PLUS: CentrifUgaL forCeS n the wormS’ tUrn n traCking rabbit fever

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MAGA ZINE of thE cuMMINGs school of vE tEr INAry MEdIc INE SPring 2010 voL . 11 no. 2

PLUS: fat CatS n man’S beSt oCD frienD n tiCk taLk

Animal Rxhow our pets are helping us conquer cancer

veterinary medicine

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c a s e s o l v e d

Photo: southwIck’s Zoo/bElINdA MAZur

visitors to Southwick’s Zoo in mendon, mass., who saw the bengal tigers taj and kya a couple of days after their spay surgeries at the Cummings School probably noticed that the big cats had shaved patches on their bellies and forepaws. but other than that, the aftereffects were minimal.

“it’s like she didn’t even have surgery,” zoo veterinarian Peter brewer said about taj, just 48 hours after the proce-dure. “the next day she was actually jumping around.”

Laparoscopic spay surgery is preferred because it reduces postoperative pain and minimizes tissue damage, unlike the traditional open-abdomen procedure. Performed with a telescoping instrument inserted through three one-centimeter incisions in the belly, the surgery removes just the ovaries, not the uterus. Surgeons watch on a video monitor as they guide their instruments. the surgery also eliminates the need to anesthetize the animal a second time to remove sutures once the incisions heal.

the tigers were the first—and most exotic—animals to benefit from the less-invasive procedure; now tufts surgeons

are offering it for large dogs.bengal tigers, native to the indian subcontinent, are an

endangered species (about 4,000 live in the wild), according to the world wildlife fund. but they are abundant in zoos, although industry groups have discouraged breeding in captiv-ity to preserve the genetic purity of the species, hence the need for spaying. Some bengal tigers, taj among them, are cream-colored or white instead of golden because they carry a recessive gene for that coloration.

taj and kya are sisters and littermates who each weigh about 180 pounds. anesthesiologist Lois wetmore used a tranquilizing dart to render the cats unconscious at the zoo, so they arrived at the foster hospital for Small animals already asleep. robert mcCarthy, v83, and Joerg mayer per-formed the 90-minute surgeries.

“anyone who’s ever had laparoscopy is very aware of how little pain they experienced following the procedure,” says mcCarthy. “we see that as part of our role, to decrease pain after surgery.” —Catherine o’neiLL graCe

A Better Way to Spay

contents features 6 ReindeerRescuer

In Mongolia’s isolated northern tier, Sophia Papageorgiou, V96, is studying tick-borne illness in the reindeer that sustain an ancient herding culture.

c ov e r s t o ry

10 Four-LeggedFightersOur pets could help the National Cancer Institute meet its challenge to the nation’s research community to eliminate suffering and death from cancer by 2015.by Catherine O’Neill Grace

17 TheSkinnyon DietPetFoods

Pet owners face plenty of confusing information on the labels when choosing products designed to help their dogs and cats shed those extra pounds, according to Cummings School researchers.

cover photograph by Alonso Nichols Back cover photograph by Donna todd

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veterinary medicine

debor a h tur ner kocheva r, d.v.m. , ph.d.de a n a nd henry a nd l ois foster professor

tufts Prints GreenPrinted on 25% post-consumer waste recycled paper. Please recycle.

it was a sunday, and the committee formed to search for a new president of Tufts University was listening carefully to the responses of a gathering of alumni on the Medford/Somerville campus to these four questions:

n How is Tufts positioned today?n What are the most important things you want the university

to preserve?n What are the seemingly intractable problems that Tufts must

begin to solve?n Looking back five years from now, what achievements would compel you to say that the

next president had been successful?

The responses were fascinating, including one comment from a young alum who said that Tufts is positioned as an international university that addresses global health through excellence in the health sciences while instilling in its students the principles of active citizenship.

I thought this answer captured the highest aspirations of Tufts University and chal-lenged all of us to contribute to these core missions. Increasingly, the Cummings School does just that.

A recent example is the U.S. Agency for International Development funding of the project RESPOND, which is enabling Tufts and its partners to work on a multimillion dol-lar global effort to improve the capacity of the government and private sector to respond to outbreaks of infectious disease [see story, page 23]. Closer to home, our students have applied their clinical and public health knowledge in offering free vaccination clinics for pet owners who reside in Worcester Housing Authority-run homes.

Every day our faculty and staff work to develop in our students the skills they need to make meaningful contributions. Whether this is as practitioners, scientists or public health professionals, our graduates carry on the best of Tufts’ traditions.

As we consider what we want in the next Tufts president [see story, page 24], we would be wise to also consider these fundamental questions right here at the Cummings School. How are we positioned? What should we preserve and what should we change to address our challenges? Where should we be in five years? This is your school, and I welcome your thoughts about how we can make the most of our distinctive Tufts attributes.

All the best,

TheBestofTufts

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vo L . 11 , N o . 2 sP r I NG 2010

executive editorDeborah T. Kochevar, Dean Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

editorCatherine O’Neill Grace

editorial DirectorKaren Bailey

Design DirectorMargot Grisar

Design2COMMUNIQUÉ

contributing WriterLeslie Limon

staff PhotographersAlonso Nicols Andrew Cunningham

editorial AdvisorsShelley Rodman, Director Veterinary Development and Alumni Relations

Joseph McManus, Executive Associate DeanCummings School of Veterinary Medicine

Tom Keppeler, Associate DirectorPublic Relations

Tufts Veterinary Medicine is funded in part by the Edward Hyde Cox Fund for Publications. It is distributed to alumni, friends, veterinary students, veterinarians and key university personnel.

We welcome your letters, story ideas, and suggestions. Send correspondence to: Catherine O’Neill Grace, Editor Tufts Veterinary Medicine Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine 200 Westboro Road North Grafton, MA 01536 or email: catherine.grace@tufts.edu The Cummings School’s website is www.tufts.edu/vet The telephone number is 508.839.5302.

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upfrontpeople, places & animals

PHOTO: ISTOCK s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 3

eterinary students are notoriously busy with their studies and clinical training—but not too busy to care about the victims of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12. Student clubs found a variety of ways to raise funds to help

the island nation, from bake sales to a T-shirt designed by Kitt Hollister, V12, that featured the Haitian motto: L’union fait la force (Unity creates strength).

The student chapter of the American Veterinary Medical Association (SCAVMA) and other Cummings School clubs raised $7,045 for humanitar-ian relief. “This included donations, our bake sale, the commemorative T-shirt sale, the donation of profits from our regular [on-campus] store items,” reports Lauren Baker, V11, SCAVMA president. The donation also included matching funds from a couple who wanted to remain anonymous, but who were con-tacted on students’ behalf by Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow.

In addition, on a Sunday afternoon at the end of January, the Cummings

School hosted “An Afternoon of Song,” its first professional concert in the Agnes Varis Auditorium, featuring Tufts University applied music faculty members Edith Auner on piano and soprano Andrea Ehrenreich. Also performing was f lutist Deborah Thomson, V12.

The audience of more than 60 concert-goers included residents of neighboring communities, some visiting the campus for the f irst time. The $400 in concert proceeds was donated to Doctors Without Borders in support of Hait ian rel ief efforts.

cummings school students reach out to a nation in need

helpinghandsforhaiti

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An earthquake survivor walks amid

the devastation in Port-au-Prince.

u p f r o n t

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Two endangered kemp’s ridley sea turtles, rescued by the New England Aquarium, were diagnosed with chronic pneumonia after undergoing CT scans at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. The diagnos-

tic imaging showed the extent and location of fluid build-up in the turtles and will serve as a baseline to determine the success of the pneumonia treatment over the coming months.

The school’s new high-performance CT scanner produces 16 cross-sections of an animal’s body simultaneously, meaning each turtle was “scanned” in about a minute, said Mauricio Solano, head of the school’s Diagnostic Imaging Section. The scanner was pur-chased last fall with the aid of a $250,000 bequest from the late Zelda Cushner, a breeder of Cocker Spaniels.

The two Kemp’s Ridley turtles, named Ozark and King’s Canyon, were among more than 80 sea turtles the New England Aquarium rescued off Cape Cod this winter. Kemp’s Ridley is one of the smallest—and the most endangered—marine turtles.

During the summer, the young turtles feast on crabs on the south side of the Cape. But strong currents end up pulling them north, into the bowl-shaped Cape Cod Bay, so they have to swim about 25 miles north before they can head south to warmer waters

for the winter, according to aquarium officials. The turtles develop hypothermia from the cold water.

Between 25 and 150 Kemp’s Ridley turtles wash up on Cape beaches each fall. Since the early 1990s, the New England Aquarium has rehabilitated more than 500 of the turtles, some of which need as many as six months of treatment.

