Bellwether 90 | Fall 2018

FALL 2018 #90

THE MAGAZINE OF PENN VET

BEGINNINGS Meet Dean Andrew Hoffman Experience the Power of Penn Vet

COMPASSIONATE CARE UNBRIDLED INNOVATION

DEAN HOFFMAN’S INAUGURAL MESSAGE

BREAKING BOUNDARIES, REVOLUTIONIZING VETERINARY MEDICINE

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am honored to address you as the dean of Penn Vet. I fell in love with animals at New Bolton Center when I was a kid. The big-hearted field service (dairy) professor Dick Bartholomew, a family friend, introduced me to large animal practice, which instantly grew as a passion. To be the steward of Penn Vet, including New Bolton and its field services, is a distinct privilege.

Penn Vet is one of the greatest veterinary schools in the world. In my new role, I am bolstered by the School’s illustrious past and supported by its incomparable faculty, passionate Board of Overseers, enthusiastic students, and committed alumni. And I am indebted to my predecessor, Dean Joan Hendricks, who helped the School strengthen ties between veterinary and human medicine, grow research programs, and increase giving.

Part of what excites me about joining Penn Vet is our proximity to the rest of the University. Writer Eric Weiner recently coined the term “Geography of Genius” to describe physical areas that have historically cultivated creativity, ingenuity, and innovation. Arguably, Penn is such a place, with genius mapped across its campus.

This geography is an important element of Penn Vet’s future. Veterinarians ask questions with implications for animal, human, and environmental health. We can’t answer them in a vacuum. Cross-disciplinary collaboration with peer practitioners and researchers is critical in tackling monumental global challenges, from chronic and fatal disease to food security, biosecurity to biodiversity, climate change to antimicrobial stewardship.

As I define my plans for the School, breaking down walls that have historically separated different disciplines — an effort Dean Robert Marshak started years ago and Dean Hendricks carried further — will remain a priority.

Our field must also push boundaries in clinical settings. It’s incredibly compelling that veterinarians can be access points

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to human health and well-being. People seek our knowledge and care when their pets or livestock are ill. We get to know these animal owners, and this relationship becomes an opportunity to help them find or access health care for their own lives.

Toward these goals, the School must transform our curriculum to educate 21st-century students for traditional clinical practice and emerging career pathways. One of the major focuses of my first year will be working with my colleagues to innovate how we prepare future veterinarians to work in a world characterized by globalization, population growth, and rapid technological advances.

The focus will be an innovative curriculum that enables students to create career pathways adapted to the new world.

Part of this effort will be strengthened by making veterinary medicine more inclusive. To thrive, Penn Vet’s student body and our profession need to reflect the world in which we live. We’ve done a good job of attracting women to veterinary medicine. Now we need to do a much better job of inviting underrepresented communities.

This is an exhilarating time for Penn Vet, one holding revolutionary promise for veterinary medicine. The recently launched The Power of Penn Campaign will attract new resources for the School, enabling us to reach ambitious but attainable goals. You represent the School’s excellence and can help shape its vibrant future. Your support and counsel are critical. I look forward to fruitful conversations and working together in the years to come.

Dean Andrew Hoffman The Gilbert S. Kahn Dean of Veterinary Medicine

bellwether OFFICE OF ADVANCEMENT, ALUMNI RELATIONS, AND COMMUNICATIONS Assistant Dean of Advancement, Alumni Relations, and Communications Carol Pooser Director, Communications and Marketing Martin J. Hackett Director of Annual Giving and Advancement Services Mary Berger Director of Alumni Relations Shannon Groves

INSIDE

Director of Development for Companion Animals Helen Radenkovic Director of Development for New Bolton Center Margaret Leardi Director of Development and Board Relations Jillian Marcussen Associate Director of Major Gifts Neva Graham Associate Director, Communications for New Bolton Center Hannah Kleckner Web Communications Manager Carole Cloud

FEATURES

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Assistant Director of Institutional Events Brittany Tinsley

EET DR. ANDREW M HOFFMAN, GILBERT S. KAHN DEAN OF VETERINARY MEDICINE T HE POWER OF PENN VET

2 Dean’s Message 18

Donor Profile

22 Research 26 Faculty News 38 Events 43 Alumni News 45 Class Notes

Assistant Director of Annual Giving and Advancement Services Barbara Belt Communications Coordinator John Donges Advancement Services Coordinator Sarah Trout Administrative Assistant Lizbeth Velez Editor Martin J. Hackett Contributing Editor Sacha Adorno Contributors Sacha Adorno Katherine Unger Baillie Lauren Hertzler Hannah Kleckner David Levin Ron Ozio Jacob Williamson-Rea Designer Anne Marie Kane

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Please address your correspondence to: Martin J. Hackett University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine 3800 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6010 215-898-1475 mhackett@vet.upenn.edu None of these articles is to be reproduced in any form without the permission of the School.

Bellwether has been digitized!

You can now read Bellwether back issues dating to the magazine’s beginnings in 1981. Visit repository.upenn.edu/bellwether

ABOUT THE COVER Dean Andrew Hoffman is Penn Vet’s 13th dean. The acclaimed researcher, clinician, teacher, and mentor assumed the position in August.

Photo by John Donges

© Copyright 2018 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and seeks talented students, faculty, and staff from diverse backgrounds. The University of Pennsylvania does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, color, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or status as a Vietnam Era Veteran or disabled veteran in the administration of educational policies, programs or activities; admissions policies; scholarship and loan awards; athletic, or other University administered programs or employment. Questions or complaints regarding this policy should be directed to: Executive Director, Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs, Sansom Place East, 3600 Chestnut Street, Suite 228, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6106 or by phone at 215-898-6993 (Voice) or 215-898-7803 (TDD).

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MEET DR. ANDREW HOFFMAN, GILBERT S. KAHN DEAN OF VETERINARY MEDICINE

BY RON OZIO

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On August 1, Dr. Andrew Hoffman became Penn Vet’s 13th dean, assuming the mantle from Dr. Joan Hendricks upon her 2018 retirement.

An acclaimed researcher, clinician, teacher, and mentor, Hoffman served since 2012 as Director of the Regenerative Medicine Laboratory and Professor of Large Animal Internal Medicine at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University before coming to Penn Vet. “Andy’s career,” said Penn President Amy Gutmann, “exemplifies the enormous potential of an integrated One Health approach to biomedicine: uniting clinicians and scientists from multiple professions and perspectives to increase knowledge and drive improvements in global public health, human and animal well-being, and environmental sustainability and resilience.”

“He has a long and distinguished track record and an exciting vision for the role of veterinarians and veterinary schools in research universities and society,” she continued.

At Tufts, Hoffman energetically contributed to all areas of veterinary research, teaching, and clinical care. His leadership of regenerative medicine and stem cell research programs resulted in important contributions to both animal and human health, demonstrating the profoundly positive impact of veterinary research. He regularly mentored faculty with an interest in clinical translational research and helped colleagues fully appreciate the career options available to them thanks to the versatile skills provided by a veterinary education.

Hoffman helped build and lead Tufts’ first outpatient pulmonary function testing laboratory for equine and canine patients in the world, which provided world-class care for animal patients while also making important contributions in developing animal models of human pulmonary disease. The ongoing revolution in the treatment of severe human emphysema — increasing length and quality of life for patients and decreasing the morbidity and mortality of lung volume reduction treatment — traces in part to the work of Hoffman and his colleagues.

From 2005 to 2012, he served as director of the Stem Cell Laboratory. Additionally, he led the Tufts Lung Function Laboratory for more than 20 years and served for five years as director of the Tufts Equine Sports Medicine Program.

The Wilmington, Delaware, native has significant clinical experience in large animal (dairyequine) practice and caring for and investigating a diversity of animals, including dogs, cats, horses, sheep, camelids, rodents, dolphins, and wildlife.

Hoffman, his wife Dr. Julie Ellis, and their two children, moved to the Philadelphia area in mid-summer. Ellis is an expert in wildlife health and has joined Penn Vet’s faculty. She directs the Northeast Wildlife Disease Cooperative and will bring the cooperative to Penn Vet, where she’ll study different aspects of wildlife health and biosecurity.

“Andy’s career, exemplifies the enormous potential of an integrated One Health approach to biomedicine: uniting clinicians and scientists from multiple professions and perspectives to increase knowledge and drive improvements in global public health, human and animal wellbeing, and environmental sustainability and resilience.”

— Penn President Amy Gutmann

Dean Hoffman shakes hands with Carla Chieffo, V’86, PhD (GR’98), at a recent Dean’s Alumni Council meeting.

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GET TO KNOW DEAN HOFFMAN

BY SACHA ADORNO

Bellwether sat down with Hoffman on his first day — a typically hot and humid late summer one in Philadelphia — to talk about becoming dean, the future of veterinary medicine, career highs, and more.

You grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and went to the University of Delaware for undergrad so this is kind of a “homecoming” to the area — how does it feel?

This region has changed a lot since I was a child. It’s not very familiar to me anymore — although the summer climate is! Growing up, my family didn’t make our way to Philadelphia very often, except to go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Zoo, plus occasional Phillies games. So, I’m excited to get to know the city with Julie and our kids.

Coming to Penn Vet closes a circle for me. My father, a research scientist at DuPont, worked with Penn Vet professor Dr. Dick Bartholomew’s wife Pat. For decades Dr. Bartholomew was a beloved food animal ambulatory professor at New Bolton Center.

As a kid, I had some curiosity about veterinary medicine, but it was the typical 13-year-old reading James Herriot or Dr. Dolittle kind of curiosity. To encourage a deeper interest, my father sent me out to ride with Dick at New Bolton Center on weekends or holidays. Here I was this suburban kid seeing his first calving and picking up feed and smelling the stalls; I loved it. I saw a career path there. Although in high school, I thought I’d be a musician – I was a jazz trumpet player — I did end up going the biology route in college.

While it’s too soon to reveal your plan for Penn Vet, generally speaking, where do you see veterinary medicine in 10 or 20 years?

Veterinarians will continue to provide medical care to companion and food animals. The need for private practice providers will never go away, nor should it. Beyond that, I see our profession expanding much more into areas that have traditionally been siloed.

I talk a bit about this in my Dean’s Message [page 4]: As a field, we’ll be much more integrated with human medicine, dentistry, social policy, environmental science, engineering, and other disciplines. The One Health movement is the foundation for this work, and a decade or two from now we’ll see amazing innovation around this concept. I do believe we are primed for this radical transformation.

For students, this will mean new, tailored, and unique career pathways. For researchers and educators, there will be more impactful collaboration. And practitioners will have opportunities to broaden their reach from animal to human health.

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You’re interested in the role veterinarians can play in the health of local communities, particularly in underserved urban and rural areas. Tell us more.

One of the things I find most incredible about our profession is that we can serve as access points to health care for people. In rural or urban America, animals, whether they’re for companionship or agriculture, need care. As providers of this care, veterinarians meet people who may not, for any number of reasons, seek medical care for themselves.

When I was in practice, I saw the risks my longtime farmer clients took while farming — not only environmentally, but also physically. And, although they cared for their animals, many farmers didn’t seek physicians for their own health.

As animal doctors, veterinarians get to know owners, which makes us witnesses to how different environments may affect the health of individuals and the communities in which they live. I believe veterinarians in the future will play a larger role in identifying community health needs and improving access and outcomes, for example, in rural and urban areas that are underserved.

Dean Hoffman, faculty, and students get to know each other.

