understanding FASD, which is triggered by the unborn child’s exposure to alcohol while in the womb, and, particularly, whether the father may play a role in the child’s development of FASD.

A GROWING ISSUE

FASD encompasses a group of conditions that can emerge as physical problems, such as poor coordination; problems with vision, hearing, heart, kidneys, or bones; behavioral problems, such as hyperactivity, difficulty with attention, or poor reasoning and judgment; and learning difficulties, such as poor memory, learning disabilities, and speech and language delays.

Often, an individual with FASD experiences a mix of these.

Experts currently believe that approximately 10% of children nationally have this disorder, but making a diagnosis can be difficult.

“Oftentimes, children display subtle forms of birth defects; they may not have physical characteristics that you can readily discern,” Golding said. “They may just have behavioral issues that start to manifest when they get into school, when they start to develop anxiety disorders, problems sitting still, or problems with learning and memory. Then, they get pushed to their pediatrician, who will do diagnostics.”

FASD’s prevalence varies based on geographic location. In Texas, FASD has primarily been diagnosed around the Rio Grande Valley and the Panhandle; there are fewer cases in Central Texas, except for certain urban hotspots.

Situational experiences also contribute to its prevalence.

“There’s been a long history of seeing spikes in FASD in the North, such as when there is a huge snowfall that causes people to be trapped in their houses for long periods of time,” Golding said. “You run out of things to do, so you start to drink.”

The COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a similar spike.

“It would not surprise me if in the coming three years we see, as a result of pregnancies during the pandemic, a cohort of kids who have an increased prevalence of FASD simply because of the pressures, social problems, and issues surrounding the pandemic,” Golding explained. “This is particularly true for couples who conceived while also facing stressors such as working from home while having their kids constantly at home, when school was through an online format that wasn’t holding their attention. There’s stress there, and sometimes at the end of the day, it was like, ‘I need a drink to shake it off.’”

A RECIPE FOR LIFE

Golding, who joined Texas A&M’s faculty in 2009, is building his work on Nobel Prize-winning research that shows that cellular memory—or epigenetics—can be transmitted between one cellular generation to the next, such as from the father to offspring.

The Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology faculty member likes to describe epigenetics as a cookbook.

“Your genome has these ‘recipes’ for all these different

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Golding processes tissue for a histological examination as Alison Basel and Alexis Roach work behind him.

proteins you need over the course of your life,” he said. “While cooks would use the recipe book to make a pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, epigenetics is a bookmark on the DNA that instructs it to read this piece of information at a certain stage, such as during embryonic development.”

Golding is using this approach to try to understand how the consumption of alcohol might change bookmarks in the epigenetic programming.

“We always thought that fetal alcohol syndrome was a toxicity; as the person drank, the cells that were exposed to the alcohol died, and, therefore, you ended up with these deficits,” Golding said. “But there were certain times that a person would drink alcohol and then the unborn child’s stem cells that were exposed to the alcohol would split and go on to develop different parts of the brain—but only one part of the brain would be affected. There was a lack of linear connection that didn’t make sense.”

That realization led to Golding’s “a-ha” moment in relation to FASD.

“Some components of the birth defects associated with FASD had to be programmed,” he said. “As I was reading the literature, I was struck by how blatantly researchers ignored the male contribution. My perspective came from my agricultural background and understanding the role of male epigenetic information in programming the health of the

“The placenta is a crucial organ that very few people ever think of because it’s a transient one, developing during pregnancy and being expelled after birth. It’s probably the most beautiful and noble of all the organs that we have in our body, but it is only with us for a short period of time.”

offspring—and, specifically, how it controls the development of the placenta.”

LEARNING FROM THE PLACENTA

The placenta plays a significant role in fetal development— establishing pregnancy, providing oxygen and nutrients to the baby, and removing waste products.

“The placenta is a crucial organ that very few people ever think of because it’s a transient one, developing during pregnancy and being expelled after birth,” Golding said. “It’s probably the most beautiful and noble of all the organs that we have in our body, but it is only with us for a short period of time.”

Because of the placenta’s connection to the child’s mother, Golding’s initial line of research about paternal alcohol exposure’s contribution to FASD was met with resistance.

“The field is very myopic in terms of how they view FASD, continuing to frame the disorder as a problem stemming from the mother,” he said. “If you pick up a bottle of beer, it says, ‘Warning: it’s the woman’s fault.’ So why would we look at the male’s role?”

However, thanks to grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Keck Foundation, Golding started delving into his hypothesis that men may, in fact, play a role in the development of FASD in unborn children.

“We’re seeing that alcohol changes something in sperm, changes the memory that is supposed to be transmitted to the offspring, and it affects the placenta,” he said.

Standard OB/GYN practice involves weighing this afterbirth and then throwing it away, the result of which has been that potentially valuable information about child development has been overlooked.

“We really don’t ever look to see what the condition of the placenta might be telling us,” Golding said, adding that only recently have researchers started evaluating the placenta in cases of preeclampsia, a blood-pressure disorder. “In these cases, the placenta is burned out and you can see that the placentas are falling apart.”

EXPANDING UNDERSTANDING OF FASD

Luke Dotson ’22, now in his first semester of medical school, working in Golding’s lab.

As they focus on the epigenetics of FASD, the Golding team is analyzing the placenta in new ways to better understand its

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contribution to gestational issues beyond preeclampsia.

“A lot of the health defects that we see in FASD kids— including their metabolic problems, growth delays, and problems with cognition, learning, and memory—are all secondary symptoms of this placental failure during gestation,” Golding explained.

One of their studies shows that a persistent memory is being transmitted to offspring through the placenta and that this memory is associated with health defects.

“We’re trying to figure out how this memory persists and how to measure that memory,” Golding said. “We’re also trying to figure out how much of an impact that memory might be having on other facets of health and development and human medicine.”

By reviewing bookmarks in the father’s sperm and comparing these epigenetic tags with bookmarks in the mother’s placenta, the team has found that alcohol-exposed sperm have abnormal bookmarks that also show up in the placenta, which may be causing issues in fetal development.

“We’ve essentially developed a correlation between abnormalities in the sperm and abnormalities in the placenta,” Golding said. “We can’t see differences in the embryo, but we can see them in the placenta. That suggests

that whatever we are studying is being transmitted from the dad to the placenta, and it has a very real effect on blood flow, hormone production, and the different things that you need a placenta to do.”

The researchers also have identified markers of stress in the male offspring of alcohol-exposed males.

“In our mouse model, male offspring are more prone to exhibit growth restriction and birth defects than females. We and the rest of the research field are still struggling to explain this,” Golding said. “We think it is linked to differences in fetal growth between males and females; males grow slowly in early gestation and then turn on the jets toward the end, while females are slow and steady. Perhaps the more conservative growth pattern of females protects them from these developmental defects.”

COMPLICATING IN VITRO FERTILIZATION

Golding’s team also is looking at previously unrealized consequences of a father-to-be’s drinking—the effect on in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“We have found that male drinking is hugely detrimental, with between 50-66% reduction in the pregnancy success rates when there is paternal alcohol exposure,” he said.

Golding examines a placenta sample through a microscope with the sample displaying on the screen above.
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“This really suggests that if you’re a couple struggling to get pregnant, the first thing that needs to happen is that both parents should stop drinking.”

Noting the expense and emotional stress that is part of IVF, Golding believes clinics should be as concerned about the father’s lifestyle as much as the mother’s choices.

“If you’re going into and paying for these in vitro fertilization cycles—which are enormously expensive—if the male’s drinking, you’re wasting a huge amount of money and exacerbating the stress on the mom trying to get pregnant,” Golding said. “The male’s drinking is a huge impediment to the success rates of this procedure.”

SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

Ultimately, Golding’s research has shown, for the first time, that the father’s alcohol consumption is just as important as the mother’s during pregnancy.

“Every alcohol researcher across the country is only studying the mom drinking, but we’re finding that the phenotypes are not the same when mom drinks and when both parents drink,” Golding said. “We’re seeing that the phenotypes are different depending on whether it was dad,

mom, or both, with both being often much more detrimental than either parent individually.”

The team also has determined that the quantity of paternal alcohol consumption matters; the mother’s placenta is healthier if the father has limited or no alcohol consumption during conception, as there are significant consequences if the father drinks the equivalent of two to four glasses of wine or four bottles of beer a day.

Golding also hopes his research will help change and expand the story around pregnancy—and that has significant implications for couples as well as OB/GYN practitioners.

“We’ve had this story that explains why it’s bad for a woman to drink during pregnancy, but there’s been no consideration of male health in any dimension,” he said. “We need to push back and change this narrative that it’s the woman’s fault. We now know that there’s actually much more information coming from males than just DNA; there are a whole host of molecules and memories being imparted that influence fetal health and pregnancy success.” ■

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Sanat Bhadsavle, Alison Basel, Kara Thomas, Alexis Roach, and Golding

VERO researcher Dr. Robert Valeris-Chacin uses novel approaches that combine sequencing bacteria DNA and complex computer models in an effort to better understand— and ultimately treat—a debilitating and deadly cattle disease.

As the worldwide demand for beef skyrockets, the cattle industry has struggled to find an answer for Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD).

BRD outbreaks account for approximately 75% of feedlot morbidity and 50-70% of all feedlot deaths, while also resulting in annual economic losses of up to $900 million.

These losses have a significant impact on industry epicenters such as the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, an area home to 2.5 million beef cattle at any given time; approximately 30% of the United States’ beef cattle are fed or finished at the region’s feedlots.

BRD’s complexity makes it difficult to research—and hard to predict where it will strike.

Now, Dr. Robert Valeris-Chacin, an assistant professor in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical

Sciences (VMBS), is trying new and innovative approaches that combine laboratory work, including DNA sequencing of bacteria, and complex computer models to gain a better understanding of this debilitating and often deadly disease.

Valeris-Chacin works with the Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach (VERO) program, a groundbreaking partnership between the VMBS and West Texas A&M University. Located in Canyon, the VERO program has established an infrastructure that connects students and researchers from the two Texas A&M University System entities to the citizens of the Texas Panhandle, including producers of a significant portion of the nation’s food livestock industry as well as rural veterinarians.

A DIFFERENT BREED

Valeris-Chacin brings both depth and breadth of knowledge to the challenge of understanding BRD.

Originally from Venezuela, he began working in radiology and bovine research while earning his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Universidad del Zulia in 2001. He also earned a master’s degree in immunology before joining the university in a faculty position and working primarily on

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Dr. Robert Valeris-Chacin

infectious diseases in ruminants for a decade.

However, because the nation’s research funding was limited, Valeris-Chacin moved to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the University of Minnesota.

That coursework offered him the opportunity to dive deeply into his passion for mathematics and also challenged him to look at the causes of diseases and the risk factors that determine disease patterns.

“A classical epidemiologist is pretty computer and data centric,” he explained. “I’m a particular kind of epidemiologist because I have a lot of experience in the lab—that’s not very common among epidemiologists—and working with complex and computationally intensive models is very unusual for a veterinarian.”

UNRAVELING BRD’S COMPLEXITY

In 2021, Valeris-Chacin brought his unique perspective to VERO, which is located in the heart of the U.S. beef industry and led him to focus his research on BRD.

“It’s refreshing to return to this area of study,” he said. “I am a firm believer that scientists need to answer societal needs, and in this case, that need is to improve beef production.”