The aquarium plans on releasing Ozark and King’s Canyon in July or August, once they have recovered from their pneumonia.

WHETHER yOU’RE LOOKING FOR A NORWEGIAN

Buhund, a Pyrenean Shepherd or any other breed that caught your fancy at this year’s Westminster Kennel Club dog show, doing a little bit of homework can save you years of heartache, says a Tufts veterinarian.

All breeds have varying risk factors for diseases and other health conditions, rang-ing from hip dysplasia to heart troubles. Responsible breeders test for these genetic conditions, share their findings with potential buyers and work with their breed organi-zations and parent clubs to breed these diseases out, says Jerold Bell, who teaches clinical veterinary genetics at the Cummings School and breeds Gordon Setters.

“Buying a puppy tends to be an impulse decision for many families,” Bell says. “But if you think about it, this animal is going to be a part of your family for 10 to 15 years.”

Buyers can do their part by asking for all the pertinent facts about a particular breed. “you owe it to yourself to put at least

as much research into buying a dog as you would when buying a car,” he says.

By asking for the results of simple genetic tests of the puppy’s parents, animal owners can be better informed consumers—and create a higher demand for responsibly bred dogs. “If genetic test results are not available, then there has been no quality control for genetic health,” Bell says, “so I

would strongly recommend finding a different breeder.”

Genetic testing—which can be as simple as a cheek swab and as inexpensive as $65—can reveal, for example, a risk for bleeding disorders in Dobermans, extreme drug sensitivity in collies and heart, eye and skeletal disorders in other breeds.

Specific tests for each breed are listed on the Canine Health Information Center website: www.caninehealthinfo.org/breeds.html. These tests should be performed on both parents before their first breeding, and your veterinarian can assist you with those tests. The nonprofit Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (www.offa.org) maintains regis-tries for testable canine genetic disorders on its website, which Bell calls the “Facebook for dogs.” Users can type in the parent’s name or registration number from registries, including those maintained by the American Kennel Club or United Kennel Club, to find any available genetic test information.

PuPPy Buyer Beware

Scanning the Seas Kemp’s ridley sea turtle hatchlings head for the sea.

ILLUSTRATION: WARD SCHUMAKER s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 5

o v e r h e a r d

“ I want to try to give the public a better understanding and positive outlook about what happens on a farm. These farmers put in 12- to 14-hour work days to feed the country.”

—Deandra Dill, v12, in a worcester telegram & gazette article about the importance of food-animal veterinarians

if living well is the best revenge, then fat cats are in trouble, according to a nationwide study by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention. The third annual National Pet Obesity Study found that 58 percent of all household cats

are considered overweight or obese—a five percent increase since the 2007 survey.

“Obesity is now the biggest health threat to pets in the U.S.,” says Ernie Ward, the lead researcher and president of the obesity prevention group. Fat cats and fat humans share lots in common: a higher risk for developing diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, respiratory disorders, osteoarthritis and cancer.

“The costs of obesity in illness and injury make it the number one medical issue seen in today’s veterinary hospi-tals,” Ward notes.

Each pound on your cat equals roughly 13 pounds on the average human female and 15 pounds on a male, according to the study. So a 15-pound cat is equivalent to a 225-pound man who stands 5 feet, 9 inches tall. But a 20-pound kitty is equivalent to 300 pounds on that same man.

To put that poundage into perspective, the ideal feline weight is 8 to 10 pounds for a domestic cat; 10 to 11 pounds for a Persian; 5 to 10 pounds for a Siamese and 11 to 15 pounds for a Maine Coon, according to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention.

You can tell if your cat is a healthy weight if you can eas-ily feel her ribs, her stomach doesn’t sag and you can see her waist when you view her from above.

To keep your cat in tip-top shape, consider these recom-mendations:

n Help your cat slim down smartly by taking a “before” photo of him and putting it in a visible place, such as your refrigerator door. Start a food diary and weigh your cat once a week.

n Opt for scheduled feedings, not free feeding. Instead of filling your cat’s bowl whenever it is empty, use

a measuring cup and portion out your cat’s meals twice a day. If you are unable to

be home at mealtime, consider a self-feeder that can dispense controlled portions of kibble at designated times.

n Work with your veterinarian on slowly decreasing your cat’s

daily food intake. Don’t cut back too quickly. In cats, “crash dieting” can lead to fatty liver disease.

n Set realistic weight-loss goals. It’s best for a cat to lose just

a few ounces a week so the weight comes off gradually and stays off.

n Encourage your cat to play more. Drag a toy on a string for your cat to chase

or have him hunt for low-calorie treats.For more information on how you can combat obe-

sity in your cat or dog, visit the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention website: www.petobesityprevention.com.

—Arden Moore

Arden Moore is the editor of Catnip: The Newsletter for Caring Cat Owners, published by the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. This article is adapted with permission. For subscription information, go to www.tuftscatnip.com or call 1.800.829.5116.

TheLowdownonFatcats

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s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts d e n ta l m e d i c i n e 7

by catherine o’neill grace photographs by donna todd

when sophia papageorgiou, v96, heads off to do fieldwork in Mongolia, she doesn’t simply leave one country for another. She travels back centuries. A trek that begins on a jet out of San Francisco moves to ever-smaller planes, then to a van rattling along rutted roads, and ends with a daylong horseback ride into the taiga, the forested region of Khövsgöl, the country’s northernmost province. “I am on horseback the entire time I am in the taiga,” she says.

The Mongolian taiga, where 250 semi-nomadic herders depend on 800 reindeer for survival, is on a collision course with the 21st century.

The taiga, the world’s largest ecosystem, cuts across large swaths of Canada, Europe and Asia. Taiga winters are long (six months) and extremely cold (below freezing). Most of the precipitation falls during the short, humid summers.

ReindeerRescuer

In a culture that hasn’t changed incenturies, Sophia Papageorgiou, V96,

is helping preserve herders’ livelihoods

8 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e s p r i n g 2 0 1 0

The remoteness of the Mongolian taiga, which straddles the country’s border with Siberia, limits the herders’ access to regular veterinary care for their animals. Gold min-ers, hunters and loggers have entered the region, disrupting the fragile ecosystem.

But perhaps a greater threat to the way of life of the Mongolian Tsaatan (the reindeer people) is climate change. “The 60-year-old herders say we don’t have snow in May anymore,” reports Papageorgiou. “Reindeer need the cold weather. Without it, they cannot thrive.”

If warming trends observed over the last 20 years continue, the reindeer will become even more vulnerable to the tick-borne dis-eases that already threaten them. Supplies of lichen, their primary winter-foraging food, will diminish. “The reindeer may be a senti-nel group for what might be happening with climate change in the coming decades,” says Papageorgiou, who is doing postdoctoral

research in epidemiology at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Herds Under stressIt was the ticks that brought Papageorgiou to Mongolia, where she worked with the Reindeer Life Project, an initiative of the Itgel Foundation that supports the Tsaatan and their animals.

The reindeer face several health chal-lenges, including reproductive problems and lameness. These ailments, Papageorgiou says, could result from tick-borne infections such as Lyme disease, or the parasite anaplasmo-sis, both of which produce a constellation of flu-like symptoms in animals and humans. The highly contagious bacterial infection brucellosis could be contributing to the ani-mals’ reproductive problems, she says.

Papageorgiou says she was the first to identify “a suite of three tick-borne patho-gens” in the Mongolian reindeer as part of

her doctoral work, which was supported in part by the Morris Animal Foundation. “My interest focuses on the complexity of infec-tious diseases and their interaction with the environment,” she notes.

The Tsaatan culture has remained virtu-ally unchanged for 10,000 years, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Three-thousand-year-old petroglyphs, depicting reindeer and herders, can still be found in the region. The Tsaatan are Mongolia’s smallest ethnic minority, with a population of about 500 people comprising 30 to 45 family units. They speak Tuvan and practice shamanism. And they rely on their reindeer: for the milk, which is also used to make cheese; for their antlers, which are fashioned into tools; and for transporta-tion. Unlike some other herding cultures, the Tsaatan rarely eat reindeer meat, instead hunting the increasingly scarce taiga wild

s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 9photos: a.e. bacon (middle and above)

game, such as elk or moose.Historically, the herding community

migrated between northern Mongolia and southern Siberia, as often as five or 10 times each year. But in 1921, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, modeled on the Soviet Communist Party, was estab-lished, and the Mongolian-Siberian bor-der was closed in the 1930’s, confining the Tsaatan to a smaller piece of the taiga.