“I believe veterinarians in the future will play a larger role in identifying community health needs and improving access and outcomes, for example, in rural and urban areas that are underserved.”

—Dean Andrew Hoffman

What are you most proud of in your pre-Penn Vet career?

Mentoring or training people who have gone on to do extraordinary things. It’s very satisfying as a researcher and teacher to know I’ve stimulated people to ask questions that have led them to interesting, inventive, and successful careers.

My career evolved over time, and I’m also very proud that every six or seven years I would do something innovative that had conceptual outcomes. One example is the work my Tufts lab did with a group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. We spent more than a decade developing a method to treat human emphysema. I ran an interdisciplinary team of veterinary and human physicians – the latter were present in our hospital and laboratories every day, which was incredibly exciting and rewarding. I look forward to more partnerships like this at Penn Vet.

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VET

COMPASSIONATE CARE UNBRIDLED INNOVATION In April, University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann announced the launch of The Power of Penn, a $4.1 billion comprehensive fundraising and engagement campaign for Penn’s 12 schools and six centers.

For Penn Vet, the Campaign presents an exciting opportunity to strengthen our boundary-breaking research, education, and clinical care and accelerate our impact on global public health.

With a $130 million goal, the School’s success in the Campaign will enable us to maintain our position at the forefront of veterinary medicine and help us define the future of veterinary medicine by: • Training new generations of veterinarians • Reinventing academic programs • Transforming clinical care • Impacting the world

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CAMPAIGN LEADERSHIP

JAY G. GOLDMAN, W’79 PAR’13 PAR’21 Co-Chair and Member of Penn Vet Board of Overseers “As a proud Penn alumnus and Trustee, my relationship with Penn Vet is rooted in my affinity for the University and animals, as well as my deep interest in the ties between animal and human health. The School is truly at the forefront in cancer, neurology, and other areas of research that are informing new protocols for treatment of companion animals and humans.

The Campaign will propel Penn Vet’s translational research into even greater promise for all species.”

RICHARD LICHTER Co-Chair and Member of Penn Vet Board of Overseers “My main interest is dogs, and I have been a longtime supporter of emergency care for shelter dogs at Penn Vet. The School’s care and compassion for animals is unparalleled, and one of the Campaign’s main goals is to expand people’s understanding of everything that Penn Vet does and the major impact it has. Along with raising awareness, the Campaign will raise funds for clinical care priorities, like new programs and facility renovations.”

TO LEARN MORE OR GIVE TO THE CAMPAIGN, CONTACT:

GAIL PETTY RIEPE, CW’68 PAR’98 Co-Chair and Member of Penn Vet Board of Overseers “With my husband, I have been involved with Penn for more than 50 years.

When the time came that we were able to give back, we chose Penn Vet, it’s a perfect fit for us. I have always connected with animals, and New Bolton Center and Ryan Hospital offer compassionate large and small animal care. As the Campaign momentum builds, we can look forward to critical new resources that will make the School’s facilities better than ever and empower the faculty to do so much more than they already do so well.”

Jillian Marcussen Director of Development and Board Relations 215-898-4235 jillian2@vet.upenn.edu

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TRAINING NEW GENERATIONS… EMPOWERING SKILLED, COMPASSIONATE VETS The Campaign will ramp up access and opportunity for tomorrow’s veterinarians. With philanthropic support, we will: ATTRACT THE BRIGHTEST STUDENTS

Penn Vet seeks to increase financial awards to continue to attract bright, curious, and engaged students.

ALLEVIATE MOUNTING STUDENT DEBT

Veterinary students graduate with the highest debt-to-income ratio of any health care profession. Philanthropy has an important role in making outstanding veterinary education more financially accessible.

DIVERSIFY THE PROFESSION

We have an obligation to train a more diverse student body. Our definition of diversity must encompass traditional measures like ethnicity, geography, gender, and socioeconomic background. And it must also include broader career paths through our established VMD-PhD program and current and proposed dual degree programs that combine veterinary medicine with public health, business, law, and more.

STRENGTHEN THE PROFESSION

We train a different kind of veterinarian, one who often pursues a nontraditional career path. Our graduates are clinician-scientists, an in-demand pairing of talents essential to speeding discoveries and facilitating translational medicine.

$138,067 AVERAGE DEBT OF GRADUATING VETERINARY STUDENT

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$76,000 AVERAGE VETERINARIAN STARTING SALARY

HOOKED ON BIRDS

BY SACHA ADORNO

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Linnea Tracy, V’19, observes chickens in Dr. David Levine’s backyard flock. She hopes to use her Penn Vet education to shape public policy and positively influence food security.

innea Tracy, V’19, believes birds are veterinary medicine’s next frontier, and she wants to help chart the way forward. Driven by a profound love of animals and an interest in the intersections between human and animal health, agriculture and public health, Tracy has begun her journey at Penn Vet. She decided on a career in veterinary medicine while volunteering with a local animal shelter as a teen and during college summer breaks. This shelter experience and an introduction to epidemiology in undergraduate school sparked Tracy’s plan to focus on population and global health.

Tracy also contacted Dr. Sherrill Davison, Associate Professor, Avian Medicine and Pathology, at New Bolton Center, about working in Davison’s avian lab. “I was looking for a way to incorporate population health and veterinary medicine in a public health domain,” said Tracy.

Over the summer of 2016, Tracy worked with poultry and helped Davison on a retrospective study of bald eagle mortality. “Before this, I had only ever interacted with parakeets,” said Tracy, who was “hooked on birds” after working in Davison’s lab.

For the fourth-year student, avian medicine is the perfect confluence of research, clinical care, and public health, and it’s a largely unexplored science. Relative to mammals, little is known about birds. “Most research is in mammalian species, but birds are very important to us economically, culturally, and personally,” she said.

To help change that, Tracy is currently contributing to studies out of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on how to improve the lives of egg-laying chickens. As the egg industry’s approach to egg production transitions from caged to cage-free, the number of hens with keel bone damage is increasing.

The research is exploring how to more accurately assess and prevent keel damage in ways that are less invasive for the animal and more sustainable for the farmer.

When she graduates, Tracy plans to pursue a residency in aviation medicine and hopes to eventually work for a state or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Avian health touches many lives,” she said. “We can impact thousands of birds a day with good medicine. At the same time, we can help owners maintain an income, support a state’s agricultural industry, and promote food and economic security.

This is a huge field, and it’s only going to get more important as global food demands grow.”

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REINVENTING OUR ACADEMIC PROGRAMS… REVOLUTIONIZING VETERINARY EDUCATION The Campaign will bolster support as Penn Vet prepares new veterinarians for an intense, fast-paced environment of care and discovery. With Campaign support, we will: LEAD THE WAY IN CURRICULUM INNOVATION

Penn Vet will renew our commitment to curriculum innovation by redesigning our core curriculum and offering new opportunities for students to customize individualized courses of study, pursue fieldwork, and specialize in research that reflects their interests.

BROADEN CAREER PATHWAYS

Penn Vet is carefully planning for dual-degree opportunities, which reflects the profession’s natural connection to a wealth of disciplines and leverages a veterinarian’s ability to respond to societal needs. The campaign will begin investing in new scholarships and research fellowships for students pursuing the VMD-PhD track, and it will lay the groundwork for new certificate and master’s programs based around Penn Vet’s Centers of Excellence.

Patrick Robbins, V’20, prepares to intubate a feline simulation model under the guidance of Teaching Lab Coordinator Heather Rudolph, CVT. 12 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

EDUCATING FOR WARPED SPEED DISCOVERY

BY SACHA ADORNO

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n today’s globalized world of rapid discovery, medical education — human and animal — has not, perhaps, kept pace with innovation.

On the campus where modern veterinary medicine was born, Penn Vet is working to change this, transforming how veterinary educators teach, how students learn, and the facilities in which it all happens.

“The speed of biomedical discovery is ever-increasing. A half-century ago, the doubling time of biomedical knowledge was measured in decades.

Today, it’s measured in months,” said Dr. Kathryn E. Michel, Associate Dean of Education. “Medical education has adapted a bit over time but not enough to accommodate the speed at which our knowledge advances.”

In 1910, scholar and educator Abraham Flexner published a report for the Carnegie Foundation that would establish how medical education looked for the next century. In it, Flexner presented a recommendation for a uniform medical school curriculum structure, prescribing two years of core basic science followed by two years of clinical training. This Flexnerian model became the standard until recently.

Somewhat fixed and prescriptive, although Flexner’s approach is “not completely broken,” said Michel, it is rigid and unaccommodating.

“The world we live and work in today requires students to be flexible in how they receive knowledge and achieve understanding,” said Dr. Jennifer Punt, Penn Vet’s Associate Dean of One Health. “We want to train them to become lifelong learners by teaching them to critically consume and evaluate

information, formulate questions, and look for answers. As educators, we can’t just impart content anymore.”

For an example of how veterinary education has begun evolving, Michel pointed to the Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CVBE) education framework launched earlier this year by the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). The outcomes-based, learner-centric approach outlines nine core abilities students need to exhibit to graduate. It’s designed to improve education by preparing students for careers that “meet the needs of animals and expectations of society.”

Adapting the AAVMC’s framework, Penn Vet has created similar benchmarks to guide reinvention of the School’s curriculum: Scholarship, Critical Thinking, Patient Healthcare, Population Healthcare, One Health, Communication, Collaboration, Professionalism, Regulation, and Finance.

“In addition to developing basic medical knowledge, skills, and clinical reasoning abilities, we want our graduates to excel in the important soft skills,” explained Michel. “Truly competent and skilled practitioners can communicate well, work collaboratively, and understand the financial and regulatory aspects of their careers.”

For Penn Vet students, the School’s curriculum redesign will bring new programs; opportunities for students to craft their own course of study; more combined dual degrees with other Penn schools; increased interdisciplinary learning experiences; and new stateof-the-art facilities. The School

will also offer noncurricular support services, such as Penn Vet’s new career counselor [page 37].

“Increasingly, veterinarians have a larger role to play in public and human health,” said Punt. “Penn Vet has a long history of preparing students for new fields, from the development of the VMD-PhD program in 1969 through to Dean Hendricks’ focus on One Health.

The curriculum work we’re doing now is the next iteration.”

(Above) Molly Larson, V’19, practices placing a halter on a horse head model. (Below) At New Bolton Center, students participate in a palpation lab, feeling for abnormalities in the intestinal tract of a full-body horse simulation model.

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TRANSFORMING CLINICAL CARE… UPGRADING FACILITIES FOR EXCELLENCE The campaign will dramatically upgrade Penn Vet’s clinical spaces and capacity, ensuring facilities consistently match the excellence of the School’s clinicians and the needs of its patients. With Campaign support, we will: UNVEIL GROUNDBREAKING SPACE

A new Veterinary Trauma Center at Ryan Hospital will enhance our leadership in providing emergency medicine for companion animals at our certified Level I Facility.

This capital project also sets in motion a decade-long phased modernization of Ryan Hospital’s clinical and lab spaces.

CREATE A HOME FOR ROBOTIC IMAGING

Penn Vet is the first veterinary teaching hospital to offer revolutionary robotic imaging to diagnose and treat equine patients. A new Advanced Imaging and Translational Center at New Bolton Center will integrate this imaging into the operating suite, allowing for more accurate surgery through less invasive techniques and expanding possibilities for applying breakthroughs to human health care.