BRD presents one of the major challenges to that production. This disease complex is caused by a variety of viral and bacterial pathogens that can affect cattle, specifically

“We all believe that working toward a future where we depend less on antibiotics in human beings and animals is probably the way to go. We do need to invest more into developing alternatives, especially probiotics, prebiotics, vaccines, and phages, which are viruses that attack bacteria.”

in the lower respiratory tract and lungs through pneumonia or in the upper respiratory tract through rhinitis, tracheitis, or bronchitis.

Gaining a better understanding of BRD may help researchers—and eventually veterinarians—recommend better treatments while also avoiding antibiotics.

“Currently, when cattle show symptoms compatible with BRD, they are pulled. If they have fever, they will receive antibiotics,” Valeris-Chacin explained. “There is societal pressure to reduce the use of antibiotics in animals in general. Therefore, reducing the cases of BRD will result in less antibiotics being administered to beef cattle.”

Fortunately, Valeris-Chacin already had started delving into similarly complex respiratory diseases as part of his doctoral studies, coauthoring several papers with his co-adviser Dr. Maria Pieters, who is a world-renowned expert in respiratory diseases in swine. In the future, Valeris-Chacin wants to research feedlot variables and identify which elements in the animal’s environment are useful in predicting the development of BRD.

TAKING A DIFFERENT APPROACH

One of the things that sets Valeris-Chacin apart is his focus on Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis), which is recognized as part of BRD but is not studied as much. As a result, little is known about this bacterial species.

Recent findings show that M. bovis increases in the respiratory tract of animals that have acute BRD cases.

“That prompted me earlier this year to conduct a complex epidemiological analysis that provides evidence that early in the process of BRD, there is at least an association between M. bovis and the main bacteria in BRD—Mannheimia haemolytica,” he said. “That has not been shown before.”

This finding provides solid ground for Valeris-Chacin to continue to look for more evidence about bacteria’s role in the acute phases of BRD. However, this focus also is among the hardest to study.

“You cannot see bacteria, but M. bovis is one of the smallest bacteria that we know of,” Valeris-Chacin explained. “They also evolved to be parasitic, so they depend on animals to live; because they cannot thrive by themselves outside of

30 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 RESEARCH
A student sampling the upper respiratory tract of a beef calf using a nasopharyngeal swab. A nasopharyngeal swab is cut and collected into a sterile tube for further processing.

the host, if we want to culture them in the lab, we need to provide adequate conditions so they can thrive.”

M. bovis also often remains inside the host, a key piece of information that can be forgotten by researchers working in the lab. Mycoplasmas—bacteria without cell walls, such as M. bovis—tend to produce chronic conditions as a result of their lingering, Valeris-Chacin noted.

IDENTIFYING STRAINS

Valeris-Chacin is developing a technique to help researchers study mycoplasmas.

“There are good techniques now to diagnose mycoplasmas. For instance, we have molecular techniques such as PCR that can detect very small amounts of DNA, but they can only tell you that it is M. bovis,” he explained. “The technique I’m developing has the potential to give us much more information, such as the specific strains of M. bovis. This is like having a method that allows you to know that a sample is from a dog and you’re also able to identify what breed it is.”

This information is important because bacteria, like people and animals, are unique.

“We know there is a lot of diversity within bacteria. We know that not all M. bovis are the same. But in research, it’s very difficult to get to that information without culturing the bacteria,” Valeris-Chacin said. “The neat thing about this technique, which is called targeted enrichment, is that we can have that information without culturing the bacteria.”

Valeris-Chacin believes this technique eventually will help researchers better understand M. bovis, which is prevalent in cattle but doesn’t always develop into BRD. He hopes to have the diagnostic technique developed for use as a research tool in a year; with technological and computational advances, he believes a less costly version will be available in five to six years that can be used as a diagnostic tool in feedlots.

MORE COMPLICATIONS

However, more pieces of this complicated puzzle still need to be put together.

“Because the bacteria that are involved in BRD are present in healthy animals, we are struggling to understand the determinants of when they become pathogenic,” ValerisChacin said. “We know that viruses creating viral infections are the first steps for BRD, but in some animals, it seems like other stressors are very important.”

Researchers also don’t know what triggers BRD onset.

“We’re still struggling to understand how these bacteria transition from commensals (microbes that reside on the surface of the body or at mucosa without harming health) to pathogens. That transition is difficult to study, so we need more finely detailed diagnostics to get to that understanding,” he said. “One part of this is to know the strain-level

information, because in the future we may be able to determine the strain’s genes that allow it to be pathogenic— or instead, it might be the environmental conditions that the animal is experiencing.”

Determining the genetic information of M. bovis and the environmental factors that contribute to BRD opens the door to implementing selective, preventive use of antibiotics. More targeted approaches to antibiotics, like those being developed by VERO’s researchers, implies greater profits for the producer.

IMPROVING TREATMENTS

The academic literature is unclear on how antibiotic use in animals affects human beings.

“There are various stances in the scientific field; some see a clear causal link and others feel it’s not clear, because it’s a very complex issue,” Valeris-Chacin said.

Because antibiotic resistance in human beings is a huge problem, Valeris-Chacin recognizes the delicate balance the animal livestock industry faces.

“One goal is to produce enough animal protein that is affordable to feed the world, because we need it,” he said. “The other is to reduce or eliminate the antibiotic use in animals. But we’re still way behind to have strategies that can be as effective as antibiotics to prevent and control some of the infectious diseases.”

Ultimately, Valeris-Chacin believes researchers such as those at VERO can help create a more viable health system that benefits both the animal and human beings.

“We all believe that working toward a future where we depend less on antibiotics in human beings and animals is probably the way to go. We do need to invest more into developing alternatives, especially probiotics, prebiotics, vaccines, and phages, which are viruses that attack bacteria,” he said. “There are a lot of incentives from funding agencies to develop antibiotic alternatives, but I believe we need to be more aggressive in funding so that we can put more bright minds into solving this problem.” ■

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Bovine Respiratory Disease outbreaks account for approximately 50-70% of all feedlot deaths.
“He’s doing absolutely wonderfully. I’m just so thankful for Dr. Stoner, the entire team, and everything they’ve done for him.”
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- VICKI HARTNETT
Story by MEGAN MYERS Veterinary cardiologists and surgeons from the Texas A&M Small Animal Teaching Hospital collaborated on a rare procedure to save a young tabby cat with heart failure.

At only 5 months old, Whiskey the kitten was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, a condition with potentially deadly consequences.

But thanks to committed owners and a talented veterinary team willing to try a procedure in a way never done at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH), Whiskey got a second chance at life.

DISCOVERING THE PROBLEM

Whiskey entered Vicki and Chris Hartnett’s lives in June 2020 on one of their daily walks near a heavily wooded area in their hometown of Spring.

“We were just walking past an empty lot and I’m chattering away, and, all of a sudden, Chris stopped and said he heard a little meow,” Vicki said.

The couple spotted a tiny orange tabby, about 5 weeks old, running out of the forest, straight toward them; although they looked for a long time, they were never able to find its mother, or any other cats, nearby.

Taking the kitten home with them, they quickly fell in love with Whiskey, named for his golden color, and decided to keep him.

But trouble struck in September when Whiskey began acting sick and vomiting repeatedly. Their local veterinarian discovered a heart murmur and suggested the couple take Whiskey to the SATH’s Cardiology Service.

“Whiskey’s heart murmur was so loud that his actual chest wall vibrated with it,” said Dr. Caitlin Stoner, a former SATH cardiology resident. “The louder the heart murmur is, the more likely it is to be pathologic (diseased) or something else significant, and Whiskey’s murmur was truthfully about as loud as it could get.”

After a series of tests with ultrasound and chest X-rays to look at Whiskey’s heart, Stoner and VMBS professor and cardiologist Dr. Ashley Saunders found that what was causing the heart murmur was much worse than expected.

“Whiskey had a ventricular septal defect, which is a hole in the wall between the two chambers of the heart that allowed blood to flow from one side to the other; it shouldn’t normally do this,” Stoner said. “We see this fairly commonly in cats, but the thing about Whiskey’s that was so significant was the size of it—it took up a huge chunk of his heart wall.”

This hole wasn’t the only problem with Whiskey’s heart—he also had mitral valve dysplasia, meaning the valve on the left side of his heart was formed abnormally, could not open or close correctly, and was leaking significantly.

“Those two problems together led him to have severe heart enlargement at a very young age and early onset congestive heart failure,” Stoner said.

While all of the blood in Whiskey’s heart should have been

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Dr. Caitlin Stoner and Whiskey

circulating throughout his entire body, some of it was instead only going from the right side of the heart to the lungs and then to the left side of the heart and straight through the hole to the right side again in the wrong direction.

This separate blood flow that was only going between the lungs and heart, combined with the malfunctioning valve, was filling the left half of Whiskey’s heart with extra blood and causing it to swell. The abnormal blood flow through the hole was also causing the loud murmur.

“When those chambers of the heart max out on capacity for what they can hold, blood can back up to the level of the lungs and can actually put fluid within the lungs, causing breathing difficulties,” Stoner said.

Despite looking at a very grim situation, Whiskey’s owners refused to give up hope.

When the SATH team suggested a rare procedure that could be performed in a manner they had never done before, but that had the potential to greatly improve Whiskey’s lifespan and quality of life, the Hartnetts decided to go for it.

“From the way that Dr. Stoner explained it and all of the different hands that were going to be involved, we knew that if Whiskey was going to have a chance of success, we were in the right place,” Chris said.

TRYING SOMETHING NEW

Before Whiskey came in for his surgery, a procedure called pulmonary artery banding, his SATH team spent a couple

months planning, practicing, and reaching out to experts.

“It took us a bit of time to make sure we were as prepared as we possibly could be and had a really good plan of action,” Stoner said. “The biggest thing to emphasize about Whiskey is what a huge team effort he was; so many people came together to make that pulmonary artery banding possible.”

Finally, in mid-November, veterinarians and technicians from the Cardiology, Anesthesiology, and Soft Tissue Surgery services gathered in the operating room to try to save Whiskey’s life.

For pulmonary artery banding, a band made of a strong, synthetic resin is wrapped around the pulmonary artery and tightened to control blood flow.

“That tight belt around the artery makes it harder for blood flow to leave the right side of the heart and go out to the lungs. If it’s harder for flow to leave the right side of the heart, then less flow enters and builds up in the left side of the heart and less blood goes through the hole,” Stoner said.

Even though the hole in the heart was still there after inserting the band, the reduced fluid buildup in Whiskey’s heart meant that the hole was no longer causing the backed-up blood and resulting heart enlargement that were threatening Whiskey’s life.

As Dr. Kelley Thieman, a soft tissue surgeon and VMBS associate professor, was attaching and tightening the band, the cardiologists used a catheter inside the artery to measure the blood pressure and make sure the band was at the perfect tightness.

Once the band was tightened and the catheter removed, the surgeons used a special suture donated by St. Joseph Hospital in College Station to seal up the artery.

“We needed a small suture on a tiny needle that wouldn’t cut the vessel, but since we don’t put sutures in those great vessels all that often, we don’t carry the needle on that size of suture,” Thieman said. “St. Joseph was happy to donate it, which was fantastic.”

A HAPPY ENDING

Once the procedure was finished and Whiskey had some time to recover, his veterinary team was overjoyed that follow-up scans showed that Whiskey’s heart had shrunk and he no longer had any fluid backing up into his lungs.