“The reindeer are free-ranging,” says Papageorgiou. “There are no corrals or pastures.” The animals she studied are the southernmost reindeer in the world.

Reindeer-herding cultures do exist in other northern locales: The indigenous peoples of Scandinavia, Russia and Siberia keep domesticated herds totaling some two mil-lion animals.

Papageorgiou is continuing her research in the taiga, this time focusing on the rodent population to determine which species may serve as reservoirs for tick-borne illnesses.

She says she treasures the time she has spent—and the gallons of reindeer milk tea she has shared—with the people of the taiga. In addition to her own research, she serves as a veterinarian for the herds. She

attributes much of the success of her experi-ence with the Tsaatan to what she learned at the Cummings School.

“I used all the training in international veterinary medicine that I received at Tufts—how to work with the people on the ground and the awareness that you are a guest” in someone else’s country, she says. “I remembered all those principles, and I don’t think I would have been successful without that training.” tvm

Life revolves around reindeer in the Mongolian taiga, where Sophia Papageorgiou, V96, speaking to herders, left, and drawing blood from an animal, below, is researching tick-borne illness in the herds.

“�The�reindeer�may�be�a�sentinel�group�for�what�might�be�happening�with�climate�change�in�the�coming�decades.”����� � � � � � —Sophia Papageorgiou

10 t u f ts d e n ta l m e d i c i n e s u m m e r 2 0 0 9Gloria Riccobono shares a moment with Hannah, who is undergoing cancer treatment at Tufts.

s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 11

How our pets are helping us win the war on cancer by catherine o’neill grace

photographs by alonso nichols

Four- leggedFighters

gloria riccobono’s two standard poo-dles—Hannah, a chocolate female, and Leo, an apricot male—were anything but pam-pered. The athletic dogs have led an active outdoor life, often accompanying their owner on strenuous hikes. Then last winter, as Riccobono and the dogs were heading down a trail, it became clear that Hannah wasn’t her usual stalwart self.

“At the end of the hike I noticed that she stumbled,” Riccobono says, “and when we got home and she was resting on her bed, she was kind of swaying. I knew something was not right.”

Unfortunately, Riccobono’s instincts about her 10-year-old dog, which she has had since puppyhood, were correct. Hannah was diagnosed with lymphoma, a cancer that attacks lymph nodes throughout the body.

Each year, some six million of the 65 mil-lion dogs in the United States will be diag-nosed with cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. Of the nation’s 32 million

cats, six million come down with cancer each year. On the human front, more than 11 million Americans are living with cancer, according to the American Cancer Society, and more than one million new diagnoses are made each year.

Dogs and humans have more in common than you might think. They often contract the same types of cancers: prostate, lung, head and neck cancers, breast cancers, soft tissue sarcomas, melanoma and the bone cancer osteosarcoma.

Studying animals with cancer in the context of how people get the disease and respond to treatment is an emerging discipline called comparative oncology. It is a field that could mean success for Cancer 2015, the National Cancer Institute’s chal-lenge to researchers to “understand the disease and create interventions so that no one will suffer and die prematurely from cancer” within five years. Comparative oncology has mobilized veterinary and medical oncologists, the pharmaceutical

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industry and academic centers involved in cancer research, including the Harrington Oncology Program at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

The sequencing of the canine genome in 2005 by scientists at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT has only heightened inter-est in the potential of comparative oncology. DNA mapping has shown that dogs and humans are more genetically similar than humans and rodents, making dogs better models than laboratory mice and rats for studying how tumors develop. Previously, the bulk of cancer research had been done with rodents, and when it came time to test results in human clinical trials, the research often didn’t translate well.

“We have known for a long time that many canine tumors are good models for studying human cancers,” says John Berg, a cancer surgeon who chairs the department of clinical sciences at the Cummings School. “The cancers present in similar ways, and they respond similarly to treatment.”

At Tufts, veterinarians are collaborating with oncologists at Massachusetts General Hospital to gain insights into osteosarcoma, the most common bone malignancy in humans. The disease, which usually devel-ops during the growth spurts of adoles-cence, occurs most often in teenage boys. In humans, osteosarcoma invades the long bones of the body—above or below the knee, or the upper arm, near the shoulder. In dogs, it usually occurs in the forelimb.

“We have a better understanding of can-cer, including osteosarcoma, because of the work we have done with animals,” says Lisa G. Barber, a veterinary oncologist at the Cummings School. “Cancer in the weight-bearing bones is more prevalent in dogs than in people,” she says, noting that limb-saving surgeries now used to treat children with the disease were first developed in dogs.

Cancer treatment in animals and humans “is a two-way street,” says Kristine Burgess, V97, a veterinary oncologist at Tufts. “We use humans as our lab rats, too. We study the human cancer literature and use the same chemotherapy agents and protocols that are employed to treat humans with cancer.”

Because comparative oncology is a young f ield, Burgess says, “people often don’t understand that animals get cancer with

the same or similar frequency as humans, and that we actually treat animals with the standard human treatments: surgery, che-motherapy and radiation therapy. We don’t just euthanize them.”

Veterinary oncologists study spontane-ously occurring cancers in animals—those that arise from the same environmental and genetic reasons that human cancers do. And like humans, dogs today are living longer, meaning that more of them—and more of us—will develop tumors. According to the National Cancer Institute, people ages 65 and older are 10 times more likely to develop cancer than younger people, and the mor-tality rate for older cancer patients is 16 times greater than that for younger patients. In animals, cancer kills nearly half of dogs and cats over the age of 10, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Comparative oncologists are working on

three fronts in the war on cancer: under-standing environmental risk factors such as exposure to herbicides, pesticides and tobacco smoke; unraveling cancer’s genetic footprints; and developing new treatments (see The ABCs of Clinical Trials, page 15).

Canine and human cancers share similar gene expression and molecular alterations, Burgess says. “The way they appear under the microscope, their genetic composition, all of that can be similar. But what makes it the best comparative model is that dogs have similar body systems to humans.”

Barbara Davis, a veterinary pathologist at the Cummings School, is leading studies to determine how common environmen-tal chemicals may cause cancer in dogs. Companion animals share our homes, she says, and so they provide a unique oppor-tunity to help us understand gene-environ-ment interactions that may lead to cancer.

Because dogs have shorter life spans than humans, their cancers progress more rap-idly, and veterinarians can figure out more quickly which treatments work and which don’t. That gives researchers an opportunity to gather data about cancer progression in a much shorter time.

“A dog’s life is not as short as that of a mouse,” says Burgess. “It’s more analogous to what you’re going to get in a human. A dog can be that canary in the coal mine.”

CAts And CAnCerCats, like dogs and people, develop can-cers of the breast, colon and lung, as well as lymphoma and leukemia. In the late 1970s, Tufts faculty member Susan M. Cotter, an internationally known researcher in veterinary clinical oncology, conducted pioneering investigations of the feline leu-kemia virus (FeLV) with researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her work was the first to demonstrate that viruses that cause leukemia and other neoplastic diseases (those that involve the abnormal growth of cells) can be contagious. Cotter’s findings produced some of the best early descriptions of the response of feline and

is it cancer?

as in humans, early diagnosis is critical to the success of treating canine can-cer. Kristine burgess, v97, a veterinary oncologist, says that any change in your pet’s health should be evaluated by your veterinarian. “trust your in-stincts,” she says. “no one knows your dog or cat the way you do. if he or she just does not seem right to you, check in with your vet.”

some symptoms to watch for include:n lumps, swellings or growths on or

under the skinn sudden weight lossn difficulty passing urine or fecesn blood in the urinen Wounds that don’t healn change in bark or meown change in appetiten bleeding from the mouthn persistent lameness or stiffness

“ a dog can be that canary in the coal mine.” —Kristine Burgess, V97

Above, Riccobono, Hannah and Leo check out a neighbor’s cat in Arlington, Mass. At the Cummings School, below, Leo is Hannah’s constant companion as she undergoes chemotherapy.

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canine lymphoma to chemotherapy and stimulated a surge in clinical research on the use of chemotherapy for treating cancer in animals.

For reasons that are not fully understood, feline cancers tend to be more aggressive, and so may not respond to treatment as easily as canine cancers. Another challenge is that feline cancer symptoms are more subtle. “They tend to present in late stages,” says Barber, the veterinary oncologist. Even though a cat may appear healthy, she says, it may be harboring a cancer that, if detected early enough, can be treated.

Cats can get very aggressive mammary tumors that almost always metastasize, spreading to other organs. “These tumors resemble highly malignant breast cancers in people, so they’re a good model for us to study,” says Barber. Spaying dogs before their first heat almost always eliminates the risk for developing breast cancers, she says. The effect of spaying cats is less clear, she says, even though cats that are not spayed are more likely to develop mammary cancer.