INVEST IN SKILLS-BASED LEARNING

Penn Vet students must have access to the latest technology-based tools before working with live animals. The Campaign will support two future spaces where students can hone core competencies and gain expertise: a new Clinical Skills Laboratory on the main campus and a Student Simulation and Skills Learning Center at New Bolton Center.

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ANIMALS SERVED ANNUALLY AT RYAN HOSPITAL AND NEW BOLTON CENTER

BACK IN THE RACE

BY SACHA ADORNO

S

enior Senator has been called “one of the craziest horses that ever looked through a bridle.”

But a serious accident in May 2017 temporarily dampened some of the eight-year-old gelding’s fiery, unique personality, nearly ending his racing career. While defending his 2016 Maryland Hunt Cup title at the 2017 race, the Thoroughbred and jockey Eric Poretz tumbled at the third fence in the notoriously challenging four-mile timber course.

Veterinarian Dr. Cooper Williams, VMD, diagnosed a serious fracture of the neck and emailed the images to Dr. Dean Richardson, Charles W. Raker Professor of Equine Surgery, at Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center, to discuss surgical repair.

Richardson reviewed Williams’ referral x-rays, which showed a fracture of the fourth cervical vertebra. “This was a horrible crash, really horrific,” recalled Richardson. “But I saw a more than reasonable chance of successfully repairing the injury with surgery.”

Senior Senator traveled to New Bolton Center, where Richardson used the School’s robotics-controlled computed tomography (CT) system to obtain the precise details of the break. Penn Vet is the first veterinary teaching hospital in the world to use the revolutionary equipment that enables clinicians to examine an awake, moving, and weight-bearing horse.

“Providing 3-D images, this technology offers us tremendous advantages over traditional x-ray and other imaging options,” said Richardson. “And we can evaluate our patient and plan for surgery without having to put the horse under anesthesia, which is a big deal.”

To repair the fracture, Richards and the surgical team used screws and a stainlesssteel compression plate to stabilize and secure the fourth and fifth vertebrae.

After a successful surgery, Senior Senator was placed into Penn Vet’s landmark recovery pool, part of New Bolton Center’s surgical suite in the C. Mahlon Kline Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Center, to carefully wake from anesthetization. The team then moved him into a recovery stall for recuperation.

“His aftercare recovery could not have gone better. Senior Senator was a perfect patient. He acted like he knew we were helping him and didn’t fight us at all,” said Richardson.

“This surgery saved Senior Senator’s life,” said Vicki Crawford, who owns the horse with her husband, Irvin “Skip” Crawford.

Over the course of 12 months, Senior Senator’s recovery progressed under the watchful eyes of Richardson, Williams, the Crawfords, and trainer Joe Davies. And a year after his terrible accident, in a brilliant comeback, the champ took home the 2018 Maryland Hunt Cup.

(Top) Senior Senator jumps the 13th fence in the 2018 Maryland Hunt Cup and (bottom right) takes a walk with his pet donkey Fernando.

Center images taken with Penn Vet’s revolutionary robotic equine imaging system. Top left photo

by Douglas Lees.

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ACCELERATING PENN VET’S IMPACT ON THE WORLD… ENABLING GLOBAL BREAKTHROUGHS The Campaign will advance research and apply it to solve pressing global challenges, including food safety, agricultural sustainability, and health care issues common to animals and humans. With Campaign support, we will: ENDOW POSITIONS THAT DRIVE TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH

Penn Vet’s Cancer Center is making headlines with its pioneering research. This work translates to human oncology and suggests that, together with Penn Medicine, we are on the doorstep of momentous, historic breakthroughs in cancer prevention and treatment. The Campaign will invest in these frontiers by establishing new endowed Cancer Professorships and beginning a phased approach to building a future home for the Penn Vet Cancer Center.

BRING ABOUT A HEALTHIER, MORE SUSTAINABLE WORLD

Human and animal health are inextricably linked. The Campaign will expand the productivity of the School’s centers, like the Center for Host-Microbial Interactions and the Center for Animal Health and Productivity, and will further collaborations with other Penn schools. It will also place students in experiential learning opportunities like Penn Vet’s trailblazing Shelter Medicine program, which is helping to address animal shelter overpopulation issues.

ADVANCE THE PROFESSION WORLDWIDE

We are beginning to work with groups of veterinarians in other countries, including China and Japan, to provide additional professional training and development. The Campaign will establish the foundation for a future academic program with a global spin: a master’s-level program designed to elevate standards in countries with strong veterinary education and research programs already in place.

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TACKLING DISEASE IN NEPAL

BY JACOB WILLIAMSON-REA for Penn Today

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hen James Ferrara, V’20, was 10 years old, his family’s Labrador retriever, Cody, suffered from arthritis and had to be put down.

The experience sparked Ferrara’s interest in veterinary medicine. Initially, he’d hoped to help suffering animals, and over time he became interested in the intersection of animal and human health.

Ferrara brought this interest to Penn Vet. In August, he traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, with two other Penn students, Akudo Ejelonu, a PhD student at Penn’s Population Studies Center, and Hanna Stambakio, a clinical researcher at Penn Medicine’s Urology Program.

The team received the Penn Provost’s Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation and partnered with the Center of Molecular Dynamics Nepal (CMDN), a nongovernmental biotechnology research organization based in Kathmandu. The award was to conduct baseline research on Campylobacter, a bacterium found in unpasteurized milk and animals’ digestive systems that causes campylobacteriosis, a potentially lifethreatening infection.

“As a vet student, I understand disease dynamics in animals and how they impact humans,” said Ferrara of the team’s interdisciplinary approach.

“Akudo studies demography, so the cultural aspects are right up her alley.

Hanna is a clinical researcher in urology, and she’s in the environmental studies program, so she knows a lot about creating and conducting surveys. Things really come together when you get a lot of collaborators who are outside of your own field.”

In Nepal, little is known about Campylobacter. Campylobacteriosis

is zoonotic, so the group employed a holistic perspective, conducting initial surveys to identify and understand risk factors.

Because of their reverence for cows, Nepalis don’t euthanize the animals when they’re sick. Instead, they isolate them for life, which can lead to disease transmission. Even if the cow is isolated, Campylobacter can travel via water runoff, infecting both human and animal drinking water.

Working with the CMDN, the team surveyed people in two areas, one urban and one rural, about their use of milk, animal husbandry, water treatment and consumption practices, and more. Based on assessments from this visit, Ferrara hopes to identify future research projects, interventions, and education programs to prevent the spread of campylobacteriosis and other zoonotic diseases.

“This trip was impactful for me,” said Ferrara. “And meeting and collaborating with Nepalese scientists and students was inspiring. CMDN is on the cutting edge of science, even with far fewer resources than we have here in the U.S. and at Penn Vet. Talking to Nepalis really opened my eyes about some of the early assumptions I had. For example, I assumed drinking raw-milk is a widespread practice, but I found the opposite. Except in specific cases, people boil milk before consuming it, whether it’s direct from the cow or purchased in a store. The needs are different than I might have expected.”

Ferrara has ambitious goals for the Nepal project. He envisions widespread public health education and diseaseintervention projects in Kathmandu.

He also wants to create a lasting partnership with CMDN and expand Penn Vet’s activities and relationships on the ground in Nepal.

(Top) James Ferrara on Locust Walk. (Second down) field site visit with Penn students, CMDN staff, and community members. (Third down) Jadibuti free-range ducks and temporary structures. (Bottom) Manisha Bista from CMDN and James Ferrara surveying a family in Panauti.

Top photo to Scott Spitzer.

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DONOR PROFILE

PHILANTHROPY POWERS REVOLUTIONARY ROBOTICCONTROLLED EQUINE IMAGING

BY SACHA ADORNO

B

lue Elephant Farm, 75 bucolic acres in Pennsylvania’s Newtown Square, is home to chickens, cows, goats, sheep, donkeys, miniature horses, and five Great Pyrenees puppies, a real menagerie (although it’s missing an elephant).

“Our family spends as much time on the farm as possible,” said Christa Schmidt, who owns Blue Elephant with her husband, Calvin. The couple purchased the meandering property more than 10 years ago, changing the name from Blue Dog Farm to reflect a love for elephants developed during travels in Thailand and Africa. “There is no better place for children (or adults) to run around than among the animals, plants, and produce it offers.”

Life on the farm may be magical, but periodically the Schmidts need to venture out of paradise to seek medical care for a sick or injured animal. Providentially, New Bolton Center is just a few miles away.

“It’s natural to take advantage of this fabulous facility in our backyard,” said Christa. “Unfortunately, we have had to bring quite a few animals through the doors over the years, but it’s a relief knowing they’re getting the best care in the hands of excellent New Bolton Center staff, whom we’ve come to know over the past ten years.”

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Calvin and Christa Schmidt with their children.

DONOR PROFILE

(Opposite page top and above) A few of Blue Elephant Farm’s beloved residents.

The Schmidts’ experiences with New Bolton Center inspired them to become more involved with Penn Vet. The family has given multiple gifts to support Penn Vet’s robotic-controlled 3-D equine imaging program, which has revolutionized horse diagnostics and treatment.

“We wanted to help Penn Vet bring the best possible care to patients through breakthroughs in science and technology,” explained Christa. “And we wanted to support something game changing in veterinary medicine. Robotic imaging is cutting edge, with tangible, immediately identifiable benefits.”

The School was the first veterinary teaching hospital to use this technology. Installed at Penn Vet in 2016, the system captures equine anatomy while the horse is standing, weightbearing, and awake. Traditional CT and MRI systems require that animals be anesthetized.

“This approach to 3-D CT offers many advantages over standard CT, particularly for our large animal patients that simply cannot fit in a standard CT system,” said Dr. Barbara Dallap Schaer, Medical Director at New Bolton Center. “And theoretically, the overall radiation dose is lower because the images are acquired through a series of pulses as opposed to a constant exposure.”

After helping to bring the technology to New Bolton Center, the Schmidts have also helped promote it, facilitating lectures and events for the equine community to showcase the robots’ impact on equine medicine and welfare.

“It is so important to get the word out to the greater horse community, whether through seminars, sponsoring events, or even tables set up at different horse venues,” Christa said.

“Why not ‘shout from the mountaintop’ and show everyone the benefit of this technology! Our family is excited to support New Bolton Center and be part of something that has made great strides forward in the care of animals right now and, possibly, humans in the future.”

Dallap Schaer explained that Penn Vet expects to collaborate with Penn Engineering and Perelman School of Medicine to explore using robotic imaging with humans, particularly children who are too sick or compromised for sedation or general anesthesia. “Eventually, because of the system’s somewhat unique approach to motion correction, we are hoping to adapt it for dynamic (patient in motion) studies,” Dallap Schaer said. “The University is the perfect place to advance such a clinically relevant technology.”

Philanthropy like the Schmidts’ enables breakthroughs like these. According to Dallap Schaer, projects such as the imaging system are very “difficult to fund through grants because of the level of risk getting them off the ground, and they are prohibitively expensive for the school to fund,” she continued. “Christa and Calvin’s support has been absolutely critical.”

“We wanted to help Penn Vet bring the best possible care to patients through breakthroughs in science and technology. And we wanted to support something game changing in veterinary medicine. Robotic imaging is cutting edge, with tangible, immediately identifiable benefits.”

