While clients of the small animal hospital are waiting to get a diagnosis on a pet who may or may not have cancer, a crack team of cytopathologists are working behind the scenes at the OSU Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL) to provide answers as quickly as possible.

That team of experts includes Dr. Elena Gorman, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology, Dr. Sue Tornquist, Interim Dean and Clinical Pathologist, and Dr. Austin Viall, Clinical Pathology Resident. Their work involves the examination under a microscope of preparations made from body fluids or solid tissue that is sent to them by doctors at the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

“In the course of a day, we take multiple ultrasound-guided, fine needle aspirates and within a few hours, or less if needed, we can get an answer if the patient has potential cancer or not,” says Dr. Susanne Stieger-Vanegas, Assistant Professor of veterinary diagnostic imaging. “Without their tremendous expertise and knowledge, we would not get a quick answer on what we are dealing with,” says Stieger-Vanegas.

Fine needle aspiration is a rapid method for determining if a solid lump of tissue is benign or malignant. By using a syringe to extract cells from a suspicous growth, then examining them under a microscope, an experienced cytopathologist can look for the presence of cell abnormalities and make a diagnosis. It is faster and less invasive than a biopsy.

In addition to the rewards of helping to treat and save pets, there are other aspects of cytopathology that make this team passionate about their work. “Cells are really very beautiful,’ says Dr. Tornquist. “I’m a big mystery fan. Looking for patterns in the cell types, and other things we see in a cytology sample, is like trying to put together all the clues in a mystery and solving it. And at the end of this process, you can have an impact on the lives of animals and their people.”

One advantage of being a VDL pathologist, as opposed to working at a laboratory that services hundreds of veterinary hospitals, is that the patients and doctors are located right down the hall. “I love that I have a plethora of specialists who I can turn to for information and education,” says Gorman. “Being associated with a teaching hospital makes our diagnostic capabilities so much stronger. It’s invaluable to be able to discuss the clinical aspects of a case and even go look at the patient if I so choose,” she says. “I can’t imagine working anywhere else.”

In addition to diagnosing disease, the pathologists also participate in numerous research projects and teach students. “I love teaching and working with students, house officers and clinicians,” says Gorman. “It’s so much more fun to share the experience because, well, cells are cool!”

Woody was rescued from an abusive owner when he was just a puppy. Adopted by Mari McGovern and her family, the gentle Golden Retriever was able to blossom on their ranch in the Willamette Valley, and his difficult start in life was followed by many happy years of kids, Frisbees, and exploring the forest.

Then in 2010, Woody was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer that is more common in dogs than people. McGovern’s vet referred her to the oncology unit at the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH). There, doctors told her that, in order to stop the spread of the cancer, Woody’s left rear leg would have to be amputated. They were heartbroken, and to make things worse, it was just a few days before Christmas. “They took him in on Christmas eve and performed the surgery that saved his life,” says McGovern.

When her family returned to the hospital on Christmas day to see how Woody was recovering, they were amazed when he came running out with his usual happy face!

Osteosarcoma is challenging to treat, in both humans and dogs (it tends to resist chemotherapy), so Woody’s prognosis was not great: another year at best. Fortunately, the VTH had just agreed to collaborate on a research project on osteosarcoma that offered more hope for Woody.

Developed by Drs. Charles Keller and Lara Davis at the Oregon Health & Science University, the Osteosarcoma Research Project enrolls OSU dogs for clinical trials of a new approach to treatment:  Instead of choosing chemotherapy drugs based on a best guess of what would work, doctors took a sample of Woody’s cancer cells and sent them to OHSU where a large selection of the latest cancer drugs were tested on cell cultures developed from his tissue. The drug that had the biggest impact was selected for Woody.

“We try to increase the chances of hitting the right drug at the start, rather than doing a shotgun approach, “ says VTH Dr. Shay Bracha. “Before, if you had 100 patients with osteosarcoma, they would all get the same drug because the assumption was that bone cancer all behaves the same. But we know for many years now that the cancer of each individual is very different.”