To avoid some of the environmental risk factors for cancer, Barber suggests that pet owners avoid smoking indoors and get their homes tested for radon gas. “We don’t have good preventive strategies for cancer in ani-mals yet,” she says. “Early detection is one of the things that can make a difference in the outcome.”

As with human cancers, the options for treating canine and feline cancers include

surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation, depending on the type of tumor.

The prospect of chemotherapy is anxi-ety-producing for many pet owners, Burgess says, because of what they know about the nasty side effects of the treatment in humans. But chemo for dogs generally involves fewer and shorter rounds of treatment and lower doses of the powerful drugs. “People will say, ‘Oh, my Aunt Edna had chemo, and I can’t do that to my pet,’ ” Burgess says. But only non-shedding dogs will temporarily lose their hair, and most will lose little or no

fur. And in reality, less than a third of canine cancer patients experience unpleasant side effects, and fewer than five percent get what Burgess calls “human-style sick.”

As in human medicine, research into new and better treatments for animal cancer is ongoing. Albert Ahn, V89, V94, president of AB Science, in Short Hills, N.J., reports that his company is seeking FDA approval for the drug masitinib, which has shown prom-ise in treating mast cell tumors, a common skin cancer in dogs. The drug, administered orally as a pill, is not as toxic as commonly

banking on tissue samples

the cummings school is one of seven U.s. veterinary schools participating in the canine comparative oncology & Genetics consortium tissue bank, housed at the national cancer institute in Frederick, md.

the bank, which was established in 2007, collects and preserves, for researchers’ use, small samples of tissue and fluid from dogs with cancer. samples of osteosarcoma, soft-tissue sarcomas, mast cell tumors, oral melanomas, primary lung tumors and hemagiosarcoma, a cancer that originates in the blood vessels, have been collected. the samples are available to researchers working to understand both canine and human cancer on the molecular and genetic levels, with the goal of developing new diagnostics and treatments.

When a dog with one of the cancers that the bank is seeking comes to the cummings school, veterinarians seek the owner’s permission to harvest a small piece of the tumor when it is surgically removed. blood and urine samples and a snippet of healthy skin from the area close to the tumor are also collected. the samples are then frozen to minus 80 degrees celsius and shipped to the national cancer institute. in 2009, some 100 dogs that were treated at tufts provided samples to the consortium.

Stretching their legs (all 10 of them) on the Grafton campus.

s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 15

used chemotherapies, and it targets a tumor’s molecular structure, destroying or disabling diseased cells or tissues. More than a dozen treatments that target tumor biology have been approved for human cancers, but masitinib—already used in Europe—would be among the first such veterinary therapies approved in the United States. The drug could allow veterinarians to prescribe long-term, maintenance doses to stabilize tumors rather than subjecting an animal to more invasive surgical solutions or chemotherapy.

The goal of any type of veterinary cancer treatment, Burgess says, is not necessarily to cure, but to make the animal comfort-able and preserve its regular routine and the bond between animal and owner for as long as possible.

“Quality of life is our main goal, always,” she says. “Fortunately, the majority of cancer patients and their owners continue to enjoy time together. For animals, because their life span is limited, if you can extend their lives for up to a year or more, that’s a long time.”

When Hannah, Gloria Riccobono’s stan-dard poodle, began her chemotherapy at the Cummings School, things didn’t go well at first. The dog was anxious. “Hannah has never been away from Leo, her litter mate,” she says. “They’re like two little old people. She follows him everywhere he goes. So the next time we went to the hospital, I brought him with her. Things went much better for her because he was nearby.”

The hospital staff allowed Leo to stay with Hannah as she received her treat-ments. “As long as Leo’s there, she’s happy,” Riccobono says.

Hannah’s advanced lymphoma went into remission after her first round of treatment, and she experienced some happy months. “She had a good summer,” says Riccobono. Although Hannah’s cancer has returned and metastasized and she is receiving another round of chemotherapy, Riccobono says she would not have done anything differently.

“I feel like I’m on the cutting edge by being here at Cummings with my dog,” she says. “There is so much knowledge and so much compassion. I know they are doing everything they possibly can.” tvm

Catherine O’Neill Grace is the editor of this magazine.

the abcs oF clinical trials

What is a clinical trial? it is a study to evaluate promising new methods or devices for diagnosing or treat-ing diseases, including cancer. although they are “experimental,” the treatments have been tested in laboratory animals and are considered safe for dogs or cats. “the goal is to not hurt the animal, but to help treat their cancer,” says Kristine burgess, v97, a veterinary oncologist at the cummings school.

For example, researchers at the cummings school are preparing to conduct a trial to determine whether a chemical compound called dtic (dacarbazine)—considered the gold standard of chemotherapy treatment for melanoma in people—will be successful in treating dogs with this aggressive cancer.

Why do people enroll their pets in clinical trials?if you want to help animals, this is the way to do it. veterinarians use trials to test the safety and effectiveness of new treatments. When your pet takes part, it is playing an important role in fighting disease as well as getting a chance for potentially beneficial treatment.

What about funding?often, pharmaceutical companies or academic research organizations provide funding for treatment and follow-up care in clinical trials. consult your veterinarian for details.

Will I be involved in what happens?You will work with the veterinarian who is conducting the trial to determine if your pet is an appropriate candidate to take part. sometimes clinical trials can be a last resort when all other conventional treatments have failed. You will be informed about the risks and benefits of the trial. You’ll be kept in the loop every step of the way.

Are there success stories from clinical trials for cancer conducted at Cummings?there are! in 2007 and 2008, a cocker spaniel named beamer received privately funded chemotherapy treatments for lymphoma. he is still in remission and doing great. this is a drug that is intended for use in humans, but is being tested in dogs with the same or similar types of cancer. another success story is a cute little dog that had a primary lung tumor that had spread. she was coughing so hard that she would pass out. Fortunately, she qualified for a clinical trial at the cummings school and received a novel human compound. she had a dramatic response to the treatment and had a good life for another six months.

How can I get my pet into a clinical trial at the Cummings School?visit the school’s new clinical trials website at www.tufts.edu/vet/clinical_trials. the trials are listed by species or by medical specialty. clicking on “species” and then on “dog” or “cat” will take you to a list of available trials and indicate how to contact the coordinator of the trial. the school has about 30 clinical trials under way at any given time.

Thanks to a clinical trial, Beamer is frisky once again.

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researchthe path to discovery

A gene linked to compulsive behaviors in dogs could lead to a better understanding of the condition in humans By Catherine O’Neill Grace

Man’s Best OCD Friend

oberman pinschers may hold the genetic key for under-standing obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans. While one in 50 adults suffers from OCD, engaging in repetitive behaviors like uncontrolled hand washing, it turns out that up to 70 per-

cent of Doberman pups in any given litter, and some 8 percent of all dogs, have obsessive tendencies, such as compulsively sucking their flanks.

In a breakthrough that could help explain human OCD and lead to better treatments or prevention for the anxiety disorder, researchers have located the gene for obsessive-compulsive disorder in Dobermans—the first behavioral gene identified in dogs.

Nicholas Dodman, director of the Animal Behavior Program at the

Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard found that Dobermans that exhibit compulsive behav-iors have a gene, located on canine chromo-some 7, which predisposes them to OCD.

“We don’t know for certain that it’s the gene that causes OCD in people, but what we did find out is that the same gene exists in humans on chromosome 18, which has the reputation of being the ‘psychiatric’ gene,” says Dodman, lead author on the research, published in the January 2010 issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The implications are profound. “This discovery could provide a better under-standing of disease biology and facilitate development of genetic tests, enabling ear-lier interventions and even treatment or prevention of compulsive disorders in at-risk canines and humans,” the researchers wrote in the journal.

“The occurrence of repetitive behav-iors and similarities in response to drug treatments in both canine compulsive disorder and human OCD suggest that common pathways are involved,” says Edward I. Ginns, director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a study co-author.

A EurEkA MOMEnt Dodman’s interest in compulsive behav-iors goes back nearly 30 years, when he joined the veterinary faculty at Tufts as an anesthesiologist. He and Louis Shuster, a pharmacologist and now a professor emer-itus at Tufts’ Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, started examining repetitive behaviors in horses. Their eureka moment came courtesy of a palomino horse named Poker’s Queen Bee.