— Christa Schmidt

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DONOR PROFILE

KATIE KICKS CANCER, HER OWNERS GIVE BACK

BY DAVID LEVIN

F

red and Hazel Hendricks have spent their lives in the medical profession. Fred is a renal surgeon at George Washington Medical Center; Hazel is a registered nurse. But despite lifelong careers caring for humans, the couple has always had a soft spot for the animal world. They’ve adopted scores of dogs, cats, and other creatures over the past few decades — and it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

Earlier this year, the Hendrickses’ beloved Dalmatian Katie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The veterinary hospital where she was diagnosed didn’t have the expertise to operate on such a sensitive organ, so the Hendrickses traveled three hours from their home in Washington DC to Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital for care.

Their trip seemed like déjà vu. Ten years before, the Hendrickses brought their German shorthair Lucy to Penn Vet to treat advanced cancer in her cervical spine. The couple said staff at Penn Vet did everything in their power to support both them and their pup, even in her frail condition. At one point, Lucy’s neurosurgeon even cut a vacation short, returning to Philadelphia with a few hours’ notice for an emergency follow-up.

“It just really impressed on us the dedication and concern Penn Vet always has for our pets’ well-being,” Hazel said.

With its Comprehensive Cancer Care approach, which provides multidisciplinary, holistic, and tailored treatment for cancer, staff at Ryan Hospital extended the same care to Katie. Her initial surgery, while potentially dangerous, successfully removed the pancreatic tumor. A few weeks later, when Hazel developed a massive abscess at the tumor site, the surgical team again helped the Hendrickses fight for the dog’s life, performing a second three-hour procedure to remove the infection.

“When it comes to tumors in that location, the risk sometimes outweighs the benefit of doing surgery. But the Hendrickses had complete trust in us, and opted to do whatever it took to help Katie,” said Dr. James Perry, Assistant Professor of Surgical Oncology, who performed

20 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

DONOR PROFILE

both operations. “She had a lot of people rooting for her both here and at home.” Today, Katie is happy and healthy, and shows no sign of her cancer returning.

To show their appreciation for Penn Vet’s care, the Hendrickses have donated to the School in the form of gift annuities, and they are planning future giving.

“I have found gift annuities to be a very nice method of donating money to worthwhile charities,” said Fred. “They provide a nice initial tax deduction, quarterly income for life at about six percent, and one is assured that the corpus of the funds will remain in the intended hands.”

For him, the donations express not only of the love he and Hazel have for their own pets, but for other families’ pets as well. As medical professionals themselves, giving to Penn Vet is a no-brainer for the Hendrickses: “For many people, when their dog gets sick, their first inclination is to put the animal to sleep. But if you’re a doctor or nurse, you don’t think in those terms,” Fred said. “When your pet gets sick, you try to make them well. You treat them as part of the family—after all, they are. And if you want them to have the best possible care, you take them to Penn Vet.”

PLANNED GIVING Throughout Penn Vet’s history, many supporters of the School have demonstrated their commitment to veterinary education and animal welfare through their estate plans. These special gifts have a long-lasting impact for future generations.

Grateful for their generous support, Penn Vet honors these donors through the Veterinary Heritage Circle, and membership in this special group now totals more than 300 alumni, clients, and friends.

Dr. James Perry, Assistant Professor of Surgical Oncology, and Katie.

Planned gifts can be made using your will or retirement assets, or with life income gifts such as charitable gift annuities, and can be directed toward the programs that mean the most to you. For more information, or for gift illustrations tailored to your situation and interests, please contact Jillian Marcussen, Director of Development, at 215-898-4235 or jillian2@vet.upenn.edu.

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RESEARCH

RESEARCH BRIEF

STUDYING THE PLAYERS IN IMMUNE REGULATION

BY KATHERINE UNGER BAILLIE

T

he immune system is often framed as the part of our bodies responsible for fighting infection. But a key part of immunity involves restraining that battle-ready immune cell army so its artillery is only trained upon true threats.

This element of immune regulation — and how it can go awry in cancer and autoimmune conditions — is where Dr. Oliver Garden, Chair of Penn Vet’s Department of Clinical Sciences and Advanced Medicine and the Corinne R. and Henry Bower Professor of Medicine, rests his scientific attention.

Prior to joining Penn Vet last year, Garden pursued this work at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College. For the first decade of his research career, Garden focused his attention on regulatory T cells (Tregs).

These lymphoid cells play a critical role in immunosuppression and have the potential to reduce or prevent harmful autoimmune and inflammatory immune responses.

Using Tregs from mice, humans, and, most recently, dogs, Garden’s laboratory has identified the critical role of several signaling cascades in the induction, function, and development of Tregs. Among the group’s most significant achievements was being the first to document a key defect impairing the ability of Tregs to suppress the activity of nonregulatory T cells in a mouse model of lupus, a finding later upheld in T cells from human

22 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

patients. The lab was also the first to demonstrate a role for Treg dysfunction in enhancing disease in a mouse model of type I diabetes.

In the last decade, Garden’s lab has shifted in focus to another key player in holding the immune response in check: myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs).

“The current projects in the lab are all about regulation, and how to overcome deranged regulation in autoimmune disease and cancer,” Garden said. “We have a keen interest in Tregs, but we also came to realize that immune regulation is multifactorial and doesn’t only involve lymphoid cells.”

In 2015 Garden received a grant to conduct an in-depth study of the ways in which Tregs interacted with MDSCs, an area his lab had begun to explore in the context of lymphoma in dogs.

“This sent us into the exciting realm of myeloid regulatory cells,” he noted.

MDSCs are a diverse set of cells that arise from abnormal differentiation pathways of myeloid cell precursors, including immature neutrophils and monocytes. Researchers are in the early days of understanding this population of cells, which form in disease conditions like cancer and autoimmune disease, and are believed to potently suppress T cells and NK cells in certain contexts.

Garden and his colleagues’ work has supported the idea that tumor cells promote the differentiation

and accumulation of MDSCs, which suppress the immune system’s ability to fight cancer.

For the most part, Garden’s lab has examined MDSCs’ role apart from lymphoid cells, and has embraced the concept of One Health, focusing studies in natural canine diseases alongside mouse models and, in some cases, samples from humans.

Recent studies have examined two sides of immune dysfunction: autoimmunity, when the immune system overreacts and causes disease, and cancer, in which a repressed immune system lacks the ability to recognize and kill malignancies.

On the cancer side, research conducted by former lab member Dr. Michelle Goulart and current research assistant Sabina Hlavaty, Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Burroughs Wellcome Fund Medical Research Fellow, is working to characterize different subtypes of MDSCs in dogs with a variety of cancer types. A collaboration with Wistar Institute’s Dr. Dmitry Gabrilovich, Professor and Program Leader, Immunology, Microenvironment, and Metastasis Program, is aimed at translating the work over to the human side as well.

“We’ve found that cancers with high-tumor burden tend to have higher frequencies of MDSCs in the peripheral blood compared to lower-burden cancers,” Garden explained. “It’s not only the case that MDSCs may be a

RESEARCH

“We’re clearly at the cusp of a revolution in cancer treatment and really, we’re already there in many respects. Adding in the myeloid side is likely to be an additional avenue of therapy.”

— Dr. Oliver Garden Chair of Penn Vet’s Department of Clinical Sciences and Advanced Medicine

Dr. Oliver Garden and Sabina Hlavaty, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Burroughs Wellcome Fund Medical Research Fellow, view a plate of cultured canine bone marrow cells to compare conditions during an experiment.

therapeutic target, by reducing their influence, but they also may be a useful biomarker to predict outcome and response to conventional therapies. The dog offers several significant advantages over mouse models; this is something we’re uniquely poised to take advantage of, as veterinarians.”

Given the success of immunotherapies targeting T cells in addressing cancer, Garden believes that complementary therapeutics that enlist the myeloid arm of immunity may be a new frontier in cancer treatment.

“We’re clearly at the cusp of a revolution in cancer treatment,” Garden said, “and really, we’re already there in many respects. Adding in the myeloid side is likely to be an additional avenue of therapy.”

Garden’s group is already working with immune therapies to address autoimmunity. Dr. Jie Luo, a senior

research investigator on Garden’s team, is an expert on myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease affecting both humans and dogs that causes extreme weakness and fatigue. Using a rodent model, he’s developed a targeted vaccine that suppresses the immune system and effectively cures animals of the disease. Luo, who trained under Dr. Jon Lindstrom, Trustee Professor in Neuroscience at Penn Medicine’s Perelman School of Medicine, is also working on a novel diagnostic test for dogs with myasthenia gravis.

At Penn Vet, Garden is growing his lab and forming a variety of collaborations with colleagues around campus.

Dr. Julia Ying Wu, who earned her PhD at RVC working under Garden, recently joined his lab in Philadelphia as a postdoctoral researcher, shifting her focus from Tregs to MDSCs.

Students Lauren Olenick and Andrew Pham, both undergraduates at Penn, as well as technician Brendan Lawson, are adding to the team. And Garden shares the lab with Dr. James Perry, a surgical oncologist with an interest in the role Tregs play in sarcomas. Garden has also welcomed his collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Punt, Associate Dean of One Health at Penn Vet and an immunologist, who has an interest in the influence of insulin-like growth factor-1 on immune cells in dogs in health and the cancer setting.

“We’re generating some nice data in a number of areas of clinical relevance,” Garden said. “I’m looking forward to continuing to get feedback from my colleagues on this work to advance the health of not only dogs, but also humans.”

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RESEARCH

STUDENT RESEARCH DAY

Inquisitive Minds, Academic Achievement

I

n March, students, faculty, and special guests participated in oral presentations and a competitive poster session at the School’s annual Student Research Day. During the daylong event, 45 VMD and VMD-PhD students shared their laboratory, clinical, or field studies research with attendees, showcasing innovation, creativity, and academic achievement. Six students gave oral presentations and 39 students presented posters. A panel of faculty judges selected outstanding abstracts for awards of excellence.

Keynote speaker and global health expert Dr. Patricia Conrad, DVM, PhD, from the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, delivered an inspiring address entitled “Challenge the Dogma and Be Amazed by Your Discoveries.”

DUAL DEGREE VMD-PHD AWARDS

VETERINARY STUDENT VMD AWARDS

BEST POSTER AWARDS

1ST PLACE: BAILEY BAUMANN Retinal Iron Accumulation and Degradation in Liver-specific Hepcidin Knockout Mice (Mentor: Dr. Joshua Dunaief, Perelman School of Medicine)

1ST PLACE: ANNA MARTIN Atypical Xist RNA Localization to the Inactive X in a Female-biased Murine Model of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (Co-mentors: Dr. Michael Atchison and Dr. Montserrat C. Anguera, Penn Vet)

1ST PLACE: SABINA HLAVATY Association of Long-term RPE65 Expression and Photoreceptor Preservation in RPE65Gene Therapy-treated Canines (Mentor: Dr. Oliver Garden, Penn Vet)

2ND PLACE: GREG SOUSA Role of a C-type Lectin Heterodimer in Mosquito Complement-mediated Antimicrobial Defense in the Malaria Vector Anopheles gambiae (Mentor: Dr. Michael Povelones, Penn Vet) 3RD PLACE: AMANDA SAMUELS SOS Response and Its Impact on Bacterial Colonization (Mentor: Dr. Rahul Kohli, Perelman School of Medicine)

2ND PLACE: MEGAN MCGEEHAN The Meningeal Compartment Supports Tertiary Lymphoid Organo-genesis in a Natural Model of Multiple Sclerosis (Mentor: Dr. Jorge Alvarez, Penn Vet) 3RD PLACE: ALEXANDRA SANZ Quantifying the Use and Mechanism of Defective Viral Genome Oligonucleotides as a Preventative Antiviral (Mentor: Dr. Carolina López, Penn Vet)

2ND PLACE: MARY JANE DRAKE Mary Jane Drake — AAV-mediated Expression of X-linked Inhibitor of Apoptosis Protects Photoreceptors in Two Canine Models of Early Onset RP (Mentor: Dr. Thomas Parsons, Penn Vet) 3RD PLACE: ALYCIA FRAMPTON Real-Time Intraoperative Near-Infrared Imaging of Canine Mammary Tumors, a Spontaneously Occurring, Large Animal Model of Human Breast Cancer (Mentor: Dr. Urs Giger, Penn Vet)

Above, left to right: Mary Jane Drake, Dr. Patricia Conrad, Alycia Frampton, Sabina Hlavaty, Anna Martin, Alexandria Sanz, Megan McGeehan, Bailey Baumann, Gregory Sousa, and Amanda Samuels.