“He still has the murmur and it is still impressively loud, but under the surface, things look better,” Stoner said. “He would’ve had big problems with his heart disease in the very near future without the procedure. We reset the clock for him and were able to buy him some really good years with his family at home.”

In the two years since his surgery, Whiskey has continued to do well and is living a rambunctious life like any other young cat. His owners have even adopted a little kitten

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Whiskey

“The thing that I’m so proud about from Whiskey’s case is the fact that the whole hospital came together for one little cat; it was just this phenomenal team effort. It’s so neat to see how well he’s doing now and how many people are in his corner.”

“sister” for him to play with, and he has no trouble keeping up with her.

“He’s doing absolutely wonderfully,” Vicki said. “I’m just so thankful for Dr. Stoner, the entire team, and everything they’ve done for him.”

Every six months when Whiskey comes back to the SATH for a recheck, his veterinary team is reminded of how his procedure was only possible because of the teamwork and multi-service care the hospital is known for.

“The thing that I’m so proud about from Whiskey’s case is the fact that the whole hospital came together for one little cat; it was just this phenomenal team effort,” Stoner said. “It’s so neat to see how well he’s doing now and how many people are in his corner.” ■

Whiskey and Lily Stoner and Whiskey
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 35 HOSPITAL RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Cambridge Coy ’22 has known since her second year as a student at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) that she wanted to become a veterinary radiologist.

In the years since then, her classes, part-time jobs, and time as a rotating intern at the VMBS’ Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH) have only strengthened her goal. One of her most influential experiences, however, was a research project she hadn’t originally planned on doing.

During Coy’s final year of veterinary school, Dr. Jay Griffin, a VMBS associate professor of veterinary radiology, invited her to join him in studying CT scans of dogs with American canine hepatozoonosis (ACH), a rare infectious disease.

Dogs acquire ACH after eating an adult Gulf Coast tick infected with a protozoan known as Hepatozoon. The condition is known to cause fever, weight loss, nonspecific pain, and lethargy and can sometimes be fatal. Unfortunately, the disease also can be difficult to definitively diagnose

Story by MEGAN MYERS
36 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 HOSPITAL
Recent graduate Dr. Cambridge Coy has spent her time in Aggieland—both as a student and, now, a veterinary intern—discovering a love for the field of veterinary radiology.

because of imprecise and costly testing methods.

Coy and Griffin were investigating an additional finding of ACH that may also hold a clue to an earlier diagnosis— strange bone growth visible in CT scans.

“Very few clinicians image the spine of dogs with this condition because no one ever thought there was a reason to,” Coy said. “However, we found four cases where the clinicians ordered CT scans of the spine, looking for causes of spinal pain, and the dogs were later diagnosed with this rare

infectious disease. All four of those dogs had the same weird changes to their spine.”

The dogs in their study had proliferative lesions on their spinal vertebrae, specifically coming from the periosteum, a complex fibrous membrane of blood vessels and nerves that wraps around bones. These lesions seemed to appear without any other identifiable cause besides ACH and were not cancerous or otherwise destructive.

Although no one knows why, it is well documented that

Dr. Cambridge Coy, Danielle Bell, and Jami Wood
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 37 HOSPITAL

this proliferation can often be seen on long bones of the legs, such as the femur, humerus, and tibia.

Because CT scans are becoming more common in veterinary medicine, spinal scans like those used in this study may become an effective tool for creating an earlier suspicion of ACH.

On a more personal level, the project gave Coy a new outlook on the impact radiology can have in veterinary medicine, and she was listed as the first author on the published case report, an impressive feat for any student.

A UNIQUE PATH

Like many others who go on to pursue a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, Coy wanted to become a veterinarian for as long as she can remember, which some friends and family considered odd, since she wasn’t allowed to have pets growing up.

Coy was raised by her grandparents in the small town of Kaufman, Texas, and her grandmother was terrified of anything with four furry legs. So, when she was accepted into veterinary school, everyone was shocked.

“My grandmother asked, ‘Are you really going to go?’ and I replied, ‘Yeah, I’ve only been talking about it for 20 years!’” Coy said.

Coy attended Rogers State University in Oklahoma for her undergraduate degree in medical molecular biology, which

“It’s very important to me that I am a good clinician before pursuing my specialty. I’ve learned the impact a radiologist has on patient care and treatment plans. While I am excited for the future, I’ll cherish this time working with other specialties and hope to work somewhere that lets me interact with other specialties often.”

provided a distinct, One Health perspective for entering veterinary school.

“We had normal classes like anatomy and physiology, but there was also a strong emphasis on botany and zoology because Rogers State has a strong focus on the environmental science,” she said. “There’s even a nature reserve on campus.

“The animal classes available to me were very different from the animal science program here at Texas A&M because I didn’t have nutrition or any husbandry classes. It was more like wildlife, taxonomy, and native Oklahoma ecology,” she said. “I was actually the only student in my class interested in veterinary medicine.”

These classes gave her a unique perspective that also upheld an interest in wildlife medicine and exotic animals, an area she continued to pursue throughout veterinary school. She even took the time to become a certified postmortem sample collector for Chronic Wasting Disease, a fatal disease that affects members of the deer family.

During that time, she also took advantage of any opportunities that helped her become more comfortable working with large animals.

“No pets growing up also meant no large animal experience,” she said. “I wouldn’t have made it through my equine skills labs without Dr. Glennon Mays taking the time to teach me how to relax around horses.”

It wasn’t until her second year at the VMBS that she would narrow her fascinations and cultivate a true passion.

VISUALIZING HER CAREER

When Coy began her Introduction to Diagnostic Imaging class in the spring of her second year, she was surprised to find a hidden talent for reading radiographs, a skill many veterinary students struggle with at first.

“Diagnostic imaging is really hard, but I actually enjoyed the challenges,” she said.

She decided to pursue this subject further by starting a part-time job in the SATH’s Diagnostic Imaging Service.

“I took all of the radiographs after hours for the Emergency and ICU Services, so I saw a lot of chests, abdomens, and broken bones,” Coy said. “It was a really great job and the

Coy
38 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 HOSPITAL

supervisors were awesome and really accommodating. I got to meet a lot of the faculty I needed to know moving into fourth year, so that was cool, too. It just further solidified that I wanted to be a radiologist.”

Before being able to apply for a radiology residency, Coy needed to complete a rotating internship like the one offered at Texas A&M, which allows new veterinarians to rotate through the SATH’s many services while continuing to get mentorship and guidance from VMBS faculty members.

“It’s very important to me that I am a good clinician before pursuing my specialty,” she said. “I’ve learned the impact a radiologist has on patient care and treatment plans. While I am excited for the future, I’ll cherish this time working with other specialties and hope to work somewhere that lets me interact with other specialties often.”

To no one’s surprise, Coy’s favorite service to rotate through so far has been diagnostic imaging, and from her experiences with radiology, she can pinpoint a couple types of cases as her favorites to image.

“Cancer can do really crazy things and always makes very interesting scans,” she said. “Checking for cancer metastasis on advanced imaging can be unpredictable and it is amazing what these horrible little cells can do. From an imaging perspective, you’re constantly kept on your toes. I hope

one day I can use this fascination with cancer in diagnostic imaging to further the collective efforts of oncologists to diagnose and treat cancer earlier and more effectively.”

Although she does not have exact plans for the rest of her career, Coy is considering staying within academia or using teleradiology to reach a larger clientele.

“I love the discussions that academia provides, and you get a lot more follow up with your cases compared to teleradiology. That’s really important to me and I think it helps with accuracy and learning,” Coy said. “Teleradiology is also very important for helping people and their pets who don’t have access to a full team of specialists. You get to help people from all over the place—even different countries— and that’s what all of this is really about.”

For now, she is enjoying getting to spend as much time at Texas A&M as possible, and she advises current Aggie veterinary students to consider the internship offered here.

“There are many people who will recommend that you leave to get a more diverse experience, but for a variety of reasons that’s not always feasible. Texas A&M has a wonderful program; I’m learning a lot,” she said. “I just want to let others know that there’s more than one way to achieve their goals.” ■

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Bell and Coy
40 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 HOSPITAL
Dr. Kate Barnes

“If you have everything already mapped out, the use of surgical guides decreases the surgical time, which decreases the risk for things like infection. If you’re free handing the procedure (without a guide), there’s also a little bit more of a tendency to be less accurate.”

Dr. Kate Barnes’ pioneering use of 3D printing and motion-tracking technology offers Texas A&M orthopedic patients cutting-edge treatment options, while placing the Small Animal Teaching Hospital at the forefront in exploring these innovations in animal healthcare.

When you walk into a veterinarian’s office, you expect to see photos of furry friends, anatomy charts, and a computer upon which your doctor will make notes about your pet. When you walk into Dr. Kate Barnes’ office, you see all of this with a futuristic touch of 3D printers.

A clinical associate professor at Texas A&M University’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) who specializes in small animal orthopedics, Barnes devotes her research and clinical practice at the VMBS’ Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH) to the cutting edge by defining 3D printing’s role in health care and implementing mobility assessment technology into veterinary medicine as part of the Gait Lab.

VETERINARY MEDICINE IN 3D

Using the 3D printers in Barnes’ office to print biocompatible materials puts the VMBS on the cusp of further developing veterinary medicine. While 3D models are more common in human medicine to create custom-fit replacement parts and medical devices, Barnes said the practice of using 3D printed surgical guides is still in the developmental phases in veterinary medicine.

Of particular interest to Barnes is working to implement 3D models into her operative protocols, both in the planning phase of surgery and during the actual procedure.

“We can do a couple things with the 3D printers,” she said. “One is that we can look at the bones with our 3D software and do some virtual surgical planning; it is a little easier to assess some of the limbs and bones when you're looking at them in 3D. We also can actually print out the models so that we can assess deformities and fractures during the process of planning surgeries, and we can practice those surgeries using the models.”

One of the most common issues Barnes and her team treat in dogs, and occasionally cats, using printed 3D models is angular limb deformities, a condition in which the limb is not straight. Angular limb deformities can be the result of trauma or improper growth and are commonly treated surgically by making cuts in the animal’s bone, which allows the deformed limb to be accurately realigned.

To ensure the cut is accurate and efficient, SATH orthopedic surgeons can print 3D surgical guides, which are tailormade templates developed using special software during the surgical planning stage. Once guides are printed, they

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 41 HOSPITAL RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT

are attached to a bone during surgery, showing the surgeon exactly where and at what angle to cut to correct a deformity. Guides are beneficial because they are customized to the exact size and shape of each individual patient.

“If you have everything already mapped out, the use of surgical guides decreases the surgical time, which decreases the risk for things like infection,” Barnes said. “If you're free handing the procedure (without a guide), there's also a little bit more of a tendency to be less accurate.

“So, guides help with the timing in surgery, help with the accuracy in surgery, and help shorten the time that a dog is under anesthesia,” she said.

One of the current challenges of moving 3D printing more mainstream is the high price faced by veterinarians interested in developing their own models and guides, which includes the cost of the software, printers, and the biocompatible materials that are safe to use on living organisms.

Fortunately, because the rewards outweigh the cost of the equipment, these resources are available at Texas A&M for use with veterinary patients and treatments are offered at a price that is accessible to owners, Barnes said.