The palomino was prone to cribbing, a behavior in which a horse grips an edge (a fence, grain bin or stall) with its front teeth, arches its neck and gulps in air—over and over and over again. “In some

D

photo: istock

The genetics of compulsive behavior in Dobermans hold clues

for similar human behaviors.

photo: shutterstock

The skinny on dieT peT foods

Pet owners buying food aimed at controlling weight in their plump cats and dogs might not be getting accurate information about those foods, even if they can figure out the often-confusing claims on the labels.a study done by researchers at the cummings school found that pet owners

face confusing variations in calorie counts and recommended portions, not to mention a wide price range for low-calorie pet foods. in the u.s., between 22 and 44 percent of dogs and cats are considered overweight or obese.

“there is so much information—and misinformation—about pet foods, it’s understandable that people are confused about what to feed their dogs and cats,” says study co-author lisa m. freeman, J86, V91, n96, a veterinary nutritionist at the cummings school, “to counteract these myths, people are accustomed to turning to the labels on food, but, as this study shows, packaging might not always be reliable.”

the tufts study, published in the January 1 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, examined nearly 100 commercially avail-able foods that claimed to control animals’ weight.

under federal guidelines, pet foods labeled “lite,” “light,” “low calorie” or “less calorie” must provide caloric content. foods with a light, lite or low-calorie desig-nation must also adhere to a maximum kilocalorie per kilogram restriction. but, freeman points out, more than half of the foods evaluated in the study exceeded this maximum. foods without these dietary designations are allowed, but not required, to have the caloric content on the label. however, efforts are under way to require calorie information on all pet food labels.

another important issue the study identified was the wide range of feeding rec-ommendations for weight loss. in fact, for most of the foods, pets would not lose weight or would actually gain weight if owners adhered to the feeding directions and did not adjust for their pet’s individual calorie requirements.

obesity in dogs and cats is associated with a number of illnesses, including pancreatitis, osteoarthritis, skin ailments, diabetes and respiratory tract diseases—and may contribute to a shorter lifespan.

freeman and co-author debbie e. linder, V09, studied 44 canine and 49 feline diets and obtained calorie information from the product labels and by contacting the manufacturers.

among their findings are that dry dog foods range in calorie density from 217 to 440 kilocalories per cup (kcal/cup) and

have a recommended intake that ranges from 0.73 to 1.47 times the dog’s resting energy requirement. the diets also varied wildly in price—from 4 cents to more than $1.10 per kilocalorie.

similar findings were made for wet dog food (189 to 398 kcal/can) and cat food (235 to 480 kcal/cup) marketed for weight control.

Thoroughbred barns, more than 30 per-cent of horses indulge in cribbing,” says Dodman. “I wondered why these animals were doing this.”

He and Shuster already knew that when horses are given increasing doses of mor-phine, they begin to pace in circles. They hypothesized that cribbing horses might be responding to what Dodman calls “nature’s own morphine,” or the endor-phins that their bodies release under stress. The researchers administered a morphine-blocking drug to Poker’s Queen Bee, and the horse’s cribbing stopped, quickly and completely.

“That moment changed our lives,” Dodman recalls. “I decided that behavior was what I wanted to do.” Shuster, who had been studying drugs of abuse, focused his research on repetitive behaviors, and the horse’s owner left her high-profile executive job to pursue graduate studies in pharmacology.

Dodman went on to examine compulsive behaviors in cats and dogs, particularly in Doberman pinschers and bull terriers, which are also at risk for OCD. “Veterinarians had long observed dogs engaging in stone chew-ing, nail biting, blanket sucking, pacing and so on,” Dodman says. “They do all kinds of weird stuff. But nobody knew what was causing it.”

Dodman says the technology is in place to give researchers a better idea of how the genetic variations in dogs with canine com-pulsive disorder affect brain function—and to develop diagnostic tests and treatments.

Now the research team is collaborating with scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health to determine how closely the genetic markers they identified are associ-ated with a risk for human OCD and autism spectrum disorders, a developmental dis-ability that hampers social interaction and communication.

For more information on the sequencing of the dog genome, visit www.broadinstitute.org/mammals/dog.

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Imagine having to think about every breath you take. Imagine gasping after you walk across a room. Imagine breath-ing in, and then being unable to expel

that breath without effort. That’s how peo-ple with emphysema live. The condition—a type of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—involves progressive and irre-versible damage to the air sacs in the lungs and affects more than 3 million Americans, killing 120,000 every year.

The physical effect of emphysema on the lungs is like “cutting parts of a cobweb or a net. The lung just starts to unravel,” says Andrew M. Hoffman, a professor of large animal medicine at the Cummings School who investigates treatments for lung dis-ease in animals and humans.

It is well known that cigarette smoking is the major cause of emphysema. What’s not known is how the condition spreads in the lung, and whether that process can be halted or reversed.

But hope may be on the horizon, thanks in part to research Hoffman is conducting with support from the National Institutes of Health. He and his colleagues have

devised a method to mitigate the symp-toms of the disease, using a special kind of glue to reduce lung volume, which allows the remaining lung to take in and expel air more efficiently. Now they’re trying to develop ways to rebuild lungs, cell by cell.

Hoffman specializes in diagnosing and treating equine lung disease, which develops from chronic exposure to dusty barns and racetracks and is similar to human chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). To study emphysema, he has focused on sheep, because their lung size and anatomy closely resemble those of human lungs. He is collaborating with Edward Ingenito, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate physi-cian at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“We developed methods to evaluate the safety and outcome of treatments intended for humans in the sheep models, and a long-term collaboration between human pulmonologists and veterinary physiolo-gists was born,” says Hoffman.

Ingenito and Hoffman found a non-invasive way to improve lung function in

animals and humans, which is now in the final phases of clinical trials. The so-called bronchoscopic lung volume reduction tech-nology uses special glues to reduce the size of the emphysema-affected lung, allowing the remaining lung to work more efficiently. The treatment could mark an important advance in emphysema therapy. Ingenito is the founder of Aeris Therapeutics, a com-pany with offices in Woburn, Mass., and on the Cummings School campus, which holds the patent for the volume reduction technology.

Additional important advances could fol-low. “Using the biocompatible glue to close off the emphysema-damaged lung allows patients significant relief, but the disease will continue to progress,” Hoffman says. “Part of the reason for that is that patients have already lost a lot of their critical pro-genitor and stem cells in the lungs—and there’s not much known about stem cells in the lung yet.” He points out, however, that “the lessons that we learned in developing volume reduction have better prepared us for developing stem cell therapy [for emphy-sema]. We have learned to take things from animals all the way up to humans.”

thE PrOMIsE OF stEM CElls Stem cells and progenitor cells are micro-scopic bui ld ing blocks of the body. Progenitor cells are specialized in their functions, destined to become only one type of cell when they mature, such as a muscle cell or the particular type of cell that forms alveoli, or air sacs, in the lung. Stem cells, by contrast, can develop into a variety of cell types and have the ability to replenish damaged cells in many different organs. Stem cells can replicate indefinitely, while progenitor cells can divide a limited number of times.

“We know that stem cells and progeni-tor cells are necessary to maintain a healthy cell population in the lung,” Hoffman says. If lung cells get injured, they can be replen-ished. “It’s just like your skin: When a few cells come off, new cells come up. The lung also has that capacity to replace certain cells with progenitor cells. With emphy-sema, those healing cells are targeted and damaged. If you lose your progenitors, you

photo: science source

r e s e a r c h

Breathing Easier

Emphysema eats away at a human lung.

Research holds promise for innovative treatments for emphysemaBy Catherine O’Neill Grace

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What’s Killing the Bats?