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RESEARCH

PENN VET AND PENN MEDICINE JOINTLY HOST INTESTINAL INFECTION AND IMMUNITY SYMPOSIUM

BY KATHERINE UNGER BAILLIE

D

iarrheal diseases are responsible for ten percent of all mortality in children under age five worldwide.

Even milder forms of intestinal infection have a long-lasting impact on the nutritional state, disease susceptibility, and growth of children. These relationships are complex and the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood.

Significant advances have been made in protecting children from some of the infections through vaccination.

Targeting emerging challenges, such as the protozoan parasite Cryptosporidium, is at the forefront of this effort.

In March, Penn Vet and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania hosted the Intestinal Infection and Immunity Symposium to explore how recent scientific advances in microbiology, immunology, and medicine can be used to understand and ultimately solve this important global problem.

Jointly sponsored by Penn Vet’s Department of Pathobiology and Center for Host-Microbial Interactions and Perelman School of Medicine’s Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Center for Global Health, and Institute for Immunology, the half-day event featured Penn Vet’s Dr. Boris Striepen, Professor, Department of Pathobiology, and other leaders in the field from the National Institutes of Health, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Perelman School of Medicine.

The event was part of the University’s ongoing efforts in support of the One Health Initiative, which is dedicated to improving the lives of all species through the integration of human medicine, veterinary medicine, and environmental science.

Penn Vet’s Dr. Boris Striepen, Professor, Department of Pathobiology, in his lab.

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FACULTY NEWS

IN THE OFFICE WITH

DR. JAMES LOK

I

n his more than 30 years with Penn Vet, Dr. James “Sparky” Lok, Professor of Parasitology, has accumulated a lot of awards. Most recently, the American Society of Parasitologists named him the Bueding and von Brand Lecturer for 2018 for making major research contributions to the fields of biochemistry, molecular biology, and/or pharmacology of parasitic helminths.

Lok is most proud of the many awards that recognize him as great teacher — in 2014 he received the Association of American Veterinary Medicine College’s prestigious Zoetis Distinguished Teacher Award.

“I love teaching, and I love the character of veterinary students,” said Lok. “I think Penn Vet students are particularly remarkable. They come to vet school for the love of the subject, not only the animals, but also the science that goes

26 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

into being a veterinarian. I was told when I first came to Penn Vet that we look at veterinarians as applied scientists, and I’ve seen that to be the case with our students, maybe more than at any other vet school. This is one of the things that I am really proud of about the School and our students.”

Lok’s Penn Vet office is in the Rosenthal Building, where his lab’s primary research focuses on factors affecting the development and lifespan of parasitic nematodes. These pathogenic organisms cause illness, debilitation, and even death in billions of people worldwide, especially in areas of extreme poverty. Lok and his team work specifically with the intestinal threadworm, or Strongyloides stercoralis, to understand what regulates the worm’s development as it infects a host body, human or otherwise.

FACULTY NEWS

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1 MICROBE SOFT TOYS I’ve amassed a nice collection of soft microbes and other ectoparasites, which live on the outside of their host’s body.

Students bring them to me. Of course, in the real world these organisms are mostly microscopic and don’t have eyes or wear hats, but I suppose the soft microbe people have to make them look warm and fuzzy.

My collection includes a heart worm, flea, mange mite, and Caenorhabditis (C.) elegans — and there’s even a cute white blood cell with a carrot nose.

away with my stapler or tape because they’re obviously mine.

2 BLUES MUSICIAN

Here in the lab, we genetically modify C. elegans, which are free-living nonparasitic nematodes, and Strongyloides to help us understand the function of different genes in parasitic nematodes. C. elegans are very easy to maintain, and they’re hermaphroditic. Put one on the plate, then come back in three or four days and the plate will be crawling with dozens of worms. By comparison, parasitic nematodes are very difficult to work with. They can’t complete their life cycles outside a living host, so maintaining them and simply doing experiments with them is a challenge.

Genetic modification is a little easier with Strongyloides than with other parasites so

I play the saxophone, although I haven’t practiced regularly in years. As I contemplate what may come after life at Penn, I think about getting out my horn and back to practicing. I saw this piece in someone’s trash one day when I was walking near home. So, I picked it!

3 STAPLER AND TAPE

When my daughters were little they’d sometimes come to work with me. They were bored to tears and would find the Wite-Out and start decorating. Somewhere in the lab, there’s a similarly embellished 3-hole punch. It’s hard for anyone to walk

4 SOUVENIRS

A research specialist in my lab gave me the horse from China. I was gifted with the little commemorative plate on a trip to Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan. We’ve had a long collaboration with a parasitology group at the school, and I’ve spent a couple of summers in China, in Wuhan, and in Beijing at the China Agricultural University.

5 WORMS, WORMS, WORMS

that’s why we work with them. I’ve been working with this particular system for more than 20 years and these worms still fascinate me; I could still spend all afternoon just gazing at them.

6 CACTI My wife and a good friend of ours in New Mexico thought my office needed plant life, and they also know I have some negligent character traits. They figured surely I’d be able to care for a cactus, but I’ve shown them that I’m too unreliable for even cacti.

Some of the plants are doing well, but those on the left show blatant negligence on my part. Even still, the plants bring a little of New Mexico, an area I love, to this corner of Philadelphia.

7 STUDENT ART Typically, Penn Vet students have studied biology in college and have a science bent.

But many of our students also come from unexpected disciplines. One of my former students did this nice charcoal of the façade of Penn’s Houston Hall. She had a background in theatre and visual arts, and she also excelled as a vet student. She won a cardiology prize the year she graduated.

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FACULTY NEWS

BOYLE

GALANTINO-HOMER

FACULTY NEWS Ashley Boyle, DVM, DACVIM, published Boyle AG, Timoney JF, Newton JR, Hines MT, Waller AS, Buchanan BR. Streptococcus equi Infections in Horses: Guidelines for Treatment, Control and Prevention of Strangles—Revised Consensus Statement in Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine and Pesato ME, Boyle AG, Fecteau ME, Hamberg A, Smith BI. Gastrointestinal spindle cell tumor of the rumen with metastasis to the liver in a goat in Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation.

She also presented the following research abstracts at the ACVIM forum in Seattle, Washington in June: Boyle AG, O’Shea K, Stefanovski D, Rankin SC. Propidium Monoazide-quantitative Realtime Polymerase Chain Reaction for the Detection of Viable Streptococcus equi and Boyle AG, Mitchell C, Stefanovski D, Waller, A. Combined Antigen A and C Serologic Response in Horses Vaccinated for Strangles with a Modified Live Intranasal Vaccine.

Boyle was also appointed the Assistant Chair of the ACVIM Forum Program Committee and a Member of Board of Regents for ACVIM. Along with the Equine Field Service Team — Liz Arbittier, VMD; Meagan Smith, DVM; and Jenn Linton, VMD — Boyle won the New Bolton Service Excellence July Award.

Rumela Chakrabarti, PhD, published Notch ligand Dll1 mediates cross-talk between mammary stem cells and the macrophageal niche in Science 2018 Jun 29;360 (6396) with Celià-Terrassa T, Kumar S, Hang X, Wei Y, Choudhury A, Hwang J, Peng J, Nixon B, Grady JJ, DeCoste C, Gao J, van Es JH, Li MO, Aifantis I, Clevers H, Kang Y. Hannah Galantino-Homer, VMD, PhD, published from a multi-institutional, collaborative epidemiology study funded

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by the AAEP Foundation Case-control study of risk factors for pasture-and endocrinopathy-associated laminitis in North American horses in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 2018 Aug 15;253(4):470-478. doi: 10.2460/javma.253.4.470 with Coleman MC, Belknap JK, Eades SC, Hunt RJ, Geor RJ, McCue ME, McIlwraith CW, Moore RM, Peroni JF, Townsend HG, White NA, Cummings KJ, Ivanek-Miojevic R, Cohen ND. Oliver Garden, BVetMed, PhD, participated as Co-Chairperson for two American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine consensus statement panels for the 2018 Small Animal Internal Medicine consensus statement: A Review of Evidence for Trigger Factors for Immune-Mediated Hemolytic Anemia and Diagnostic Recommendations for Idiopathic Immune-Mediated Hemolytic Anemia and Recommendations for Rational Immunosuppressive Therapy for Idiopathic Immune-Mediated Hemolytic Anemia.

Urs Giger, DrMedVet, received the 2018 Distinguished Lecture Ramsey Award from Iowa State University for his outstanding research contributions in veterinary medicine. He was also the organizer and invited speaker of a Symposium on Hereditary Diseases and Animal Welfare at the annual NAVC-VMX conference in Orlando.

DR. GUSTAVO D. AGUIRRE RECOGNIZED AS AAAS FELLOW Dr. Gustavo D. Aguirre, Penn Vet Professor of Medical Genetics and Ophthalmology, was formally recognized as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February at the Fellows Forum during the AAAS Annual Meeting.

Aguirre, V’68, whose research has investigated the genetic basis of a variety of inherited vision disorders, including Leber’s congenital amaurosis, Best disease, achromatopsia and retinitis pigmentosa, received the honor for his “distinguished contributions to the field of inherited blindness, particularly for the identification of blindness-causing genes and development of gene therapy to treat blindness.”

The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

The Fellow distinction recognizes researchers who have made extraordinary contributions to advance science across the globe for the benefit of all people. Dating back to 1874, the tradition of AAAS Fellows comprises an eminent group of scientists including inventor Thomas Edison and anthropologist Margaret Mead.

FACULTY NEWS

GUZIEWICZ

Karina Guziewicz, PhD, published Guziewicz, K.E., Cideciyan, A.V., Beltran, W.A., Komáromy, A.M., Dufour, V.L., Swider, M., Iwabe, S., Sumaroka, A., Kendrick, B.T., Ruthel, G., Chiodo, V.A., Héon, E., Hauswirth, W.W., Jacobson, S.G., Aguirre, G.D. (2018): BEST1 Gene Therapy Corrects a Diffuse Retinawide Microdetachment Modulated by Light Exposure. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 115(12): E2839-E2848; PMCID: PMC5866594; and Guziewicz, K.E., McTish, E., Dufour, V.L., Zorych, K., Dhingra, A., Boesze-Battaglia K., Aguirre, G.D. (2018): Underdeveloped RPE Apical Domain Underlies Lesion Formation in Canine Bestrophinopathies. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 1074: 309-315; PMCID PMC6035728; (Participating labs: Aguirre and Beltran labs).