MOBILIZING THE FUTURE OF MOBILITY

In addition to 3D printing, Barnes, along with other researchers at the SATH, are helping dogs improve their mobility in the new Gait Lab. Barnes’ work in the Gait Lab

is unique, both furthering research and putting the use of motion-tracking technology into medical practice.

The VMBS is one of the only veterinary schools and the SATH is one of the only veterinary practices with access to this technology, which performs two different kinds of assessments.

The first is called kinematic assessment, which allows VMBS researchers to examine joint and limb movement using small reflective balls. Barnes compares this technology, which they’re currently only using for research purposes, to that used to create CGI effects in movies.

“It's the same type of technology,” she said. “We can put small reflective balls on the dogs as they walk, and we have cameras that pick up their movement so we can analyze it.”

The second type of assessment, called kinetic assessment, uses plates to determine how much weight a dog is bearing on each leg. VMBS clinicians have used this tool both with the SATH’s orthopedic patients and in many research projects.

The results produced in the Gait Lab enable researchers to monitor a dog’s joint motion or even detect subtle lameness. If a dog is favoring one leg due to pain, the new technology allows Barnes and her team to see this in the data points.

The data gathered in the Gait Lab allows Barnes and her fellow researchers to quantitatively monitor a dog’s mobility. Prior to using this technology, most postoperative mobility data was subjective, relying on the researcher and pet

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Barnes removes a newly printed 3D model and its scaffolding (connecting the printed bone to the platform) from the printer’s build platform (black). Once removed from the platform, the bone model is detached from the scaffolding.

owner’s perspective to monitor a dog’s progress.

“During a dog’s recovery, the placebo effect occurs in owners and veterinarians,” Barnes shared. “When we do treatments on animals, people want to believe that they're getting better.

“The Gait Lab is great because it gives us an objective number for how much weight a dog is bearing on their leg, instead of having to rely on just, ‘I think it looks pretty good.’ It helps us track them over time and really be able to tell the impact of what we've done for them,” she said.

Because the kinetic assessment technology used with patients in the Gait Lab is not typically available at private veterinary practices, Texas A&M is one of the only places in the state where patients can experience its benefit; as such, the SATH and the work being conducted in the Gait Lab have the potential to make a large impact on veterinary medicine.

THE FOREFRONT OF VETERINARY MEDICINE

Texas A&M continues to move veterinary research into the future by empowering work like Barnes’ research in 3D

printing and the Gait Lab.

These technologies are still relatively new in terms of veterinary surgical technology, and Barnes is one of few practitioners dedicating her career to their advancement.

“They’re a little bit more common in human medicine. It's something that is becoming more available in veterinary medicine, but it's often more time consuming,” she said. “There are other universities that do it, but it's definitely something that's still up and coming.”

Barnes is also helping ensure that these technologies will grow in the future by passing on her knowledge and experiences to students.

“I do a lecture on 3D printing in angular limb deformities,” she said. “Students will usually look at the models together, look at the guides if we have them, and talk about the deformity and what things we're going to do to correct it.”

Because of Barnes’ work, as well as other innovations in research and patient care being explored at Texas A&M, the SATH will be home to many exciting breakthroughs in the coming years.

As Barnes continues to help pioneer this movement, she looks to the future with excitement.

“It's coming out more and more in veterinary medicine, so hopefully we'll get the opportunities to use it even more,” she said. “If you know any cases, any dogs with crooked legs, send them over. We'd be happy to see them.” ■

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“They’re a little bit more common in human medicine. It’s something that is becoming more available in veterinary medicine, but it’s often more time consuming. There are other universities that do it, but it’s definitely something that’s still up and coming.”
- DR. KATE BARNES
3D printed “bones”

“Robotic-assisted surgery is very futuristic. Veterinarians have seen more and more desire for minimally invasive procedures because it’s what we get as humans. Looking at ways to bring this tool into veterinary medicine is keeping up with the peak of what’s being offered to humans for

Story by RACHEL KNIGHT

The introduction of endoscopy, a surgical procedure that uses cameras and instruments in a small incision rather than the large incisions required for open surgery, is one of the greatest successes in medical history. Before the introduction of endoscopy, large problems required large incisions. Today, a few tiny openings paired with small cameras and rigid surgical tools are all that’s typically required for a surgeon to successfully perform most surgeries in human beings and many surgeries in animals. While endoscopy is widely recognized as the top practice for many surgical procedures, medical and technological

advancements aim to further improve endoscopic surgeries.

Dr. Kelley Thieman, the Nancy & Michael Shaw ‘68 Chair in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Small Animal Clinical Sciences (VSCS) department, is among eight veterinarians who traveled to Nancy, France, in the summer of 2022 to train with the da Vinci Surgical System, robotic-assisted equipment that is on the cusp of endoscopic surgical advancements.

“Robotic-assisted surgery is very futuristic,” Thieman explained. “Veterinarians have seen more and more desire for minimally invasive procedures because it’s what we get

Dr. Kelley Thieman became one of the first veterinary surgeons in the world to explore the art of robotic-assisted surgery by training on the da Vinci Surgical System last summer in France.
surgery.”
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- DR. KELLEY THIEMAN
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Thieman performs a minimally invasive surgery at the Small Animal Teaching Hospital.

as humans. Looking at ways to bring this tool into veterinary medicine is keeping up with the peak of what’s being offered to humans for surgery.

“Working with the da Vinci system was really cool. It’s a novelty in veterinary medicine, but it’s starting to become more common for human procedures,” Thieman said. “We were the first group of veterinarians to train with this equipment, and it was really neat to be a part of that group.

“I think we should work to offer surgical options in veterinary medicine that are offered in human medicine,” she said. “This training was a first step in doing that with roboticassisted surgeries.”

Thieman, who practices soft tissue and minimally invasive surgery at the VMBS’ Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH), routinely performs laparoscopic surgeries, an endoscopic surgery performed in the abdomen.

While endoscopy ushered in a new era of minimally invasive surgery, requiring only a few small cuts to complete major surgeries, it also brought new limitations to a surgeon’s movement in the affected body cavity because traditional endoscopic equipment is limited to rigid movements.

Robotic-assisted endoscopic surgeries add the benefit of circular, wrist-like movements.

“Laparoscopically, stitching things is really difficult because you don’t have any wrist motion and that’s how we suture,” Thieman shared. “But with the robot, it is a lot easier because all of a sudden, you have the wrist motion. So it’s almost like tiny hands in there instead of the rigid instruments because the robot can move like a wrist would move.”

Minimally invasive procedures also have a smaller chance of surgical site infection than open procedures, Thieman pointed out.

In addition to the improved range of motion, the da Vinci system offers cameras with increased visibility, and the equipment filters out hand tremors to help the surgeon move each instrument with smoother precision.

“Your fingers get velcroed into place on two different hand controls. Then you begin and you’re in control of the instruments. What you see, of course, is the instrument in the patient, not your hands on the controls,” Thieman said. “It can pick up all of your little motions. There’s also a foot pedal that allows you to change between instruments and move your camera around.”

Robotic surgical systems like the da Vinci also improve visibility into the body cavity with high-resolution, 3D displays.

“The visualization is really good because you’re really close—it’s magnified and illuminated,” Thieman shared. “Visually, it’s almost like you’re standing inside the cavity.”

Thieman’s experience training with the da Vinci system concluded in just five days, but the experience working with the robotic-assisted surgical technology excited her about the

Thieman trains at the da Vinci console with her hands velcroed into place. In robotic-assisted surgery, the patient is a few feet away from the surgeon. Robotic-assisted surgery improves visibility for surgeons by providing clear, 3D images of the patient.
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Thieman and her colleagues were featured in a French newspaper while training with the da Vinci system.

future of veterinary medicine and the role the VMBS plays in developing that future.

She explained that while robotic-assisted surgical technology is more developed for humans, it’s still a novelty in the field of veterinary medicine.

The new, next-generation small animal teaching and research hospital currently being planned at the VMBS provides an opportunity to purchase robotic-assisted surgical equipment. Doing so would place Texas A&M faculty, researchers, clinicians, and students on the cusp of defining robotic-assisted surgical approaches in veterinary medicine.

It would also introduce new potential for collaboration with Texas A&M Health and other professional and academic units on campus.

“In human medicine, there’s a binder on the front of the machine that shows how to set up the equipment for human

surgery,” Thieman said. “Veterinarians don’t have that. Our patients are a different shape than human patients. So finding those locations would be step one in introducing robotic-assisted surgeries to veterinary medicine.”

Writing the book on how to use systems like the da Vinci begins with access to the technology. The initial purchase of a da Vinci surgical system costs $2 million, while a training version of the system starts at about $200,000, Thieman said.

Opportunities to fund cutting-edge veterinary equipment like the da Vinci surgical system abound in the nextgeneration small animal teaching and research hospital fundraising campaign. Those interested in contributing to the cusp of veterinary surgical advancement can learn more about giving opportunities at tx.ag/NextGenVetHospital

“I have an interest in minimally invasive surgery, and robotic-assisted surgery really pairs well with that because it enhances laparoscopic- or thoracoscopic (surgery in the chest)-type surgery where you’re doing surgery through keyhole incisions,” Thieman said. “To be able to offer our clients and our patients what is being offered to human patients is important, and robotic-assisted surgery is the next step in that.” ■

“To be able to offer our clients and our patients what is being offered to human patients is important, and roboticassisted surgery is the next step in that.”
- DR. KELLEY
THIEMAN
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 47 HOSPITAL RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
In traditional laparoscopic procedures, surgeons are limited to rigid movements because of the surgical tools (seen above); robotic-assisted surgeries add the benefit of circular, wrist-like movements.

Scientists from across Texas A&M—and beyond—are working to mitigate the consequences of disasters while developing practical solutions to real-life problems as part of the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center’s second multi-million-dollar funding cycle.

When Hurricane Florence hit the North Carolina coast in the fall of 2018, more than 30 inches of rain fell in some areas of the state. The resulting flooding was dangerous enough,

but it unleashed a whole new threat when it caused dams to burst, letting water from storage ponds filled with coal ash enter nearby rivers.

Coal ash contains contaminants like mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, all of which can cause significant short-term and long-term effects on exposed populations.

In situations like this, being able to detect the presence of those contaminants is an important first step in mitigating their effects on people, as well as the environment.

That’s where groups like the Texas A&M University Superfund Research Center come into play.

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After Florence, a number of Superfund trainees spent several days conducting water, air, and soil sampling in North Carolina and then returned several times over a period of one year to conduct more sampling.

Closer to home, Superfund researchers have done similar work after Hurricane Harvey and the Intercontinental Terminals Company (ITC) Deer Park Fire in Houston.

These researchers come from multiple schools and colleges at Texas A&M, as well as other universities. Their projects span many disciplines—from toxicology and engineering to medicine and public health—but have the common goal of

“We’re trying to push the research, but we also want to be useful in the here and now. In most of academia, the metric is how many papers you publish, but here, because there’s a strong community engagement component, we understand how research can be translated into something that can actually make meaningful impacts for vulnerable people today.”

protecting people from hazardous chemicals released during and after natural and human-made disasters.

“We’re trying to fill a critical gap in understanding what types of hazardous chemicals get released after disasters,” said Dr. Weihsueh Chiu, a professor at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) and deputy director of the Superfund Center. “We’re also working to develop new tools and approaches that will hopefully eventually be adopted as part of a disaster response toolkit.”

As the center begins its second five-year, nearly $10-million funding period, its leaders are setting big goals in their work to develop practical tools to keep Texas’ and the United States’ communities safe.