Each spring hibernating bats awaken in caVes around the country, taking their place in a complex ecosystem and consuming hordes of insects. but a deadly skin disease, known as white-nose syndrome, has killed more than a million bats from Vermont to Virginia since it was first identified in a cave near albany, n.y., in 2006.

the nocturnal mammals, the only major predator of night-flying insects, are important because they eat thousands of tons of potentially harmful agricultural pests each year. one big brown bat can gobble up between 3,000 and 7,000 mos-quitoes in a single night.

white-nose syndrome, which gets its name from the ring of white fungus on the muzzle and wings of the affected bats, is killing as much as 90 to 100 percent of the population in a given hibernation site.

wildlife biologists believe that white-nose syndrome is caused by the fungus Geomyces destructans, which thrives in the cold caves where bats sleep away the winter months. for reasons that are not yet understood, the infected bats behave oddly—waking up and flying outdoors in winter, when there are few insects to feed on. awakened from hibernation, the bats lose their winter fat reserves before the season is over and starve.

researchers believe the disease probably spreads from bat to bat. but because it might be carried on clothing and climbing gear brought into caves by spelunkers, the u.s. forest service has closed caves and mines in 33 states while scientists figure out how to control the spread of the disease.

last fall, the u.s. fish and wildlife service preventing extinction program awarded six grants totaling $800,000 to stop the spread of white-nose syndrome. one grant went to cummings school researchers donna e. akiyoshi and alison robbins, g89, V92, who are trying to develop a rapid diagnostic test for the disease.

the work at tufts will generate monoclonal antibodies that would be able to detect the presence of the fungus Geomyces destructans in bat caves, says akiyoshi, a research associate professor of biomedical sciences and the principal investigator on the project. “since many of the caves are difficult to get to, a field-based test will be useful in that samples can be collected and analyzed on-site,” she says. “based on the results, decisions about whether to quarantine the cave can be made quickly.”

white-nose syndrome is “a hugely devastating disease,” says robbins, who works with the cummings school’s center for conservation medicine. she points to a census visit to a cave in western massachusetts in march 2009. “we ex-pected to find 10,000 bats there. we came up with 117.” when they returned to the cave in december, only 14 bats were left, she says.

on another front, researchers are testing treatments for the disease, robbins says, including applying antifungal drugs directly on the bats.

robbins says she remains optimistic that science will come up with a solution. “a lot of people are working on this,” she says. “i think there is even a possibility for developing a vaccine.”

photo: marVin moriarty/usfws

can’t respond to injury any longer.”Hoffman and his colleagues have worked

with lung cells from mice and sheep and with healthy human lung cells obtained through biopsies. Their goal has been to develop ways to grow new progenitor cells from existing healthy cells. Because such cells would be identical to the host lung cells, the diseased lung would be less likely to reject them.

“We are focused on rebuilding the lung,” says Hoffman. “We want the cells to actually build new air sacs.” The idea is that the new progenitor cells would attract “the other two main types of cells—those on the blood side of the lung’s structure and those on the air side.” This could allow fine blood vessels to “run through and pick up oxygen,” less-ening the breathing problems patients with emphysema experience, he says.

The researchers have been able to dem-onstrate that the lab-grown progenitor cells produce everything they hoped they would. “They produce elastin [which allows the lung

cells to expand and contract] and growth factors, and are capable of assembling the scaffolding that other cells can attach to,” Hoffman says. “We have demonstrated that they have the potential to replace damaged cells in the emphysema lung.”

They have also isolated progenitor cells, grown them and put them in mice and sheep with encouraging results. “We have done two different pre-clinical trials in sheep, and both showed that the cells improved blood f low and increased tis-sue mass in the emphysema lung,” says Hoffman. He hopes that at the conclusion of his study, in about five years, the lung-rebuilding technique can be tested safely in human emphysema patients.

“ We are focused on rebuilding the lung. We want the cells to actually build new air sacs.”

—Andrew M. Hoffman

The telltale white fungus on the muzzle

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r e s e a r c h

photos: istock (top); science source

it appears that Just being around babies

is enough to make you act like a mom—at least if you’re a female rat. a study conducted at the cummings school has shown that nulliparous rats—animals that had never given birth or had any experience with young—exposed to foster pups very quickly exhibited typical maternal behaviors. but more than their behavior changed—their brains did, too. it turns out they grew new neurons, or nerve cells.

scientists already knew that exposure to young can stimulate maternal behavior in rats, mice, hamsters, monkeys—and humans. the creation of new neurons, or neurogenesis, has also been shown during pregnancy and lactation in rodents. the big breakthrough in the tufts study is that the neurological change happened in the absence of pregnancy or nursing.

the national institutes of health-funded study, conducted by miyako furuta, a postdoctoral fellow, and robert bridges,

who heads the reproduction and neurobiol-ogy section at the cummings school, was published in Brain Research Bulletin.

“we specifically found that new brain cells were produced as a function of the adoptive female showing parental behavior,” says bridges. the adoptive moms started crouching over the pups, grouping them or carrying them back to the nest. on average, it took about a week of daily exposure to the babies for the rats to begin acting like mothers.

the researchers found that the new neu-rons grew in the area of the brain known as the subventricular zone, which is involved in the production of cells that can affect odor recognition. “new neurons produced in this brain region migrate to the olfactory bulb, where they can become integrated into the olfactory neural network,” says bridges.

“these new neurons may have a role in recognizing pups or associating their smell with the mother’s behavior, so that during lactation or when [the rats] re-produce later and smell pups, they respond faster,” he says.

in continuing his research, bridges will more closely examine whether the new neu-rons play a role in how adoptive moms, as well as mothers that give birth, remember to be maternal when exposed to young later in life. he wants to determine if the adoptive moms, like the biological moms, undergo “a reprogramming of the brain so they respond to pups more readily later on.”

Babies on the Brain

the 4.6 million americans involved in the equine industry may be susceptible to respiratory ailments because of poor air quality in horse barns, according to researchers at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

The study, which surveyed more than 80 people who work in horse barns in New England, found that 50 percent of them had complained of coughing, wheezing or other respiratory ailments in the past year, compared to just 15 percent in a control group of 74 people. The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published in the journal Occupational Medicine.

Lower respiratory illness is well documented in horses, and the amount of dust in barns is typically fingered as the culprit, says Melissa R. Mazan, V93, V94, V98, an associate professor of clini-cal sciences at the Cummings School and the study’s lead author. “Our hope was to see whether this poor air quality affects horse owners, and it appears that it might,” she says.

Mazan and her colleagues at the Cummings School collaborated

with researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Connecticut and the Environmental Protection Agency on the study.

Follow-up work is needed to determine the specific causes of respiratory distress in the barn workers and how best to protect their health, Mazan says. But, she notes, the initial results are striking, and these same ailments may occur among pig, dairy and chicken farmers who also work in environments containing large amounts of organic dust.

Barn workers susceptiBle to respiratory ills

Breathing may not be easy in a horse barn.

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g r a f t o n ta l e s

he sounds of music—and an occasional dog howl—filled the agnes Varis campus center auditorium as talented veterinary students presented a tuneful thank-you to the volunteers of tufts paws for people, a pet

visitation program that serves communities near the cummings school. Veterinary faculty, staff and students work with the program to train teams of people and pets who visit elder-care facilities, the grafton and shrewsbury public library reading programs and a residential program for at-risk adolescents.

“the concert for the animals”—which debuted the veterinary school’s new c3 yamaha concert grand piano—featured pianist melissa a. doolin, V13, playing debussy’s “the children’s corner suite,” and emily a. roye, V13, performing a medley of songs about animals by the american com-poser samuel barber. (agnes Varis, h03, a member of the cummings school’s board of overseers and a tufts trustee emerita, provided major gifts for the auditorium and piano.)

“currently, we have 30 active [paws for people] teams—27 have dogs, two have cats and one has a miniature horse,” reports debra gibbs, a radiology technician who helped launch the program. “the most rewarding part of doing paws for people work for me is the joy that lights up peoples’ faces when they interact with the handlers and animals.”

gibbs is licensed to offer therapy animal workshops and evaluations through the delta society’s pet partners program. if you are interested in learning more about how you and your pet can get involved, send an email to pawsforpeople@tufts.edu or call 508.839.8741.

Musical Paws

T

The audience was all (furry) ears as Melissa Doolin, V13, performed Debussy.

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o n c a m p u s cummings school news

he veterinary life began quite early for susan m. cotter, who started working in a clinic in her hometown outside of Chicago way before she was old enough to drive. “I had to get a work permit because I was under 16,” she says.

“I still keep in touch with Dr. Nevin Berglund, the veterinarian I worked for then,” says Cotter, a Distinguished Professor and clinical oncologist at the Cummings School. “He was a big part of my wanting to be a veterinarian. He

let me come to his clinic and just watch. He didn’t have runs put in yet, so he let me walk all the dogs.”

Cotter continued to work summers at the clinic throughout high school and col-lege and while attending veterinary school at the University of Illinois. After earning her D.V.M. in 1966—one of just four women in a class of 41 students—she headed east for an internship at Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston and stayed on the clinical staff there through the 1970s.

She arrived at Tufts in spring 1981, less than two years after the university opened New England’s only veterinary school. “We didn’t yet have the small animal hospital,” Cotter says. “I was charged with setting up the small animal medicine course for the third-year students, which was about a hun-dred hours of lecture. Dr. Jim Ross [consid-ered one of the school’s founding fathers] and I just kind of created it out of nothing. There was no curriculum committee, and we have built on it ever since.”

Now, nearly three decades later, Cotter has decided to call it a career. Well, almost. Even though she’ll officially “retire” at the end of June, she says she’ll remain active in educating Tufts veterinary students. Beyond the Grafton campus, the veterinary profession itself has been the beneficiary of Cotter’s work, which has advanced animal and human health.