Ronald Harty, PhD, published Han, Z., Schwoerer, M.P., Hicks, P., Liang, J., Ruthel, G., Berry, C.T., Freedman, B.D., Sagum, C.A., Bedford, M.T., Sidhu, S.S., Sudol, M., and Harty, R.N. 2018. Host Protein BAG3 is a Negative Regulator of Lassa VLP Egress. Diseases: 6, (in press).

NIH/NIAID R21-AI139392 Mark Haskins, VMD, PhD, received the Life for MPS Scientific Award at the 15th International Symposium on Mucopolyaccharidosis and Related Diseases in San Diego on August 2. From the National MPS Society, which granted the award: “With a career spanning over 40 years working in lysosomal storage diseases, he has been a pioneer in the field.

Dr. Haskins has worked extensively with animal models and has been innovative in his application of therapeutic approaches, including bone marrow transplantation, enzyme replacement therapies, gene therapy, and medical therapies.”

De’Broski Herbert, PhD, presented a National Institutes of Health WALS Lecture — LINGO Proteins: a New Language for the Mucosal Barrier— in June.

Sabina Hlavaty was selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Medical Research Fellow for the 2018-2019 year, co-mentored by Oliver Garden, BVetMEd, PhD, and Dr. Dmitry Gabrilovich at the Wistar Institute, to continue the lab’s research on canine myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC). She also presented a poster at the Myeloid Cells Keystone Symposium in Breckenridge, Colorado in April.

Anna Kashina, PhD, published The makings of the ‘actin code’: regulation of actin’s biological function at the amino acid and nucleotide level and nucleotide level in Journal of Cell Science. 2018 May 8;131(9). pii: jcs215509. doi: 10.1242/jcs.215509.

Review. PMID: 29739859; Rapid and dynamic arginylation of the leading edge β-actin is required for cell migration. Pavlyk I, Leu NA, Vedula P, Kurosaka S, Kashina A. Traffic, 2018 Apr;19(4):263-272. doi: 10.1111/tra.12551. Epub 2018 Mar 8.

PMID: 29384244; and Diverse functions of homologous actin isoforms are defined by their nucleotide, rather than their amino acid sequence, Vedula P, Kurosaka S, Leu NA, Wolf YI, Shabalina SA, Wang J, Sterling S, Dong DW, Kashina A. eLife. 2017 Dec 15;6. pii: e31661. doi: 10.7554/eLife.31661.

PMID: 29244021 Meryl Littman, VMD, contributed to the new ACVIM Lyme consensus update: Littman MP, Gerber B, Goldstein RE, Labato MA, Lappin MR, Moore GE. ACVIM consensus update on Lyme borreliosis in dogs and cats. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, 2018;32(3):887-903.

David McDevitt, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Sciences, received the Anna Freeman Davies Award for service from the College Settlement Camps. McDevitt was a member of the camp’s Board of Trustees for more than ten years, and associated for more than 30 years with the overnight camp that was founded in early 1900s for immigrant children.

KASHINA

Cindy Otto, DVM, PhD, launched the RACE-approved Penn Vet Working Dog Practitioner Program (www. workingdogpractitioner.com) and published Hare E, Kelsey KM, Serpell J, Otto CM. Behavior Differences between Urban Searchand-Rescue and Pet Dogs in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 05 June 2018.

Jonathan Palmer, VMD, joined the ranks of the emeritus faculty in August. Palmer graduated from Penn Vet in 1977, and after a year in private practice returned as a resident in Medicine. Following completion of his residency, he joined the faculty in the Section of Medicine, and never left. In the early part of his career, Palmer earned a national reputation for is work in Large Animal Gastroenterology, publishing studies on Salmonellosis, Potomac Horse Fever (when it was an emerging disease!), and the seminal article on abomasal ulcers in cattle. His career pivoted to Neonatology and Perinatology, and he deftly guided Penn Vet’s programs in those areas for many years. He is recognized as one of the giants in this field. Palmer’s influence extends far beyond the borders of New Bolton Center, having trained many of the internists working in Neonatology around the world.

After 40 years of service to Penn Vet and New Bolton Center, he has certainly earned the “Emeritus” title.

Chelsea Reinhard, DVM, MPH, became a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.

Alexander Reiter, Dipl. Tzt., gave didactic lectures and tutored hands-on laboratories at various continuing education events in Vienna, Austria in December 2017, and in 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada in January, Halmstad, Sweden in February, Charlotte, North Carolina in March, Kromeriz, Czech Republic in April, Rimini, Italy in May, and Innsbruck, Austria in June.

WWW.VET.UPENN.EDU/BELLWETHER

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FACULTY NEWS

SERPELL

VOLK

James Serpell, PhD, published Dodman, N.H., Brown, D.C. and Serpell, J.A.* 2018.

Associations between owner personality and psychological status and the prevalence of canine behavior problems in PLOS ONE, 13(2): e0192846; and Farhoody, P., Mallawaarachchi, I., Tarwater, P.M., Serpell, J.A., Duffy, D.L. and Zink, M.C. 2018.

Aggression toward familiar people, strangers, and conspecifics in gonadectomized and intact dogs in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5: 18; and McGreevy, P.D., Wilson, B., Starling, M. and Serpell, J.A. 2018. Behavioral risks in male dogs with minimal lifetime exposure to gonadal hormones may complicate population-control benefits of desexing in PLOS ONE, 13(5): e0196284. He also published Hare, E., Kelsey, K., Serpell, J.A. and Otto, C.M. 2018. Behavior differences between urban search-and-rescue and pet dogs in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 5 June 2018 and Perez, G.E., Conte, A., Garde, E.J., Messori, S., Vanderstichel, R. and Serpell, J.A. 2018. Movement and home range of owned free-roaming dogs in Puerto Natales, Chile in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 205: 74-82, https://doi. org/10.1016/j.applanim.2018.05.022.

Patricia Sertich, VMD, presented research on the sonographic appearance of the late gestation equine fetal intestine at the International Symposium Equine Reproduction XII in July in Cambridge, England. (Participating lab: Georgia and Philip Hofmann Research Center for Animal Reproduction) (Project collaborators: Morgan Agnew,VMD, JoAnn Slack, DVM, Darko Stefanovski, PhD, Jennifer Linton, VMD).

Deborah Silverstein, DVM, was promoted to full professor in the CE track in the department of Clinical Studies and Advanced Medicine. She also recently published Evaluation of the placement and maintenance of central venous jugular catheters in critically ill dogs and cats, Reminga CL, Silverstein DC, Drobatz KJ, Clarke DL in Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care 2018. May;28(3):232243.

Carlo Siracusa, DVM, PhD, was voted President Elect of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, at the Annual General Meeting in Denver, Colorado in July.

Corinne Sweeney, DVM, was reappointed

by Governor Tom Wolf to a three-year term as a member of the Pennsylvania State Horse Racing Commission.

Susan Volk, VMD, PhD, was promoted to Associate Professor of Small Animal Surgery (tenure track). She spoke at the Society for Advanced Wound Care/Wound Healing Society meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina in April and the European Wound Management Association meeting in Krakow Poland in May.

DR. RONALD N. HARTY EARNS LINDBACK AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED TEACHING Penn Vet’s Dr. Ronald N. Harty, Professor of Microbiology, was one of eight Penn faculty members to receive the 2018 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Harty serves on several committees that exemplify his commitment to students and their education, including the Committee on the Academic Status of Students, the Committee on Academic Promotions, the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Faculty Council, and the NIH-Merial Summer Program Admissions Committee.

Wrote one student nominator, “Dr. Harty has presented himself as a beacon of support for the students, offering much needed humor to the class throughout his lectures. He advocates for his field with great enthusiasm and inspires us to do the same.”

Given annually, the Award was established in 1961 with the help of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation.

30 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

CAMPUS UPDATES

FIRST TUESDAY LECTURE SERIES NOVEMBER 6, 2018

Colic: It’s Always Time to Call the Vet Dr. Louise Southwood

DECEMBER 4, 2018

“Tails” from the NBC Maternity Ward Dr. Michelle Linton & Dr. Jennifer Linton

MARCH 5, 2019

Mythbusting the Lameness Exam: Part 2 Dr. Elizabeth Davidson & Dr. Liz Arbittier



A FREE event for horse owners and enthusiasts. Lectures take place in Alumni Hall, 6:30PM-7:30 PM. Seating is limited.

APRIL 2, 2019

So You’ve Always Wanted to be a Vet: A Day in the Life of a Vet Student at NBC Fourth-Year Vet Students

MAY 7, 2019

Unraveling Laminitis: What We Know and Where We’re Going Dr. Andrew van Eps

JUNE 4, 2019

Paleolithic to Picasso: Interesting Stuff about Horse Anatomy Dr. Dean Richardson

TO REGISTER:

firsttuesdaynbc.eventbrite.com QUESTIONS?

Barbara Belt | 610-925-6500 | beltb@vet.upenn.edu PRESENTED BY:

New Bolton Center WWW.VET.UPENN.EDU/BELLWETHER 382 West Street Road | Kennett Square, PA 19348

31

FACULTY NEWS

ANGUERA

BELTRAN

GRANTS Gustavo Aguirre, VMD, PhD: $163,389 for Molecular Genetic Studies of Inherited Cataracts in the American Cocker Spaniel from American Spaniel Club Health & Rescue Foundation (1/1/18-12/31/21) Montserrat Anguera, PhD: $2,611,414 for Gene regulation from the inactive X in activated B cells from NIH RO1 AI134834 (6/2018–5/2023); $524,590.19 for Role for abnormal gene expression from the inactive X in female-biased lupus disease from USAMRAA (DOD) Impact Award (September 2018 - August 2021); $314,945 for Gene regulation from the inactive X in activated B cells from NIH/ NIAID (7/2018-5/2019); $50,000 for Role of X-chromosome Inactivation maintenance on the microbiome during autoimmunity from University Research Foundation (URF) (9/2018-8/2019) (Project collaborator: Michael Atchison, PhD) Michael Atchison, PhD: $1,051,361 to support VMD-PhD training in infectious disease related research from NIH T32AI070077 (5 years); $616,120 for veterinary students to perform short-term research projects from NIH T35OD010919 (5 years); $20,000 for veterinary students to perform short-term research projects from Boehringer Ingelheim (one year) William Beltran, DVM,PhD: $2,887,683 for Gene therapy for treatment of rhodopsin-mediated autosomal-dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa (adRP) from OPHTHOTECH (6/1/18–5/31/2021) Andres Blanco, PhD: $21,047 for Screen for FDA-approved inhibitors that synergize with GSK-LSD1 to induce therapeutic differentiation in non-APL acute myeloid leukemia from McCabe Fund Pilot Grant (8/1/18-7/31/19)

32 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

Igor Brodsky, PhD: $442,750 for Novel role of CARD19 in cell death and antibacterial host defense from NIH R21 (6/8/18-5/31/20); $6,000 for Lab Retreat Travel from Burroughs Wellcome Fund (5/1/18-9/30/18) Margret Casal, DVM, PhD: $12,960 for Microphthalmia and Delayed Growth Syndrome in the Portuguese Water Dog from AKC-Canine Health Foundation (11/1/17-10/31/19) Rumela Chakrabarti, PhD: $170,000 for Understanding function of Notch signaling in Tamoxifen resistant breast cancer from Abramson Cancer Center-Emerson Collective Cancer Research Fund (20182019, 2 year grant) Amy Durham, VMD: $329,185 for Aperio VERSA Digital Slide Scanner, eSlide Manager Database, and Advanced Image Analysis Software for the Comparative Pathology Core from NIH S10OD023465 (05/01/2018-04/30/2019) (Project collaborators: Bruce Freedman, VMD, PhD, Enrico Radaelli, DVM, PhD, Gordon Ruthel, PhD); $45,000 for Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award from National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences/NIH (2/1/18-1/31/19) Bruce Freedman, VMD, PhD: $275,000 for The Membrane Repair Channel TRPML1 Regulates Ebola Virus Budding from NIH/ NIAID R21 (12/21/17-11/30/19) Serge Fuchs, PhD: $193,764 for Negative regulation of myeloid-derived suppressive cells in cancer from NIH R01/ Wistar (12/18/17-11/30/18) Oliver Garden, BVetMed, PhD: $14,945 for The impact of intravenous anesthetic agents on canine natural killer cell cytotoxic function: the Achilles heel in cancer diagnosis and surgery? from AKC-CHF (1/1/18-12/31/18) (Collaborator: Ciara Barr, VMD); $50,000 for The intestinal

TEACHING AWARDS (Top) Dr. Courtney Pope, internal medicine resident, received the William B. Boucher Award, which honors a house officer for excellent teaching at New Bolton Center. The award is made in honor of Dr. William Boucher, a distinguished educator at Penn Vet for over four decades. (Above) Dr. Klaus Hopster, assistant professor of anesthesiology, was awarded the Zoetis Distinguished Veterinary Teacher Award, accepted on his behalf by his wife. The award is the most prestigious teaching award in veterinary medicine, presented annually to a faculty member at each college of veterinary medicine in the United States. The entire Penn Vet student body votes for the recipient.