“By establishing our research capacity and group of investigators, we’re putting Texas A&M on the map for national efforts in disaster research response,” said Dr. Ivan Rusyn, Superfund Center director and a University Professor of toxicology.

“Our big goal as a center for this next five-year cycle is to convert the data we collected into actionable knowledge that our communities and county, state, and federal agencies can use; a lot of our plans for the near future are focused on what the next challenge is and how we can take things from research to practice,” he said.

REACHING PEOPLE, CHANGING LIVES

The Superfund Center, housed within the VMBS, is one of 25 university-based, multi-project centers across the U.S. funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Superfund Research Program, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

While many of these centers focus on a specific class of chemicals, the Texas A&M center is unique in that it chooses to take a broader approach to disaster response.

“We’re one of the few, or maybe the only one, that’s covering a wide range of different chemicals and focusing on the effects of the mixture as a whole, rather than just determining its individual components,” Chiu said.

Following its launch in 2017, the Texas A&M Superfund Center used five major projects and several support cores

- DR. WEIHSUEH CHIU
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Dr. Weihsueh Chiu, Lusie Ford, and Dr. Ivan Rusyn

to study various aspects of chemical contamination after disaster events.

Chiu said the center proved the feasibility and practicality of looking at the overall effects and toxicity of a sample in its first five years, which has the potential to help communities and researchers alike make quick decisions and to assist in prioritizing clean up after a disastrous event.

Communicating with the public also is a key part of disaster response; for the Superfund researchers, this includes helping people know about potential dangers from chemicals released during disasters.

While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many research institutions, the Superfund Center used the pandemic as an opportunity to strengthen its Community Engagement Core, one of six support cores within the center.

To help build stronger relationships with the communities it serves, the center hosted outreach events on emergency preparedness; developed new reporting tools for environmental and health data; trained staff and students in outbreak response; and played a role in increasing local COVID-19 vaccination rates.

“We leveraged our partnerships to hold several vaccination drives and community meetings explaining vaccinations,” Rusyn said. “We wanted to show that we’re partners to the community in more than just coming and taking samples or administering questionnaires.”

DEVELOPING NEW METHODS & TOOLS

During its next five-year cycle, the center will take a broader approach to disaster response and focus on providing fast, tangible results to first responders and community members.

“We are expanding our ability to detect different types of substances,” Chiu said. “We’re also taking advantage of some newly available technologies to address questions that are very difficult to answer in a rapid context. After a disaster, you can’t wait five or 10 years for results; we want to provide tools that are timelier than that.”

To accomplish these goals, the Superfund Center has launched three new projects, in addition to two that have carried over from the first funding cycle.

The first of these projects uses non-targeted analysis to provide rapid answers to what dangerous chemicals could be present in environmental samples.

“There are 80,000 different chemicals being used in commerce and the scientific community has only tested maybe 1,000 of them. We have this gigantic range of chemicals and there’s no way we can do it the old-fashioned way because it would take us centuries to finish testing them all,” Chiu said. “In a disaster, we want to have a rapid answer, even if it’s not definitive. You don’t want to necessarily wait for the definitive answer in that situation.”

In the center’s first cycle, the environmental samples typically consisted of sediment gathered from Galveston Bay. In the center’s second cycle, a new project will help expand the types of samples collected by using the Mobile Responding to Air Pollution in Disasters (mRAPiD) air quality testing van to monitor air pollution in real time.

This project will also study the relationship between air pollutants released by disasters and the risk of childhood asthma and other respiratory conditions.

“The van enables us to respond to a non-disaster scenario in which a community is concerned about air pollution but

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Toriq Mustapha, Mariana Saitas, Dr. Natalie Johnson in the mRAPiD van

also have the capability to go do some real-time sampling after a disaster,” Chiu said.

Finally, the third new project will study a unique subset of the population impacted by disasters—pregnant women and their unborn children—in partnership with the Texas A&M College of Engineering. Using tissue chips to replicate cells in the placenta, researchers can get more rapid results by studying the effects of chemicals without having to wait until a disaster occurs.

In addition to these projects, the center is launching two new cores to support disaster response and to enhance mapping capabilities that help determine how specific disasters will impact regions and industrial facilities.

TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION OF RESEARCHERS

One of the unique aspects of the Superfund Center is its ability to provide trainees with practical, real-world experience, in addition to lab work.

“One of the big advantages of the Superfund program is that instead of requiring our students to work solely in a lab setting, they have some impact on communities,” Chiu said. “They’re actually going out and taking real samples from real people’s yards, talking with real people who are living in places that are polluted or were affected by disasters, and seeing that connection between their research and the ultimate goal of improving people’s lives.”

Superfund trainees have gone on to diverse careers in multiple fields, working at government institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, other

universities across the country, and private companies that conduct post-disaster sampling.

“The center’s collaborative opportunities and interdisciplinary science create valuable opportunities for students,” Rusyn said. “We’ve really been able to leverage our partnerships to help them get their degrees, get publications, and, most importantly, get jobs.

“The center is a science-to-practice type of project, while 90% of NIH-funded projects are just fundamental research. That’s what allows us to draw a lot of students, because they are more interested in the type of work where they can actually see the value and application,” he said. “We are very proud that there’s not only a large number of trainees but also that we have a very diverse group of individuals—diverse in terms of their affiliation, race, ethnicity, income level, and other metrics.”

PROVIDING TANGIBLE RESULTS

Across all of the center’s projects and support cores, one thing remains consistent—researchers are developing practical solutions to real-life problems; their projects directly and immediately benefit people.

“We’re trying to push the research, but we also want to be useful in the here and now,” Chiu said. “In most of academia, the metric is how many papers you publish, but here, because there’s a strong community engagement component, we understand how research can be translated into something that can actually make meaningful impacts for vulnerable people today.” ■

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Dr. Courtney Sakolish conducts experiments using tissue chips.

UTI MODELS

HEART HEALTH

LARGE ANIMAL MODELS

CHAGAS

Faculty from the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences have partnered with faculty from UT Southwestern to advance animal and human health in research funded by Clinical and Translational Science Award grants.

Story by DORIAN MARTIN & Sidebar by RACHEL KNIGHT
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*Infographic created by Gabrielle Shreve, VMBS Communications

With the goal of supporting One Health, Texas A&M University’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) has joined forces with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to foster translational research as part of a prestigious program funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The two institutions are working together on UT Southwestern’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), a prestigious five-year grant given to medical schools by the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). The program has made approximately 60 awards to some of the top-ranking medical schools across the United States. UT Southwestern was selected to participate in Spring 2021.

Participating in this respected grant program is an honor the VMBS is incredibly proud of, according to VMBS associate dean for Research & Graduate Studies Mike Criscitiello.

“The CTSA is consistent with our goals of increasing impactful translational research, better leveraging our patient populations and their spontaneous disease for clinical trials, as well as the growth of our research portfolio through strategic partners in the region,” Criscitiello said.

“As one of the world’s foremost research institutions, UT Southwestern has fostered bold, multidisciplinary research that we are excited to pair with our expertise in veterinary medicine,” he said.

UT Southwestern leaders also are excited about this collaboration, which is a natural extension of the joint work between both institutions’ faculties.

“Texas A&M is a natural partner for the UT Southwestern CTSA program based on many ongoing scientific collaborations between investigators at both institutions,” said Dr. Robert Toto, UT Southwestern Medical Center’s principal investigator and CTSA program director. “The selection of Texas A&M to participate in the UT Southwestern CTSA enriches the hub by bringing scientific expertise not only in basic mechanisms of disease processes common to animals and humans but also for clinical trial design that can translate from animals to humans.”

EXPANDING COLLABORATION

The NIH initially created the CTSA program to specifically focus on supporting medical school research. However, the similarities between diseases in human beings and animals provided a natural extension for veterinary school participants in this program.

“We have very unique resources that can contribute to human health. We see pets that have diseases that are similar to people,” said Dr. Jon Levine, professor, Helen McWhorter Chair, and head of VMBS’ Small Animal Clinical Sciences Department. “The belief was that this would be a

SIX VMBS FACULTY–FOUR CTSA FUNDED RESEARCH PROJECTS

The intersection of animal and human health offers ample opportunities to progress healthcare outcomes for animals and human beings alike, as medical advances for all species are made through collaborative research efforts at this junction.

Six faculty members from the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) received funding in the form of Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) grants to advance medical research for both animals and human beings.

Learn more about next-generation healthcare and medical advances in these brief explorations of CTSAfunded collaborations.

CURING THE KISS OF DEATH

Kissing bugs, blood-feeding insects that typically attack the face with a painful bite, pose a health threat to both human beings and animals. When a kissing bug is infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease, the insect’s “kiss” can become deadly if the bug defecates while biting their victim. Unlike tickand mosquito-borne pathogens, kissing bug-borne pathogens spread through their feces.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates that 8 million people in Mexico, Central America, and South America are infected with Chagas disease, with an additional 300,000 people infected in the U.S. Dog kennels in southern states attract kissing bugs with heat and smells, putting dogs at greater risk of contracting Chagas in these areas.

Dr. Ashley Saunders, a VMBS professor and assistant head of the Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, and Dr. Sarah Hamer, a VMBS professor and Richard Schubot Endowed Chair and director, have teamed up with Dr. Rick Tarleton, a professor in the University of Georgia’s Department of Cellular Biology, to advance treatment options for dogs fighting Chagas disease.

“Our approach is to use an existing antiparasitic drug, which is already approved for use in treating humans infected with the Chagas disease parasite, in

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tremendous win-win.”

CTSA’s initial expansion to include veterinary schools was championed by Dr. Deborah Kochevar ’81, who earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree from Texas A&M and her doctorate in biomedical sciences from UT Southwestern. As dean of the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Kochevar worked with NCATS to form the CTSA One Health Alliance (COHA), which created a coalition of veterinary schools participating in CTSAs.

Establishing COHA opened the door for deeper collaborations through the forming of relationships and leveraging the expertise of physicians, research scientists, veterinarians, and other professionals who are studying diseases that are shared by human beings and animals. The alliance is focused on creating animal disease models, clinical trials, clinician/scientist education and training resources, biobanking resources, communication and collaboration, and clinical research jobs and fellowships.

DEEPENING RELATIONSHIPS AND RESEARCH

The CTSA partnerships between medical schools and veterinary schools have provided myriad benefits.

“Investigators from both institutions have the opportunity to collaboratively solve problems encountered in translational research processes, including identifying new drug targets for a variety of diseases,” Toto said. “The partnership also can create new research questions that could only be answered by interdisciplinary research teams. Formation of such teams can help investigators successfully compete for extramural funding to pursue answers to important questions in various animal/human diseases.”

Examples of research areas with translational implications include cancer, Chagas disease, bladder dysfunction, orthopedic diseases, and metabolic and neurologic disorders and diseases.

“Veterinary schools allow for researchers to leverage naturally occurring disease models in non-rodent animals alongside human clinical research,” said Dr. Charles Long, a professor in VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology. “This provides a natural step in translational research, bridging rodent and human research.”

The CTSA program also provides access to researchers who work in different types of labs.

“The CTSA program offers an opportunity to establish new working relationships with people outside of our institution,” Long said. “Certainly, the investigators at UT Southwestern, due to their location, have no access to the resources that the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences has, especially in terms of large animal models. In that context, the UT Southwestern and the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ collaboration is almost obvious.”

new ways to combat the biology of the Chagas parasite that has made it so hard to treat,” Hamer explained.