And it all started with the cats.At Angell, Cotter and the Harvard

virologist Max Essex pursued research on cats infected with feline leukemia (FeLV), a retrovirus. Their work was the first to show that viruses that cause leukemia are contagious and suppress the immune sys-tem, causing other health problems. The research led to improved diagnostic tools and a vaccination for FeLV. Cotter calls it “the most important work” she has done.

More signif icantly, their discover-ies had profound implications for people infected with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and spurred the pace of human AIDS research. Cats with feline leukemia, it turns out, were excellent animal models for studying human HIV.

In veterinary oncology, Cotter’s work led to clinical research on using chemotherapy to treat animal cancers. In the 1980s, she

Susan Cotter’s lasting gifts to animal and human health By Catherine O’Neill Grace

A Career Well-lived

T

Sue Cotter with her Boston terrier Brady

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published some of the best early descrip-tions of how canine and feline lymphoma respond to chemotherapy, and those treat-ment protocols were adopted by practicing veterinarians around the world.

“Her work has had an immeasurable impact on feline health and welfare,” says John Berg, chair of clinical sciences at the Cummings School.

Cotter’s breakthroughs in research and clinical care have earned her numerous accolades: Woman Veterinarian of the Year, Beecham Research Award, Purina Research Award, Mark Morris Lifetime Achievement Award, the NIH Transfusion Medicine Academic Award and the Distinguished Service Award from the Association for Veterinary Hematology

But, she says, her greatest professional moments have come in the classroom. “I love the teaching,” she says. “It’s one of the main reasons I came here, and it’s now what I enjoy most. After I retire I will stay active in some way in problem-based learning classes. It’s a lot of fun getting to know the first-year students when they come in, and I plan to continue to do that.”

She won’t have a long commute. Cotter and her husband, retired physician Richard H. Seder, live in North Grafton, about five minutes from campus.

She’ l l a lso take t ime to return to another of her childhood interests. “I grew up with a Boston terrier that I used to show in obedience competition,” she says. “That was mostly in late grade school and high school. For years, I had a cat. Then I got married, and my husband had a cat, so we had two cats.” After their last cat died a couple of years ago, she and her hus-band switched species. She’s now showing their Boston terrier Brady in obedience competitions.

Sue Cotter’s research led to improved diagnosis and a vaccination for feline leukemia.

the term “global pandemic” has become a familiar one during outbreaks of

infectious diseases such as sars, avian flu and most recently, h1n1. now the u.s. agency for international development (usaid) is launching a multimillion dollar global effort to combat zoonotic diseases, which first emerge in animals and threaten both animal and human health. tufts will play a critical role in this public health campaign.

the cummings school has been tapped by usaid to be part of a multidisciplinary team that will receive a grant of up to $185 million over five years. their goal is to create better communication and training programs among veterinarians, physicians and public health officials in regions where new diseases are likely to emerge. the respond project, as it is called—one of five in usaid’s new emerging pandemic threats program—will also draw on expertise from tufts faculty at the school of medicine, the feinstein international center and the center for the enhancement of learning and teaching.

the project will identify available resources in disease hotspots such as the congo river basin, southeast asia, amazonia and the gangetic plain, which stretches through pakistan, india, bangladesh and nepal. “the tufts faculty already has exist-ing links with many of the countries involved in the program,” says robyn alders, the principal investigator on the usaid grant and an associate professor of international veterinary medicine at the cummings school.

the school is no stranger to international efforts to combat disease. in 1983, vet-erinarians and faculty at tufts’ fletcher school were asked by usaid to optimize cattle production in niger, leading to participation in a long-term effort that successfully eradicated the deadly cattle virus rinderpest. and since 2006, a team of cummings school veterinarians has been working with the un food and agriculture organization and the indonesian ministry of agriculture to monitor and control highly pathogenic avian influenza in indonesia.

“respond unites veterinarians, physicians and public health professionals and others for the purpose of preventing and controlling diseases that may be transmitted between animals and people,” says Joann m. lindenmayer, V85, an associate profes-sor of public health at cummings and co-principal investigator on the usaid grant.

the respond team will begin by developing training programs to investigate and respond to suspected emerging disease outbreaks, in collaboration with in-country partners. then they will work with local institutions such as schools of medicine, veterinary medicine and public health, min-istries of health, agriculture and natural resources and the private sector in the high-risk regions.

“we will lend a hand through short-term support of partner insti-tutions as they develop the skills and expertise needed to assume responsibility for disease preven-tion and control efforts within their own countries and regions,” says lindenmayer.

Pandemic Responders

illustration: otto steininger

24 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e s p r i n g 2 0 1 0

o n c a m p u s

lawrence s. bacow, who has advanced Tufts University’s lead-ership in teaching, research and public service, while champion-

ing access to higher education, will step down in June 2011.

Bacow took office as Tufts’ 12th presi-dent on September 1, 2001. From the after-shocks of 9/11 to the economic challenges of the recent recession, he has consistently led the university according to the funda-mental principle that he outlined in his seminal essay “A University Poised”—that all decisions should be based on what would help Tufts “to attract, recruit and retain the very best students and the very best faculty.”

In announcing his decision, Bacow noted, “I have often said that 10 years is about the right term for a university presi-dent. It is long enough for one individual to have a substantial impact but not so long that the institution, or the president, becomes comfortable.”

During Bacow’s tenure, Tufts built on its historic strengths to enhance the undergraduate experience, deepen graduate and professional education and critical research, broaden international engagement and foster active citizenship

throughout the university. Tufts also made significant financial progress, raising more than $1 billion for its current $1.2 billion Beyond Boundaries campaign. The uni-versity’s endowment grew by nearly 86 percent from 2002 through December 2009, to $1.26 billion.

Bacow has been nationally recognized as an advocate for increasing access to higher education. As other institutions began expanding merit aid to gain an edge in competing for the most talented students, Tufts never wavered in its com-mitment to need-based financial aid for undergraduates. “It is far from clear to me how society is better off when scarce financial aid resources are diverted from the neediest students to those who are not needy by any measure, simply to redis-tribute high-scoring students among our institutions,” Bacow told the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education in 2006.

Since 2001, financial aid for undergrad-uate, graduate and professional students has increased by almost 94 percent. In 2008, Tufts launched the first university-wide program in America to ease the debt of graduates pursuing careers in public service and the nonprofit sector.

A presidential search committee, headed by Peter Dolan, A78, A08P, vice chair of the Tufts Board of Trustees, will work with the executive search firm Isaacson Miller. Deborah T. Kochevar, dean of the Cummings School, is serving on the search committee.

For updates on the search, go to http://presidentsearch.tufts.edu.

Presidential search

President Lawrence S. Bacow

Bacow to step down in 2011, after leading Tufts for a decade

photo: brian loeb, a06

Veterinarians at the foster hospital for small animals, the hospital for large animals and the tufts ambulatory service in woodstock, conn., treated more than 32,000 cases last year. their patients included:

19,560 dogs5,431 cats2,236 farm calls1,571 horses and donkeys565 pet birds

190 llamas and alpacas38 goats7 pigs6 sheep4 hamsters and

other small mammals

1 giraffe

By all counts

source: 2009 american association of Veterinary medical colleges surVey

providing the means for excellenceb e y o n d b o u n d a r i e s

photo: andrew cunningham s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 25

hat better crescendo for the new agnes varis Auditorium than a concert grand piano? And who more fitting to make the gift than Agnes Varis herself? Make no mistake: It’s not just the auditorium that bears her

name. A board member of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Jazz Foundation and the Metropolitan Opera, Varis is an active philanthropist in these arts organiza-tions. Programs that educate children and offer low-cost orchestra seating for senior citizens are among those she has underwritten at the Met. She was also recently named to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

The piano selection committee, which included representatives from the

Cummings School as well as from the music department in Tufts’ School of Arts and Sciences, expressed delight at partici-pating in a process they knew would bring new creativity to campus life.

“It was a thrill to be part of the team blessed with the opportunity to select just the right piano for the lovely Varis Auditorium,” says Joseph Auner, professor and chair of music at Tufts, who co-led the committee that chose a Yamaha Concert Grand Piano.

Should anyone think that veterinary medicine and music are mutually exclu-sive, they need only ask the school’s Board of Overseers, which was treated to a piano concert of three George Winston pieces by Peter Orzech, V12, during its meeting on campus last fall. Orzech was asked to per-form when a glance at the log book kept near the grand piano identified him as a frequent player.