Usually the average survival time for a dog diagnosed with osteosarcoma is about a year. Woody lived for nearly three years.  When you consider that this is one-fifth of a dog’s life span, it was quite a dramatic result and very inspiring for the doctors collaborating on the project. “It was an impressive remission,” says Bracha.

In his favor, Woody’s disease was diagnosed before there were signs of cancer in his lungs. This rarely happens; by the time most dogs see a vet, x-rays show the osteosarcoma has spread to the lungs. This was the case for another patient in the osteosarcoma study: a big, furry German Shepard named Nuit.

Nuit is currently receiving the same personalized treatment that Woody had, but Nuit already showed tumors in his lungs by the time he came to the VTH. He was given a matched drug and in less than a year, two of the masses in his lungs had disappeared completely. “Usually, when you can see lung masses, the progression of the disease is very fast – three months and they are dead,” says Bracha. “He is a year out and doing fantastic.” In fact, last month his x-ray was completely clear.

Most of the dogs in the osteosarcoma project have had equally good results, but not all. “We still need to figure out many things,” says Bracha, “but when it works, it is phenomenal.

Osteosarcoma is also a devastating disease in children – in fact, although it only accounts for 2% of cancer cases, it is responsible for 10% of all pediatric cancer deaths. The information gathered in the joint OHSU/OSU osteosarcoma project will benefit human treatment also. “They are doing some of these trials in children as well, but we can learn a lot from the dogs,” says Bracha. “Statistically, there are many more dogs with this disease than children. Because the progression of the disease is very, very similar in the dog, it makes sense to study the disease in both species.” Another benefit: Dogs have shorter lifespans so the study can collect data fast.

OSU has completed the pilot phase of the study. Currently, Dr. Bracha and another OSU researcher, Dr. Milan Milovancev, are fundraising to finance the next phase. “We still have a lot of data to collect,” says Bracha. “We have to get a large number of patients from different institutions – that is always the gold standard to do a multi-institutional study with big cohorts of patients to have statistically significant findings.”

Dr. Bracha has been treating dogs with cancer for nearly ten years. “We get very, very attached to our patients. We see them on a weekly basis for months, years sometimes. They become a big part of our lives so it is devastating when we lose them, and it’s a huge celebration when they surpass the average survival rate and do better,” he says. “Then they come and they wag their tail.” Despite the emotional roller coaster, Dr. Bracha views oncology as his mission. “It’s a privilege to do something that may change the survival or prognosis for dogs and for people,” he says.

Woody died last spring. Although they miss him very much, his family will always remember the contribution he made to science. “We were so fortunate to be given the opportunity to be part of the program,” say McGovern. “The experimental drugs allowed us two-and-a-half more years with him, and for that we will be eternally grateful. We hope the information gathered from Woody’s case study will be helpful to children and teens facing this terrible disease. Woody would have wanted it that way!”

It doesn’t sound very enjoyable, but 18,000 of your fellow citizens have signed up to participate in the American Gut Project  ̶̶  before it has even started.

Researchers at universities around country will be recruiting large numbers of people to contribute samples of the microbes that live in their intestines. The goal of the project is to collect a large database of information about these bugs, and they will use genome sequencing to differentiate and identify hundreds of different species.

With the advent of microprocessors in the 1990’s, computers were able to handle massive amounts of information. This allowed scientists to take a small peice of DNA and map the entire genetic code of an organism in a process called genome sequencing. In the last decade, improvements in the technology behind this process have made it more accessible and less expensive, and a whole new branch of biomedical research has resulted: The study of the microbial community in a human intestine.