FACULTY NEWS

DURHAM

microbiome of dogs with idiopathic immune-mediated hemolytic anemia: an occult trigger for pathogenic autoimmunity? from Center for Host-Microbial Interactions PILOT (6/1/2018-5/31/19) Ronald Harty, PhD: $275,000 for Dueling PPxY Motifs of Filovirus VP40 and Host Angiomotin: Effects on Innate Immune Defenses and Tight Junction Integrity at Immune Privileged Sites. from NIH/ NIAID R21-AI139392 (6/3/18-5/31/20); $275,000 for Modular Domains of Host Proteins Regulate Filovirus Maturation. from NIH/NIAID R21 AI-138052 (1/15/1812/31/20); $300,000 for Development of Small Molecule Therapeutics Targeting Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses. from NIH/ NIAID R41 STTR AI138630 (6/1/185/31/20); $682,000 for Development

of Host-Oriented Therapeutics Against Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses from The Wellcome Trust (2/10/18- 2/9/20); $45,000 for Regulation of Tight Junction Integrity by Ebola Virus VP40 from University Research Foundation (3/1/182/28/19); $50,000 for Development of Small Molecule Therapeutics Targeting Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses from Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center (6/1/18-5/31/19) De’Broski Herbert, PhD: $6,000 for 22nd Annual Woods Hole Immunoparasitology (WHIP) Meeting from Burroughs Wellcome Fund (3/1/18-8/31/18) Anna Kashina, PhD: $513,453 for Protein Arginylation as a Key Regulator of Cell Migration from NIH/GM R35 (8/31/188/31/2022); $50,633 for Development

PITTA

of Arginine Linkage-Specific Antibodies from Abzyme Therapeutics, LLC (11/27/1708/31/18) Christopher Lengner, PhD: $21,955 for Developing novel immunotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer from Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award (ITMAT) (2/1/18-1/31/19) James Marx, DVM, PhD: $5,000 for 2018 ASLAP Foundation Summer Fellowship Program from American Society for Laboratory Animal Practitioners (6/1/188/31/18) Nicola Mason, BVetMed, PhD: $297,300 for Preserving Cancer Stem Cells In Canine Blood Specimens from Leidos Biomedical research Inc. (12/1/17-6/30/18); $183,146 for Immune Targeting of the V600E

DR. CYNTHIA OTTO RECOGNIZED FOR WORK TO ADVANCE HUMAN-ANIMAL BOND At its 2018 annual conference, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) presented Dr. Cynthia Otto, founder and executive director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, with the 2018 Bustad Companion Animal Veterinarian of the Year Award.

“The commitment and passion Dr. Otto has shown in her day-to-day work that explores and supports relationships between working dogs and their owners shows how highly she values the connections that exist between people and the animals with which we share our planet,” said Dr. Michael J. Topper, AVMA President.

Otto has been practicing veterinary medicine for more than 30 years and is double board certified in veterinary emergency and critical care and veterinary sports medicine and rehabilitation. Through the Working Dog Center, she has made substantive contributions to fundamental and clinical research on working and performance dogs.

Named in honor of the late Leo K. Bustad, an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of human-animal interactions, the Bustad Award is presented to an AVMA member veterinarian in recognition of their outstanding work in preserving and protecting the human-animal bond.

WWW.VET.UPENN.EDU/BELLWETHER

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FACULTY NEWS

SCHAER

SILVERSTEIN

B-Raf neo-Antigen in Canine Urothelial Carcinoma from AKC Canine Health Foundation (2/1/18-1/31/20); $86,400 for Precision Medicine for Canine Lymphoma from AKC Canine Health Foundation (3/1/118-2/29/20) (Project collaborator: Amy Durham, VMD); $300,000 for Clinical Advancement of CAR T cell therapy for dogs with B cell malignancies from Petco Foundation Pet Cancer Support (4/1/18-3/31/20); $250,000 for Evaluation of constitutive canonical NF-kB activity as the Achilles Heal of Soft Tissue Sarcoma — Funds will support a pilot clinical trial using local administration of an NF-kB inhibitor in dogs with soft tissue sarcomas — from Abramson Cancer Center Pilot (7/1/18-6/30/19) (Project collaborator: Karin Eisinger, PhD, Perelman School of Medicine) Sue McDonnell, PhD: $34,748 for Reproductive Behavior and Physiology of Horses from Dorothy Russell Havemeyer FDN (11/1/17-10/31/18) Keiko Miyadera, DVM, PhD: $60,775 for AAV Gene Therapy for Muscular and Ocular Diseases from UNC Chapel Hill/ Tamid Bio, Inc. (2/1/18-11/30/18); $48,687 for Safe and Effective Therapy for Vision Loss in MPS1 Patients from UNC Chapel Hill/MPS Society (7/1/17-6/30/18) Olivia Nathanson, VMD: $13,978 for Evaluation of procedural & maintenance data when esophagostomy tubes are used for nutritional support during acute and chronic illness and identify risk factors for short and long term complications from Nestle Purina (4/1/18-3/31/19) (Project collaborator: Dana Clarke, VMD) Thomas Parsons, VMD, PhD: $72,509 for Impact of duration of farrowing crate closure on sow welfare and piglet mortality from National Pork Board (12/1/1711/30/18) Dipti Pitta, PhD: $72,719 for Influence of Valkalor AL 881 on Milk Production

34 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

VITE

in Holstein Cows from Idena (10/1/179/30/18); $499,739 for Deciphering the crosstalk between bacteria – archaea interactions in the rumen and methaneyield phenotype of dairy cows from USDA NIFA (1/1/2018-12/31/20); $86,091 for The effects of 3-nitrooxyproponal (3NOP), a persistent methane inhibitor, on ruminal microbial gene expression profiles in dairy cows from DSM Nutritional Products AG (12/15/17-6/15/19)

Boris Striepen, PhD: $200,535 for Forward Genetic Technology for Cryptosporidium from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (6/1/17-5/31/18)

Laurel Redding, VMD, PhD: $23,450 for Clostridium difficile in canine fecal samples from Center for Host-Microbial Interactions PILOT and additional $29,478.24 from PennCHOP Microbiome Program Pilot and Feasibility Award (1 year)

Charles Vite, DVM, PhD: $807,263 for Creation of Feline NPC2 Using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing from Leidos Biomedical Research Inc. (9/25/178/31/18); $397,503 for BioMarin MPSIIIA research project from BioMarin Pharmaceuticals Inc. (12/6/17-12/31/18)

Adam Sateriale, PhD: $216,000 (for the first phase of program) for Investigation of subtelomeric gene families in Cryptosporidium from NIH K99 (5/5/184/30/20) (Mentor: Boris Striepen, PhD) Thomas Schaer, VMD: $144,940 for Synovial Fluid and Joint Sepsis from NIH RO1 (with Thomas Jefferson University) (08/01/17 - 05/31/18); $135,056 for A Translational Approach Towards Ligament Regeneration from NIH/NIAMSK (with University of Connecticut Health Center) (5/1/18 – 1/31/19) Deborah Silverstein, DVM: $37,500 for a videomicroscope that visualizes and enables assessment of the microcirculation and endothelial glycocalyx from a private donor; $7,271 for Method Comparison and Precision Study Evaluation of the NOVA StatSensor®; and the StatSensor® Xpress™ Hand Held Creatinine Monitor in Dogs from NOVA Biomedical (4/1/18 – 3/31/19) Carlo Siracusa, DVM, PhD: $29,940 for Sileo (dexmedetomidine oromucosal gel) for Veterinary Visit Anxiety In Dogs: a randomized, doubleblind, placebo controlled pilot study from Zoetis (12/6/17-12/5/18)

Andrew Vaughan, PhD: $30,000 for Transcriptional programming by Notch controls regenerative outcomes following influenza injury from Center for HostMicrobial Interactions PILOT (6/1/185/31/19)

Susan Volk, VMD, PhD: $442,750 for Type III Collagen as a suppressor of breast cancer progression and metastasis from NIH/NCI: 1R21CA216552-01 (7/20176/2019); $162,700 for Tumor permissive collagen signatures in canine mammary gland tumors: Development of Prognostic markers and targeted Therapies for Improved Outcomes from AKC Canine Health Foundation (3/1/18 to 2/29/20) Brittany Watson, VMD, PhD: $15,000 for Student Ambassador Program from Petsmart Charities (9/1/17-9/1/18); $10,000 for Second Annual Shelter Medicine Educator Meeting from Petsmart Charities (10/1/17-12/31/17); $50,000 for Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Internship Grant from Maddie’s Fund - The Pet Rescue Foundation (7/1/18- 8/31/19) Meghan Wynosky-Dolfi, PhD: $25,000 for Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award from National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences/NIH (2/1/18-1/31/19) (Participating lab: Igor Brodsky, PhD)

ALUMNI WEEKEND MAY 16–17, 2019 WELCOME BACK! Come celebrate with us and relive your veterinary school memories. Join us for events on both school campuses.

Alumni with graduation years ending in a “4” or a “9” will also be celebrating a class reunion. Register today to enjoy the festivities.

www.vet.upenn.edu/ alumniweekend

CAMPUS UPDATES

PET MEMORIAL PROGRAM “No one seemed to care about his death. To them he was just a skinny, old alley cat. But he was a good boy, loyal to me. I am still weeping over his passing, missing him A LOT. So, thank you for helping him at the end, thus helping me; and most especially, thank you for your gift to Penn Vet, which will ultimately help many, many more cats….”

— CLIENT OF AN ALUMNI PARTICIPANT

PENN VET ALUMNI, HONOR YOUR PATIENT BY PARTICIPATING IN THE PENN VET PET MEMORIAL PROGRAM Established in 1982, Penn Vet’s Pet Memorial Program helps practitioners show compassion for their clients who have recently lost a beloved pet, while providing an important contribution to Ryan Hospital. The program provides financial support for the treatment and care of Penn Vet’s animal patients.