The project is an ideal CTSA fund recipient, as it offers high impact opportunities for trainees in graduate school, veterinary school, and veterinary residency programs to work in endemic kennel environments and collect samples for analysis in the laboratory. This work also is important in mitigating the spread of a disease that is the source of an ongoing public health problem.

“Research on a neglected disease is a long and arduous process,” Saunders said. “With persistence, we continue to learn about Trypanosoma cruzi epidemiology and clinical Chagas disease. This kind of work relies on grant funding to be successful, and we are very appreciative of the CTSA support.”

PREPARING FOR A POST-ANTIBIOTIC WORLD

The World Health Organization recognizes antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest threats to global health, food security, and development, which is why Dr. Sarguru Subash is interested in reducing or eliminating the need to prescribe antibiotics to treat urinary tract infections (UTI) in both animals and human beings.

Because UTIs are one of the leading infections treated with antibiotics, Subash, a tenured associate professor in the VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, is working collaboratively with Dr. Phillippe Zimmern, the Felecia and John Cain Distinguished Chair in Women’s Health at UT Southwestern, to develop a model for testing next-generation treatments for UTIs.

Subash explained that the treatments their research will review are host-directed, a strategy that aims to enhance the body’s natural, protective response to infection.

“If we have a way to pharmacologically boost what the host is naturally doing to infections, we think that would be a novel way to combat urinary tract infection,” Subash shared. “So we are aiming to look at the role of copper at the host pathogen interface. Our immune system harnesses the toxic potential of copper by selectively exposing bacterial pathogens to copper.”

Read more about Subash’s next-generation UTI treatment on page 14

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“Such collaborations are vital to future research that could lead to improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. These collaborations also can identify, through basic and clinical investigation, methods for accelerating the discovery of new pharmacologic therapies for human diseases.”

UT Southwestern leaders share a similar perspective.

“For UT Southwestern, access to the veterinary clinical research and biorepositories (facilities that collect and store biological samples for laboratory research) at Texas A&M’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences provides needed resources for translational research,” said Dr. Stacy Pritt, associate vice president for research support and regulatory management at UT Southwestern Medical Center. “Our faculty gain the ability to work with A&M’s veterinarians and other researchers to approach research problems holistically and with more diverse animals.”

EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES

Work on the CTSA program began with a pilot grant program, which made its first round of funding awards in fall of 2021.

“These awards really helped those principal investigators elevate their research program,” Levine said. “Moving into the next phase, we are requiring that each project that receives an award have representation at each institution, and there is matching money that comes from the (VMBS) Dean’s Office to enlarge the size of these awards.”

Additionally, a virtual seminar series is now held quarterly; these well-attended presentations feature researchers from both schools whose work focuses on the same subject area.

“We might have a glia scientist from UT Southwestern present alongside a veterinarian scientist here who works in a parallel cancer model,” Levine said. “That’s a good opportunity to share information.”

In the winter of 2023, the partnering institutions hope to have a mini conference.

“We really want to see if we can develop broader connections,” Levine said. “Developing those connections will set us up for the next pilot grant cycle. Hopefully, we can get even stronger applications.”

Discussions also are ongoing about opportunities for students to collaborate with faculty from the partnering institution.

“UT Southwestern students interested in biomedical research may benefit in the future through scientific collaborations and communications with both faculty and students at Texas A&M,” Toto said. “Vice versa, Texas A&M

ADVANCING SCIENTIFIC MODELS

Science is an eternal quest—one scientific discovery can lead to thousands of advancements in a vast array of fields.

While some advancements are small, others change our understanding and scientific practices forever.

Dr. Charles Long, a professor in the VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology, and Dr. Jun Wu, an assistant professor and the Virginia Murchison Linthicum Scholar in Medical Research in the UT Southwestern Department of Molecular Biology, have teamed up to develop a large animal model that could change basic biomedical research and animal and human health.

The Food & Drug Administration requires drugs to be tested for safety and efficacy in both laboratories and animals before human drug trials can begin. While some illnesses and disease can be tested in small animal models, such as mice, more complicated conditions often require more complicated large animal testing.

Long and Wu are using CTSA funding to develop technology that would increase efficiency in developing large animal models and reduce the number of animals needed for testing.

“This blastoid technology would allow us to do exactly the same things that we do in the mouse in a large animal, sheep, goat, cattle, and pigs, effectively at the same efficiency level,” Long said. “It would dramatically improve our efficiency and reduce the number of animals needed. It’s a huge win for humans and for animals.”

If the research is successful, Long and Wu will have built the scientific foundation needed to advance medical care for cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal diseases, cancer, and other deadly health conditions.

EXERCISING HEART HEALTH

Someone dies from cardiovascular disease every 34 seconds in the United States, making heart disease the leading cause of death in America, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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students may benefit from such potential collaborations.”

VMBS administrators are finalizing plans to give interested first-and second-year veterinary students the chance to work in UT Southwestern’s research lab through the Veterinary Medical Scientist Research Training Program (VMSRTP), which is coordinated by Long and Dr. Dana Gaddy.

As part of this 13-week experience, Aggies would move to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for the summer to work with a mentor from the UT Southwestern faculty. As part of the VMSRTP requirements, students complete a poster, oral presentation, and manuscript that can be submitted for publication based on their research experience.

Both institutions believe these types of efforts will lead to major breakthroughs in the future.

“Such collaborations are vital to future research that could lead to improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease,” Toto said. “These collaborations also can identify, through basic and clinical investigation, methods for accelerating the discovery of new pharmacologic therapies for human diseases.”

Texas A&M’s representatives agreed, noting the goal of improving One Health.

“Translating basic science advances into clinical intervention can move faster when research teams are nimble in model species,” Criscitiello explained. “This amplifies the scope of impact for all animal health—whether companion animal, wildlife, production animal, or human.” ■

While statistics about heart disease in America are abundant, information about the fat tissue and fat cells around blood vessels that supply oxygen and nourishment to the heart muscle, known as coronary arteries, and the role secretions from the surrounding fat tissue and cells may or may not play in influencing coronary vessels is lacking.

Dr. Annie Newell-Fugate, an assistant professor in the VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology (VTPP), and Dr. Cristine Heaps, a VMBS VTPP professor, are working to expand our understanding of the microenvironment of the coronary vessels and surrounding adipose tissue. Their research is the first of its kind.

Newell-Fugate explained that exercise promotes secretion of molecules from fat tissue that play functional roles in metabolism and may also stimulate the secretion of hormones from this tissue that could control coronary vessel dilation.

She and Heaps will monitor sedentary and exercised pigs to better understand the fat tissue-coronary vessel microenvironment and the role exercise plays in heart health.

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Dr. Ashley Saunders Dr. Sarah Hamer Dr. Saguru Subash Dr. Charles Long Drs. Cristine Heaps and Annie Newell-Fugate

“What really keeps me going about poultry, in particular, is that the world’s population is growing, and the need for a cheap source of protein grows with it.”

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 57 STUDENTS
Fourth-year veterinary student Jason Sousa
- JASON SOUSA
Story by ASHLEY VARGO After graduation, veterinary student Jason Sousa plans to help fill a critical shortage in the United States by becoming a poultry veterinarian dedicated to keeping our nation’s food supply safe.

According to Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) fourth-year veterinary student Jason Sousa, any part of the veterinary curriculum can be about poultry if you try hard enough.

Growing up around cats and dogs, Sousa knew he was going to be a veterinarian by the time he was 6 years old, but it wasn’t until he got to high school that he developed a passion for poultry.

“I hadn’t had any exposure to poultry before high school,” Sousa said. “Then I raised chickens and turkeys for FFA and did a little bit of everything with poultry.”

In 2015, he began his undergraduate degree in poultry science at Mississippi State University—and loved every minute of it.

“I realized that I could be a poultry veterinarian and that that was a viable career in an area where there was a need,” Sousa said. “I came into veterinary school knowing that that’s what I wanted to do.”

For Sousa, there are many aspects of the field that make poultry medicine appealing, but the interest begins simply with the birds.

“Birds are just very cool,” he said. “Their anatomy, their physiology—it’s all so unique and well-adapted to serve birds’ purposes, whatever they may be.”

“Poultry production is growing in and of itself, and more chicken houses are being built every year. So, the need for poultry veterinarians is definitely getting higher and higher because, on top of the growing industry, older veterinarians are retiring and leaving the industry.”

After starting his veterinary school journey, though, Sousa discovered just how scarce poultry veterinarians are. Because he estimates that there are only about 300 poultry veterinarians in the United States, whereas small animal veterinary students can find a variety of mentors available for each challenge they face, Sousa had to be a bit more creative with finding mentorships and experiences.

In his sophomore year, Sousa was assigned two mentors— Dr. Brandon Dominguez, at Texas A&M, and Dr. Yuko Sato, a poultry veterinarian at Iowa State University.

“Dr. Sato and I meet on Zoom every semester; she offered to let me come up and spend time with her lab and some poultry vets up in Iowa,” Sousa said. “I see her at all of the conferences I go to. I was so impressed that A&M was willing to go the extra step to help me make those connections.”

To further those connections and find additional field experience, Sousa is always prepared to jump at a chance to have a new poultry-centered adventure—no matter where it takes him.

“I’ve bounced around every corner of the country because the poultry industry is so geographically distinct,” Sousa said. “The South predominantly has broilers; in the North, there are a lot of layers; the West has a little bit of everything; and the Midwest has a lot of turkeys. You have to jump around to get good experiences.”

Sousa’s career plans involve completing a residency in production poultry medicine and becoming board certified with the American College of Poultry Veterinarians. Before then, he’ll be heading to North Carolina State University for a poultry health management rotation and then to California, Alabama, and Nebraska for more learning opportunities.

Because he has found an unexpected range of possibilities as a poultry veterinarian—from the production and clinical medicine side, in which veterinarians go out into the field daily to evaluate birds on farms, to the diagnostic and research side—his long-term goals remain up in the air, but he knows that no matter where he ends up in the industry, the work will be fascinating.

“I don’t know what that’s going to look like quite yet because I like it all a little too much to say I’m only going to work with one particular type of poultry for the rest of my life,” Sousa said.

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One of his favorite aspects of the poultry industry is that it is vertically integrated, which means that many of the companies involved own everything from the hatchery and feed mill to the birds themselves, as well as the processing plants. As such, many of the consultations Sousa has participated in require plenty of detective work and investigative prowess.

“As a poultry veterinarian, if a plant says, ‘We’re noticing this problem; what’s going on?’ I might end up tracing that all the way back to the feed mill where they miscalculated the calcium and phosphorus inclusion,” he said. “I like that poultry vets get to have their toe in every single area of production and get to investigate what’s happening.”

In addition to the tracebacks, Sousa has found that the work requires a lot of forward thinking at an industrial scale.

“With clinical medicine, you might be looking at 100,000 birds or more at any given time,” he said. “You have to say, ‘How do I treat them?’ but, also, ‘How do I prevent this from happening the next time we place a flock in this house?’ You get to develop biosecurity and vaccine protocols.”

Along with keeping the birds healthy, part of a poultry veterinarian’s job is to keep in mind the safety of the people whom the animals will feed. With poultry constituting such a

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Sousa

large part of the American diet, the field has become deeply intertwined with both public health and epidemiology.