In the intestines, billions and billions of microbes, with colorful names like Bifidobacterium infantis and Lactobacillus acidophilus, live and function in a symbiotic relationship with each other, and with your own cells. Many of the critters that live in your gut cannot be grown in a laboratory test tube so their function, or even their existence, was unknown before genome sequencing. Now that scientists know what is there, they are discovering how important these bugs are in digesting our food, building our immune systems, maintaining stable glucose levels, and other jobs that are critically important to good health.

At the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine, in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Natalia Shulzhenko is working on the frontier of this new science. Trained as a medical doctor, Shulzhenko became interested in the bugs that inhabit the gut while working at the National Institute of Health. One of her projects discovered a three-way interaction, or crosstalk, between the immune system, the intestinal lining, and intestinal bugs. When this communication was disrupted in mice, it led to poor absorption of fats and malnutrition. “We realized that what happens in the gut is not only about our own cells but about the microbes that live there. They have huge powers,” she says.

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A little, nine-pound cat with a dicey history is trying to give Benny Beaver a run for his money in the mascot department. The cat’s journey from critically-ill stray to Beaver Believer began at the Oregon Humane Society in Portland, Oregon.

A unique partnership exists between the Oregon Humane Society (OHS) and the College of Veterinary Medicine at OSU. It began in 2007 with the opening of the Animal Medical Learning Center (AMLC), a full-service animal hospital adjoining the OHS shelter.  At the center, veterinary students from OSU live onsite in dorms and take two-week clinical courses in primary care as part of their graduation requirement. They join OSU veterinary faculty and the OHS medical staff, working on everything from diagnoses to surgery. It’s a win-win collaboration and, as the first program of its kind in the nation, has become a model for other universities to follow. The benefits of the program to veterinary students and the Humane Society are obvious but for Pebble the cat, the partnership between OSU and OHS was a life saver.

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The old cinder-block building on the Benton County Fairgrounds has held a variety of events over the years from holiday bazaars to library book sales, but on a warm, sunny day in November, the floor was covered with an unusual display: row after row of folding tables holding dozens of blanket-covered crates.

Out in the parking lot, pulled up close to the front entry, was a big, white trailer with an enormous graphic of a cat on its side. Shuttling between the trailer and the building, a steady stream of veterinary and pre-veterinary students held unconscious cats bundled into blankets. The Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon (FCCO) had come to town.

The FCCO uses a trap-neuter-return strategy to combat the exploding growth of feral cats in Oregon. The coalition supplies humane traps to property owners who bring captured cats into a clinic for sterilizing. It is the only proven way of reducing the feral cat population and it depends on the kindness of many volunteers including the veterinarians who perform the surgeries.

At the fall clinic in Corvallis, six different veterinarians worked in the operating room of the big white trailer performing nearly 100 sterilization surgeries in just half a day. OSU students from the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) prepped the cats for surgery, moved them to the recovery area, and monitored their progress. The cats were returned to property owners for release the next day.

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Ometepe Island is a tropical jewel in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. It is largely undeveloped and reached only by a forty-minute ferry ride over notoriously rough water. The people of Ometepe have little money and rely on their animals for food and transportation, yet there is no resident veterinarian on the island. This means that many of the domestic animals suffer from disease and malnutrition.

Every year, for seven years in a row, the OSU student chapter of the International Veterinary Students Association (IVSA) has travelled to Ometepe to help.

OSU veterinary medicine students begin organizing their fall trek to Ometepe in the spring. They start early because it is a huge logistical endeavor to move dozens of volunteers, plus huge amounts of equipment and supplies, to an island 4,000 miles away. Laura Meadows is a second-year veterinary student who made her first trip to Nicaragua last fall. She was surprised by how well the complex project functioned. “We brought together students, faculty, staff, private-practice vets, and massive amounts of supplies and equipment, then transported everything and everybody via plane, bus, boat, taxi, and horse to a remote town on a small island in a third-world country. We had the trust of the community to bring their animals from miles away and we successfully treated over 300 animals. Then we cleaned up, packed all our things, and successfully got everything and everybody back home. Whew!”

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