“The Agnes Varis Auditorium is not just about lectures and conference presenta-tions. It also has great potential as an artis-tic venue,” says Dean Deborah T. Kochevar. “Enhancing the facility with this magnifi-cent instrument affirms that dimension.”

“Seeing our auditorium f il led with students enjoying the sounds of our new grand piano brought tears to my eyes,” says Sheila Moffat, manager of the Department of Environmental and Population Health, who began working at the veterinary school when there was just one classroom. Her participation in the piano selection, she says, capped years of working toward a student-oriented campus.

Who says veterinary medicine and music don’t belong together?By Leslie Limon

Grand Entrance

W

“ Seeing our audi-torium filled with students enjoying the sounds of our new grand piano brought tears to my eyes.”

— Sheila Moffat, manager, department of environmental

and population health

b e y o n d b o u n d a r i e s

26 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 photo: shutterstock

though animal shelters have been around for more than a century, the arrival of shelter medicine as a veterinary specialty

is recent. The aggressive spay/neuter pro-grams of today’s shelters supplant the once-common practice of euthanizing animals within days of their arrival. Back then, some animal lovers seeking an alternative would start their own rescue-and-adopt operations. Maintained by private dona-tions, they were known only by word of mouth.

One of those operations sat in the back-yard of philanthropist Elmina Sewall, of Kennebunk, Maine, a passionate animal welfare advocate. With her financial sup-port, a true shelter replaced her home-grown operation, evolving into the Animal Welfare Society, a regional facility in West Kennebunk. She also provided scholarship support for veterinary students at Tufts.

It was only fitting, then, that the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, established after its namesake passed away five years ago, donated $75,000 to the Cummings School’s growing shelter medicine program. The program partners veterinarians in Tufts’ Center for Animals and Public Policy and the Department of Clinical Sciences with several organizations, including the Animal

Rescue League of Boston and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The program’s director, Emily McCobb, V00, MS02, says she’s delighted with the “extremely generous gift,” which is an unrestricted one, meaning the funds can be used to support the program’s most-pressing needs, such as curriculum devel-opment. McCobb says current goals are to acquaint students with the special needs of shelter animals and collaborate with part-ner organizations to offer an elective course in shelter medicine. The gift will also sup-port the program as it looks to address the surgical needs of animals in the Springfield, Boston and Worcester areas.

The foundation’s gift underpins a field that continues to grow as animal shel-ter operations move more toward rescue, rehabilitation and placement of animals in permanent homes. Spay/neuter procedures remain an important facet of shelter medi-cine, but shelter veterinarians also treat the consequences, both physical and emotional, of every situation that lands an animal in a shelter. And because animals are staying in shelters longer, veterinarians need to pre-vent, control and treat diseases that arise in

a group housing environment.“The emerging field of shelter medicine,

with its great needs, is right along the lines of the causes [Elmina Sewall] cared deeply about,” says Jay Espy, executive director of the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation. He says he hopes to see shelter medicine programs at the Cummings School and elsewhere forge tighter relationships between the vet-erinary and rescue communities.

Kennebunk veterinarian Margaret Shively, V84, who cared for Elmina Sewall’s beloved dogs, believes her client would have been delighted to support the Cummings School’s shelter medicine program. “The number of animals exceeds the number of loving homes for them at any given time,” she says. “Most haven’t been spayed or neutered, and that’s key, both for reducing overpopulation and enhancing adoptabil-ity. So for students to get that clinical expe-rience is great. Anything that promotes the welfare of the dogs and cats surrendered is a wonderful thing.”

—Leslie Limon

sewall Foundation supports training in shelter Medicine

for the eighth year in a row, tufts university has received a coveted four-star rating from charity navigator, america’s largest independent evaluator of charities. the “highly rated” ranking is a reflection of the university’s ability to effec-tively manage and grow its finances.

only 1 percent of the nation’s charities have achieved such a long record of four-star ratings, “indicating that tufts university consistently executes its mission in a fiscally responsible way, and outperforms most other charities in america,” wrote ken berger, president and ceo of charity navigator, in a letter to tufts president lawrence s. bacow.

each year charity navigator highlights the work of efficient charities, providing donors with information that gives them greater confidence in their philanthropic choices. to see tufts’ online rating page, visit go.tufts.edu/charity.

tufts receives 4-star charity rating

s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e 27photos: andrew cunningham

WanT To help us?

To advance veterinary educa-

tion and research that helps

animals everywhere, please

consider supporting the

Cummings School of Veterinary

Medicine at Tufts University.

You can make your gift online

at tufts.edu/givenow, call

508.839.7905 or send a

check (payable to Trustees of

Tufts) to: Cummings School

of Veterinary Medicine, 200

Westboro Road, North Grafton,

MA 01536.

Thank you for including the

Cummings School in your giving

plans.

the first time sandy niles needed to bring marble, her irish Sport Horse, to the Hospital for Large Animals, she was distressed to hear that it was closed. The hospital was experiencing a salmonella outbreak, and had to turn Niles and other clients away because its

isolation facilities were filled.The next time Niles had better luck. She says she was “very impressed” with

the care provided to animals and the consideration given to families. “It really is quite something.” Grateful that Marble was successfully treated for colic, Niles asked Daniela Bedenice, the attending veterinarian, how she could help the Cummings School. One item on the hospital’s priority list struck a chord: an isolation facility.

A new isolation unit would expand the hospital’s ability to better serve its clients, especially during the busy end-of-summer season, when show horses and equine athletes are most vulnerable to infections. The design and con-struction was funded with a $3.7 million grant from The Manton Foundation, a charitable trust created by Niles’ grandparents and now led by Niles and her family. During the planning and design phase, Tufts sought advice from experts in infectious disease control and its own faculty and staff to ensure that the new isolation unit would elevate the quality of care provided to large animals in the region.

The new six-stall, free-standing unit, dedicated in September 2009, quadru-ples clinicians’ capacity to manage infectious diseases, including salmonellosis, strangles and herpesvirus-1 in horses, and the parasitic disease cryptosporidi-osis in calves, goats and alpacas. Each self-contained stall has its own ventila-tion unit and two stalls feature large-animal hoists. Niles calls it “the house that Marble built.”

Mary Rose Paradis, an associate professor and section head of Large Animal Medicine and Surgery, says she has been dreaming about a facility like this for two decades. “It’s absolutely state-of-the-art,” she says. “We had our ideas about what we wanted, and then took the best practices of all that we saw and put them together.”

When Marble visited Tufts again for an MRI, attending veterinarian Jose M. Garcia-Lopez asked Niles if he could keep the horse’s shoes, which had been removed for the procedure. “I have to admit I was a bit taken aback,” says Niles. “Normally you don’t keep a horse’s shoes unless you think it might be their last shoeing cycle.”

Turns out it was a request Niles couldn’t deny. Marble’s shoes are a permanent part of the Cummings School land-scape, set in the concrete out-side the isolation unit to honor The Manton Foundation gift and Marble’s role in bringing the need to Niles’ attention.

The House That Marble Built

Marble’s shoes at the entrance to the new isolation unit.

28 t u f ts ve t e r i na ry m e d i c i n e s p r i n g 2 0 1 0 photos: science source

advice for our readersa s k t h e v e t

hoW To reach usMain hospital switchboard and after-hours emergencies 508.839.5395 Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals, appointment desk 508.839.5395Hospital for Large Animals, appointment desk 508.839.5395Tufts Ambulatory Service, Woodstock, Ct. 860.974.2780Tufts VETS, Walpole, Mass. 508.668.5454Wildlife Clinic 508.839.7918Directions to Tufts (ext. 84650) 508.839.5395Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine Administration 508.839.5302Veterinary Student Admissions Office 508.839.7920Veterinary Alumni Relations 508.839.7976Cummings Veterinary Fund 508.839.7909Tufts Pet Loss Support Hotline 508.839.7966Continuing Education 508.887.4723Public Relations 508.839.7910

Web site: www.tufts.edu/vet

If you are interested in learning more

about how you can support the Cum-

mings School of Veterinary Medicine,

contact: Shelley Rodman, director of

veterinary development and alumni

relations, at 508.839.7907, or email:

shelley.rodman@tufts.edu.

tick talkIf it’s spring, it must be tick season. Michael Stone, an internist at the Foster Hospital, answers a reader’s question about how to manage the nasty critters.

Q:What can I do to protect my pets—and my family—from ticks?A:

most pet owners are concerned about the presence of ticks on their animals and themselves. as my 8-year-old daughter says, “they’re gross!” unfortunately tick control is more difficult than flea control. even with the use of anti-tick products,

you’ll still f