In the future, Sousa believes that the path toward increased food safety will involve more collaboration between poultry scientists, researchers, and veterinarians.

“Food safety is absolutely something that’s coming under more and more scrutiny,” Sousa said. “It’s important that there’s collaboration. I think it’s at the forefront of everybody’s minds because there’s still a lot that we don’t know about what we, as veterinarians, can do, especially in the midst of growing pressure to use fewer antibiotics.”

Additionally, the field of poultry medicine must grow in tandem with the ever-expanding human population.

“Poultry production is growing in and of itself, and more chicken houses are being built every year,” Sousa said. “So, the need for poultry veterinarians is definitely getting higher and higher because, on top of the growing industry, older veterinarians are retiring and leaving the industry. I’d say, at this time, there’s probably more of a need for poultry vets than there is a supply of poultry vets.”

Nonetheless, Sousa is happy to be a part of the tight-knit field, and no matter how the specifics of his career shake out, he takes comfort in knowing that he’ll be part of the force for creating positive changes in the availability and safety of human food.

“What really keeps me going about poultry, in particular, is that the world’s population is growing, and the need for a cheap source of protein grows with it,” Sousa said. “Unfortunately, beef and swine take a long time to grow. They’re more expensive and they’re not as accessible to people who need food at a low cost. I think poultry is what’s going to be feeding people in the future.

“What keeps me going, even on bad days, is knowing that what I’m doing is ultimately helping to make sure more birds stay alive and can be a source of food for somebody.” ■

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Sousa during an externship at a broiler breeder house in Clinton, North Carolina

By discovering an issue that was new to the medical community, an Aggie graduate student has made a breakthrough in Down Syndrome research that may one day lead to better medical care for people with the condition.

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 61 STUDENTS
Story by AUBREY BLOOM Dr. Larry Suva and Kirby Sherman

Kirby Sherman, a Ph.D. candidate in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Department of Veterinary Physiology & Pharmacology (VTPP), was always interested in science and medicine, so much so that when she was only 10, she talked her dad into letting her watch shows like “ER.”

“It was probably not the best show for a 10-year-old kid, but I loved it,” she said.

When she was 11, that interest got a lot more personal.

“I was in an accident and essentially broke my face,” she said. “I had an orbital floor blowout fracture, broke my sinus, and had a whole bunch of external trauma. I had to have several surgeries between the ages of 11-15; that spurred my interest in regeneration, biomaterials, and the scaffolding they can use to rebuild bones. I was so intrigued by it that I would read all of my medical records.”

That interest remained when Sherman was considering her future career.

Although she came from a family of petroleum engineers, including both parents and two siblings (Aggie classes of ’88, ’89, ’13, and ’17), she went in a different direction, receiving her undergraduate degree in animal science and her master’s degree in biomedical sciences.

In her graduate bone diseases class, she found her calling.

“I thought learning about bone diseases was the coolest thing ever,” she said. “It correlated to my own injuries and my interest in how to induce healing in people who have traumatic injuries.”

Soon, she found herself volunteering in VMBS Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences (VIBS) professor Dr. Dana Gaddy’s lab for a year before jumping at the chance to work in the laboratory of VTPP department head Dr. Larry Suva, whose research interests include bones and Down syndrome (DS).

“Scientists have been studying fractures for a long time in a lot of different species, and while healing might be slow in some cases, the vast majority of fractures do eventually heal in all species. In our research, the fractures didn’t heal at all.”

The pioneering research that has resulted from their work together has led to the discovery that based on animal models, people with DS may not heal from fractures, with Sherman publishing a manuscript earlier this year in the journal BONE highlighting their findings.

Previous research has indicated that bone density in the DS population is lower, which increases the likelihood of bone fracture, and while scientists believed that the healing response to fractures would be different in people with DS, Sherman’s discovery seems to confirm for the first time that fractures in people with DS do not heal at all.

“Scientists have been studying fractures for a long time in a lot of different species, and while healing might be slow in some cases, the vast majority of fractures do eventually heal in all species,” Sherman said. “In our research, the fractures didn’t heal at all.”

“A fracture not healing properly, what we call a non-union, can kill people, whether they have Down syndrome or not,” Suva said. “If this population really has a higher rate of nonunion than the average population, that’s a big deal.”

PIONEERING WORK

In Suva’s lab, Sherman was tasked with the DS study in part because of her interest in fracture healing, but also in part due to timing.

Sherman was only a couple of months into her Ph.D. program when rare mice that share characteristics of humans with DS arrived in Suva’s lab. Interested in fracture healing and early in her preliminary work for her Ph.D., the timing was right for Sherman to study these mice.

What she learned was not only surprising to herself but to everyone else in the lab.

“When bones heal, a soft callous made of cartilage, a sort of glue, will form on the bones and then connect the fractured ends back together; we call this bridging,” said Sherman. “In Down syndrome models, the glue starts to form, but it’s never able to bridge.

“We always thought the healing response would be different, but for them to not have any healing at all was incredible,” she said. “And it’s alarming, because if this is happening in people, it’s a serious health concern.”

According to Suva and Sherman, there are two primary

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Suva and Sherman

During 93 days post-fracture (DPF), wild-type (WT) mice had normal fracture healing, while both male and female mice with Down syndrome (DS) began mineralization but did not successfully bridge.

reasons why this issue has gone undetected until now.

The first is that people with DS are living much longer than they used to. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1960, people with DS had a life expectancy of just 10 years. By 2007, as more was learned and applied to offset the endocrine impacts of Down syndrome, the life expectancy was 47 years.

“We’ve known that bone mass is lower in this population, and the increased life expectancy has allowed researchers to better understand the long-term implications of their lower bone mass,” Suva said. “Today, there are people with DS in their 20s and 30s who have bone mass and bone architecture consistent with someone in their 60s. They’re active members of the community and they’re playing sports. Obviously, that’s great, but if they’re at increased risk of bone fractures that won’t heal, it’s also a concern.”

The second reason this issue stayed undetected for so long is that specialized care for people with DS has not been a consideration by doctors and hospitals, which means that there wasn’t data readily available to identify this issue.

“You’d think we’d have this information from a database, but there’s not a medical code that identifies people with Down syndrome,” Suva said. “Down syndrome support groups and family members don’t want their loved ones or themselves singled out for having a disease. After all, they’re normal people.

“As a result, even with all of the fractures that get recorded

every day in the United States, there’s no way to identify which of those patients have Down syndrome and, therefore, no organized way to track their healing,” he said.

The next steps in the research will involve trying to find that data and focusing on the actual mechanisms preventing the healing of the fractures.

Since nobody knew this was a problem, nobody was looking for solutions.

When Sherman presented this research at a DS meeting in California earlier this year, the attendees were amazed at their findings.

“People were speechless,” she said. “It seems extreme to say that the fractures were not healed at all, but that’s the reality. A lot of why they’re speechless is people just don’t know this is a problem. But at least now that we know, we also know that it’s something we need to monitor and research more.”

The team plans to continue studying this topic and has submitted funding requests with hopes to do just that.

“We want to keep running with this,” Sherman said. “We want to learn, mechanically, why these fractures are not healing.

“The end goal would be to therapeutically treat it, to try and induce healing,” she said. “That’s the ultimate goal—being able to induce normal healing without having to surgically fix these fractures.” ■

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 63 STUDENTS RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
*Figure from Sherman’s publication in Bone. Read more at tx.ag/ShermanBone.

“AI is going to be the future of a lot of things; people use it more often than they think they do. I definitely think it is going to be a big thing in veterinary medicine, because it’s going to allow us to provide services to clients at a cheaper cost and a lot faster. With the high caseloads veterinarians have, it’s going to be a really good tool for the future.”

After a veterinary student and an engineering student teamed up for an invention competition, they decided to turn their prototype into a real, AI-based program to help veterinarians diagnose canine heart disease.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a phrase on the tip of many tech experts’ tongues, and with the help of Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) fourthyear veterinary student Tabitha Baibos and her fiancé Tomas Reyes ’20 ‘22, AI is taking on new life in veterinary medicine.

After creating an award-winning prototype during a student competition, Baibos and Reyes are further developing their invention in an effort to improve canine heart disease treatment. Their AI-based algorithm has become the center of the pair’s start-up company and is now being fine-tuned with the help of VMBS professor and Eugene Ch’en Chair in Cardiology Dr. Sonya Gordon and other veterinarians.

INCEPTION OF RADANALYZER

A desire to help animals is nothing new for Baibos; the pet parent of four cats and one dog has dreamed of becoming a veterinarian since she was young.

“I was introduced to the idea of becoming a veterinarian through a book series I read as a kid,” Baibos said. “I love to read, and there is a series called ‘Animal Ark’ about a little girl whose parents owned a veterinary clinic. I was in love with the series and read all of those books; that’s really what made me want to become a vet.”

Since becoming an Aggie veterinary student, Baibos has continually pursued opportunities beyond the school’s curriculum, including raising puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, as a VMBS student ambassador, and more.

This year, Baibos put her knowledge of veterinary medicine to the test through Aggies Invent, a 48-hour design

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competition in which students develop a prototype in response to a given challenge.

For the January 2022 VetMed competition, held in conjunction with the Texas A&M College of Engineering, the challenge was posed simply—create an innovative solution for a veterinary care problem.

Baibos was the sole veterinary student among a team of engineering students, which included her fiancé. Their team decided to tackle the prompt by developing a way to more easily calculate vertebral heart score in dogs—an area of much-needed development.

“When dogs start to develop heart disease—and this could

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 65 STUDENTS
Fourth-year veterinary student Tabitha Baibos and Tomas Reyes ’20, ‘22 (MS)

be for several reasons, but it’s really common in smaller dogs as they get older—their hearts will start to get bigger, usually because there’s an increased amount of blood in the heart or it’s pumping really, really hard,” Baibos said. “Usually, a veterinarian has to stand at a computer and use a ruler tool on an X-ray image and hope they’re finding the right spots to measure from.”

While the typical method for measuring and calculating vertebral heart score is both time-consuming and errorprone, it is also vital because it helps veterinarians determine if treatment is necessary or if a certain course of treatment has been effective. Baibos and her team sought to take out the guess-work and the time constraints of the process.

“We went all over the web to find pictures of X-rays that we could use freely,” she said. “My fiancé made an algorithm using artificial intelligence that can literally just look at the picture and, within seconds, give you a calculation.”

Having someone with a veterinary background certainly gave Baibos’ team a competitive edge; it also gave Baibos the chance to take on a teaching role.

“It was a good challenge for me to be able to take my knowledge and explain it in a way that an 18-year-old with no veterinary background could understand,” Baibos said. “Some of my teammates never even had pets. So, having to explain these concepts, the whole veterinary side of things, was a challenge for me.

“Our goal is to be able to use RadAnalyzer for things other than just vertebral heart score, like looking at diseases in the lungs or looking for bone fractures. So, hopefully, I will be able to use it in my own practice.”

“The competition was super fun. I didn’t think I would enjoy it, but I loved it,” Baibos said. “It showed me that I am capable of doing more than I thought and gave me the opportunity to think about problems from a different perspective.”

After taking home first prize, Baibos and Reyes couldn’t simply abandon the work they’d done. Instead, they developed it further by co-founding RadAnalyzer, a company that aims to incorporate AI into everyday veterinary practice.

“After we finished the weekend project, we thought more about how there’s a need for this,” Baibos said. “We have spent the past couple of months working on it, and now we’re an official business.”

The duo has landed some minor investors already, and they aren’t stopping there.

“We just submitted our application for a start-up accelerator through Amazon Web Services,” Baibos said. “We’re also in the process of getting veterinarians to sign up and use our website.”

IMPROVING THE ALGORITHM

Vertebral heart score is traditionally measured by manually choosing specific points on a radiograph to mark the top and bottom of the heart, as well as the edges of the heart’s widest area. Veterinarians then measure these dimensions and determine how many vertebrae the measurement corresponds to on the dog’s spine. In total, seven points have to be found on an image each time.

RadAnalyzer finds these points and makes the measurements and calculations automatically, but it is still in the testing stage. The AI improves when experts validate the accuracy of its measurements or apply corrections when it chooses faulty points on new X-ray images.

The service is currently free for veterinarians to use in their own practices and to provide feedback. Veterinarians can upload patients’ anonymized X-ray images to the app or website, which will automatically calculate the vertebral heart score. The points on the vertebrae that the algorithm selects will appear on the image, and, if veterinarians using the program don’t agree with the points, they can make adjustments that the AI will learn from.

The AI is also learning more and more as interns at the Texas A&M Small Animal Teaching Hospital make use of the tool for cases requiring a vertebral heart score; their work

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Baibos, Reyes, and Jitterbug

is verified by Gordon and then uploaded to the RadAnalyzer database to give the AI a broader range of correct examples.

“The goal is to publish our results showing that the algorithm is accurate and that the test metrics are good,” Baibos said. “We’re basically training our machine-learning model as if Dr. Gordon is doing them all herself. We’re hoping to provide a level of quality and accuracy that would be equal to a board-certified cardiologist.”

For Baibos and Reyes, working on RadAnalyzer goes beyond merely a professional endeavor; the two have had to adapt to each other’s working styles, and, ultimately, Baibos believes that developing RadAnalyzer has had a positive effect on their relationship.

“Working on RadAnalyzer really gives us something to bond over,” Baibos said. “We had two separate worlds and were able to bring them together. It’s also really helped him to connect with my friends from vet school. And we got engaged literally a week after we won Aggies Invent, so, you could say it’s been really good for us.”

As for Baibos’ future, she plans to work at a feline-only clinic—perhaps, one day, even open her own—and get board certified in feline medicine. And although vertebral heart

score isn’t used as often in cats as it is in dogs, RadAnalyzer will continue to be a major part of Baibos’ career.

“Our goal is to be able to use RadAnalyzer for things other than just vertebral heart score, like looking at diseases in the lungs or looking for bone fractures,” Baibos said. “So, hopefully, I will be able to use it in my own practice.”

Ultimately, Baibos hopes that the negative aspects of analyzing radiographs—the uncertainty of the measurements, the time required to get accurate results, and the cost to pet owners—will all be made obsolete with the expansion of AI.

“AI is going to be the future of a lot of things; people use it more often than they think they do,” Baibos said. “It is going to be a big thing in veterinary medicine, because it’s going to allow us to provide services to clients at a cheaper cost and a lot faster. With the high caseloads veterinarians have, it’s going to be a really good tool for the future.” ■

WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 67 STUDENTS RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Sonya Gordon, Reyes, Baibos, and Jitterbug
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Susan Fontaine ‘77 and Murphy

Levine prove that fighting cancer is a team sport.

Susan Fontaine’s life-long love affair with dogs grew by leaps and bounds when she and her husband, George Corolla, started competing and showing their dogs in the early 1990s. Since then, the couple competed with six different dogs, all with names that started with an “M.”

Yet, as is the case with all pets, the Fontaine-Corollas’ dogs have faced health challenges over the years.

One of their most recent dogs, Murphy, wasn’t feeling well in 2017, so Susan took him to the veterinarian. Noticing a large lump in his throat, the veterinarian directed Susan to the Texas A&M Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH), where the German shepherd was diagnosed with lymphoma.

Murphy benefitted from the compassionate care of SATH’s staff as well as regular chemotherapy, which not only prolonged his life for three more years but also sustained his energy levels. He was still competing until two months before his death.

While the Fontaine-Corollas previously made gifts to the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS), the quality of care Murphy received during the last part of his life prompted Susan ’77 to establish the Susan Fontaine Endowment for Veterinary Clinical Trials, which will support research aiming to better both animal and human lives.

“We don’t only aspire to have research that directly impacts veterinary medicine, but we’re also very interested in human and environmental health,” said Dr. Jon Levine, head of the VMBS’ Small Animal Clinical Sciences Department (VSCS). “We

know that dogs and cats—but especially dogs—have a lot of diseases that are very similar to people, whether we’re talking about cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, or some heart diseases. Information we can find out genetically about how a dog’s cancer develops might be very relevant to human cancers.”

SHOWING OFF

The couple’s entry into dog competitions began when they lived in Seattle and brought home Molly, a German shepherd, in the early 1990s.

“We signed up for obedience school and the obedience instructor said, ‘You ought to consider competing and showing the dog,’” Susan said. “I never had thought about what that life was like and it hadn’t occurred to me that there was even such a thing as obedience competitions.”

Susan and Molly’s first competition proved to be a learning opportunity.

“We went into the ring and then Molly left me—she was supposed to stay with me—and she went and sat in the middle of the ring and watched me perform to the judges’ commands,” she said, laughingly.

The experience, however, caused her competitive juices to kick in.

“I’m going to prove I can do this,” she said. “This dog and I are going to conquer this; that got me hooked on competing with dogs.”

A year later, the Fontaine-Corolla family got another

by DORIAN MARTIN Susan Fontaine ‘77 and Dr. Jon
“We don’t only aspire to have research that directly impacts veterinary medicine, but we’re also very interested in human and environmental health.”
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 69 GIVING RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
- DR. JON LEVINE

German shepherd, Max, which George decided to show while Susan showed Molly.

“It was a nice hobby we could do together,” Susan said. “We’d go to dog shows on the weekend and to class together. We’d do little workouts in our driveway in our neighborhood.”

Susan, who has also competed in rally and agility, believes dog competitions are a team sport.

“When the dog does well and you do well, there is no better feeling in the world. It is such a partnership with the dog; it’s like you’re in sync, so that’s the driving force of the competition,” she said. “Right now, with Mia, I’m doing nose work, which is scent detection that uses the dog’s natural ability to find a specific odor that’s hidden away. Mia has to communicate to me where it is and then I tell the judge. I’m right or wrong, based on what the dog has said to me.”

The couple was so committed to competing that, upon moving to College Station for retirement, they built a facility in their backyard so they could train locally instead of driving to Houston.

“I have a group of friends who come to do training together, but it’s not a business,” Susan said. “We support each other in our training efforts.”

BREAKING BARRIERS

Susan’s ability to forge strong relationships was strengthened by her time as a student at Texas A&M. She came to campus right as women were being accepted into the Corps of Cadets and could live on-campus in dorms.

“There were four men to every woman, and there were around 18,000 students when I graduated,” she remembered. “It was very different than it is today.”

Her father was serving in the military and her family was stationed overseas when she enrolled at Texas A&M.

“I fit into the military culture; it was a family environment. I met really, really good friends with whom I’m still friends as we come up on our 45th class reunion,” she said. “I share my football tickets with my college roommate.”

After earning her degree, Susan stumbled into what turned into a 38-year career in the insurance industry, starting as an underwriting trainee at Aetna in Houston.

“It was a perfect fit for me. It’s very analytical and you get to learn a lot about a lot of different businesses,” she said. “It’s part psychologist, part detective, part actuary, and part fortuneteller—you try to predict who’s going to have a loss or a claim and what can you do to avoid that.”

Her work led to an introduction to her future husband and allowed the couple to live in Seattle and Wilmington, Delaware. As the couple neared retirement, they decided to look for a single-level home in a place with mild winters.

George, who wasn’t an Aggie, said, “What’s wrong with Bryan-College Station?” Noting that she was shocked that it was George’s idea, Susan explained about their decision to move to College Station in 2014, “I think he knew that I would be happy here. I’d brought him to a couple of reunions.”

Looking back over the years, Susan realizes that she entered both Texas A&M and the corporate world during a time of tremendous cultural change.

“It was the time period when women were coming to the workforce—and it was the same thing in my career,” she said. “I was the first commercial female manager for one of my insurance companies and the first female divisional president for another. I didn’t break the glass ceiling, but I knocked on it.”

COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIP

Over the years, the couple lavished their attention on their dogs: Molly, Max, Missy, Moses, Murphy, and Mia.

“It started happening with Molly and Max, so when we got the next one, their name had to start with an ‘M,’” Susan explained.

With no children, the couple started considering how they wanted to distribute their estate—and both Texas A&M’s former College of Liberal Arts (which joined the new College of Arts and Sciences on Sept. 1) and the VMBS made their

70 | VMBS TODAY // WINTER 2023 GIVING
Susan Fontaine ‘77 and Murphy

“I’ve always loved dogs, but I had not connected with the vet school when I was in college. After watching Murphy’s experience, I thought that the school would be a good investment in the future.”

initial list, leading to liberal arts scholarships and supporting VMBS’ facilities.

Yet, Murphy’s experience with the SATH had a significant influence on Susan’s future funding decisions.

“I’ve always loved dogs, but I had not connected with the vet school when I was in college,” she said. “After watching Murphy’s experience, I thought that the school would be a good investment in the future.”

After George died in 2021, Susan learned that she received an inheritance that allowed her to do more for Texas A&M.

“I don’t have to live off of my income anymore,” she explained. “I realized that I had money to play with and to do good with that I didn’t have before—so what can I do?”

After reviewing options with the Texas A&M Foundation’s VMBS development team, Susan came up with a plan for her investment.

“The clinical trial idea jumped right out at me because I had been thinking all along, ‘What else can I do to help other dogs

not go through what Murphy went through?’” she said.

Soon after, she read about Levine’s research on glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer that affects humans and dogs. Levine noted that other VMBS researchers are studying conditions that could have implications for human beings, including Chagas disease and cartilage replacement, as well as the dog aging process.

Levine is already putting Susan’s endowment to work.

“Our immediate use for this is to help support a startup package for a geneticist we are hiring,” he said, adding that this position, which also incorporates funding from the Office of the Provost, will be a joint hire between VSCS and the VMBS’ Department of Veterinary Pathobiology. “The idea behind this strategy is to amplify the collaborations we have. This geneticist will be a benchtop scientist who works with test tubes and looks at genetic data but also can connect with the faculty members who see cases in the trenches and identify new or current diseases that we don’t understand.”

Susan hopes that more donors will consider supporting these types of innovative efforts to improve the health of both dogs and human beings.

“I’m an ordinary person. I remember the days when I had to buy clothes on layaway and not buy groceries until I got my paycheck,” Susan said. “I think anybody can give—and anybody can plan to give in the future. You have to make it part of your values.” ■

- SUSAN FONTAINE ‘77
WINTER 2023 \\ VMBS TODAY | 71 GIVING RESEARCH HOSPITAL COLLABORATION STUDENTS GIVING SPOTLIGHT
Dr. Jon Levine

VMBS TODAY

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“It’s time for a change and it’s time to look to the future and build on our tradition of excellence in advanced, compassionate care. I hope you share our dreams and aspirations for the future.”
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