COST

• $150 for a pack of 12 cards • 10% discount on your order of 3 packs or more • $15 per card if we mail the cards for you •5 0% discount on your order of 10 packs or more, plus the option of sending a monthly recurring gift for payment

For more information and an order form, visit www.vet.upenn.edu/petmemorial-program or call 215-898-1480.

36 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

STUDENT NEWS

STUDENT NEWS John Cain, V’20 received a $5,000 grant to study Molecular Dissection of Mosquito Resistance to Heartworm Infection from Morris Animal Foundation. (Mentor: Michael Povelones, PhD)

WHAT’S NEXT? Caryn Stivelman to Help Students with Answers A warm welcome to Caryn Stivelman. Penn Vet’s new Career Counselor. Stivelman joined the School in July, bringing extensive experience in higher education and the University, where most recently she served as Associate Director of Undergraduate Affairs at Penn Engineering.

As Career Counselor, a new position for Penn Vet, Stivelman will help Penn Vet students find and navigate career opportunities in clinical care, research, public health, and more.

She is a Penn alumna and holds a BA from Penn School of Arts and Sciences, an MSEd from Penn Graduate School of Education, and a MBE (Master of Bioethics) from Perelman School of Medicine.

Jeffrey Carey, V’19, received the 2018 Nigel W. Fraser Award for Excellence in Microbiology from the Perelman School of Medicine’s Department of Microbiology. He defended his dissertation in April and joined Penn Vet’s class of 2019 to finish his VMD. Mariel Covo, V’20, won the 2018 Schad Prize in Parasitology. Named in honor of eminent parasitologist Gerhard Schad, the prize is awarded annually to the student achieving the highest academic standing in the core Veterinary Parasitology course.

Jordan Fairman, V’20, and Amy Middleton, V’21, were selected for the 2018 Zoetis Bovine Summer Externship program.

Fairman spent four weeks at Attica Veterinary Associates, a dairy-predominant practice in Attica, New York. Middleton spent four weeks at Battenkill Bovine Veterinary Clinic in Greenwich, New York.

Brianne Karten, V’20, and a group of Penn Vet students and alumni traveled to Quartier Morin, Haiti, in June as part of Pou Sante: Amar Haiti, a Penn Vet initiative.

The students collaborated with two Haitian vet techs, holding a clinic at the Université Notre-Dame d’Haïti and teaching agricultural students about veterinary care.

All told, they provided care to more than 1,300 animals, including goats, cattle, pigs, horses, donkeys, dogs, and cats. Visit www. pousantehaiti.org for more information.

Kristofer Smith, V’21, was the first veterinary student to intern at the Joe Jurgielewicz & Son duck farm in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania. Over the summer, he learned about the duck production industry and various diseases that are affecting duck farms.

Nathaniel Sotuyo, VMD-PhD program: $44,524 for Treatment of epilepsy and associated comorbidities using stem cellderived interneurons to correct circuit dysfunction in an animal model of Dravet syndrome from NIH/NINDS F31 XX (Mentors: Stewart Anderson, MD, and Ethan Goldberg, MD, PhD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia)

WWW.VET.UPENN.EDU/BELLWETHER

37

EVENTS

SNIFFING OUT OVARIAN CANCER

BY LAUREN HERTZLER

C

ollaboration and innovation are ingrained in Penn’s culture. Guided by this value, one specific University research team is made up of experts in veterinary medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, chemistry, and physics who are working to detect early stage ovarian cancer. While all members are leading experts in their fields, the team’s star talents are humankind’s best friends: dogs.

As part of the Center for Public Health Initiatives’ (CPHI) innovation-themed seminar series, the group’s research—led by Dr. Cynthia Otto, Director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center; Dr. Janos Tanyi from Perelman School of Medicine’s Division of Gynecologic Oncology; Dr. A.T. Charlie Johnson, Director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center; and Dr. George Preti, an organic chemist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center—was highlighted during the “Detection Dog” talk in April.

The event featured Dr. Jennifer Essler, a postdoctoral fellow at the Working Dog Center who works closely with Otto and Preti. In video and photos, Essler showed how Penn Vet is training dogs, using plasma samples from Tanyi’s patients, to use their incredible sense of smell to detect malignant ovarian cancer.

“Osa is currently the star,” said Essler of the four-year-old German Shepherd featured in a video demo. On screen, the dog sniffed a stainless-steel wheel, outfitted with ports containing a malignant sample, benign samples, and normal samples, as well as a mix of other “distractors.”

Osa suddenly froze and stared. She’d detected the cancer and received a reward.

Essler explained how the Working Dog Center is seeing if it can now train dogs on cancer cell lines to alert on cancer plasma, which would reduce the need for increasing numbers of plasma samples.

38 BELLWETHER FALL 2018

EVENTS

Preti, an expert on the chemistry of human body odors, discussed his role in applying analytical techniques to identifying the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in plasma, indicative of ovarian cancer. These VOCs, or odor-producing chemicals, are now being presented to the working dogs.

“Body odor as a diagnostic function has a long history going back to Hippocrates,” said Preti.

“And if you think about it, a couple thousand years ago physicians didn’t have much beyond their own senses to diagnose a disease with.”

Today there are sophisticated instruments that can collect, separate, and identify odorants.

“Consequently, the demonstration by the canines that ovarian cancer has an odor signature tells us that we can begin to isolate and identify this odor signature’s components,” he said.

“Using the dogs as a sensitive bioassay, the odorants we collect/isolate can be presented to the dogs to see if the isolates’ ‘smell like ovarian cancer.’”

The hope is this research will translate into a device for use in a clinic — essentially, the Working Dog Center dogs are informing and refining what will be an electronic system. That’s where Johnson comes in: The physicist is creating an electronic nose made of nanosensors that mimic the abilities of the canine nose.

The potential impact of a tool that can detect ovarian cancer early is massive. Ovarian cancer is hard to detect at an early stage. At a later stage, it becomes much more difficult to treat — the five-year survival rate of stage-IV ovarian cancer is only 17 percent. If detected in the earliest stages, the cancer is especially treatable, with a five-year survival rate of over 90 percent.

The team’s finding of the past five years are nothing short of “remarkable,” Preti said. “They suggest what we are proposing is not some far-out concept.”

And, better yet, there’s also the potential to use these findings to help detect other “hidden” cancers, specifically pancreatic cancer, which has some genetic similarities to ovarian cancer.

Dr. Jennifer Essler, Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn Vet Working Dog Center, talks about training dogs to detect ovarian cancer.

“Body odor as a diagnostic function has a long history going back to Hippocrates. And if you think about it, a couple thousand years ago physicians didn’t have much beyond their own senses to diagnose a disease with.”

— Dr. George Preti Monell Chemical Senses Center

WWW.VET.UPENN.EDU/BELLWETHER

39

EVENTS

BEST FRIENDS BASH (At left) Penn Vet hosted the sixth annual Best Friends Bash in June.

This specialized form of pet therapy helps craniofacial patients from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia see how dogs are affected by similar challenges and how they have adapted.

MLK DAY VACCINATION CLINIC (Below) In observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital held a free wellness and vaccination clinic for the local community. In addition to vaccinations, low-cost, permanent identification microchips for pets are offered. This year over 320 animals were examined, a new record.

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EVENTS

FARM SHOW Penn Vet participated at this year’s Pennsylvania Farm Show. (Above, from left) Pennsylvania State Representative Eric Roe speaks to Penn Vet student Linnea Tracy, V’19, about the important role Penn Vet plays in supporting the state’s vital agriculture industry; aspiring young veterinarians get a close-up look at equine anatomy and other “Yucky Stuff;” Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Mike Turzai poses with future-working-dog Moxie and volunteers from the Penn Vet Working Dog Center, who put on demonstrations showcasing the Center’s work during the Farm Show week.

STUDENT AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION SYMPOSIUM COMES TO PENN VET For the first time in the School’s history, Penn Vet hosted the Student American Veterinary Medical Association (SAVMA) Symposium. More than 1,000 students attended the student-organized program, which consisted of interactive wet labs, lectures, academic and athletic competitions, an exhibit hall, and the SAVMA House of Delegates bi-annual meeting.

WWW.VET.UPENN.EDU/BELLWETHER

41

EVENTS

20 YEARS OF SCHOLARSHIP AND SUCCESS

BY HANNAH KLECKNER

I

n April, nearly 100 students, faculty, alumni, and supporters gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Penn Vet’s Opportunity Scholarship (OS) Program.

Established in 1998 by Dr. Charles W. Raker, V’42, the program is built upon four core values of caring, compassion, competence, and communication. In addition to financial support, the scholarship also offers a structured platform for networking and mentorship opportunities among Penn Vet alumni and students.

During the event, Dr. Stephen Cole, V’15, a lecturer in Microbiology, was honored with the 2018 Charles W. Raker Opportunity Scholarship Award, which recognizes individuals within the Penn Vet community who serve as outstanding mentors and key contributors to the veterinary profession.

“Dr. Cole is a selfless mentor who is extremely giving of his time and wants to ensure that those he mentors learn as much as possible,” said Rachel Durrwachter, V’20, who presented the award. “He is especially empathetic to students and understands the student experience here, an understanding that he uses to tailor his teaching in a way that makes every lecture memorable and relevant.”

Also honored during the event was Dr. Ray Hostetter, V’69, who received the inaugural OS Founders Award. The Award is for Penn Vet alumni who have had a profound impact on the scholarship program.

(Top) Dr. Ray Hostetter, V’69, pictured with his wife, Jane, received the inaugural OS Founders Award, which recognizes Penn Vet alumni who have had profound impact on the OS Program. (Second down, left to right) Dr. James Stewart, V’68, pictured with OS students Kaitlyn Moss, V’21; Erika Klemp Pilon, V’19; and Patrick Pilon, V’19. (Third down, left to right) Dr. Patricia Sertich, V’83, with Chandler Navara, V’21; Lisa Wu, V’21; and Denis O’Flynn O’Brien, guest of Dr. Sertich. (Center) Dr. Lindsay Shreiber, EE’84, V’96, with (left to right) Emily Goodell, V’18; Daniel Bruce (guest); Elisabeth Hasslacher, C’84; Elizabeth Snyder, V’21; and Matt Charman (guest).

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ALUMNI NEWS

COMMENCEMENT

2018

On May 14, 113 members of the class of 2018 received their Veterinariae Medicinae Doctoris. Dr. Andrew McCabe, CEO of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC), provided the commencement address. Class president Sophie Eiger addressed her classmates and was presented with the V’18 class flag by Dean’s Alumni Council member Dr. Tory Hampshire, V’88.

Dr. Lloyd Reitz, President of the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association (PVMA), administered the Veterinarian’s Oath.

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ALUMNI NEWS

ALUMNI WEEKEND

2018

More than 200 people alumni and friends from ’54 to ’17. Scores of activities and lots of fun!

DON’T MISS IT! Plans for Alumni Weekend, May 16-17, 2019, are underway! If your class year ends in a “4” or a “9” and you’d like to help plan your milestone reunion, let us know!

Contact the Office of Alumni Relations at grovessh@vet.upenn.edu.

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ALUMNI NEWS

CLASS NOTES

1990s

1970s

Jill Stetz, V’94, was selected by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Board of Directors to serve on the American Board of Veterinary Specialties as veterinarian (non-boardcertified) representing small animal practice for a four-year term. Stetz has worked in small animal practice since graduation and has been the owner of Narberth Animal Hospital since 2005.

Robert Orsher, V’79, was honored by Manor College with the Community Leadership Award on April 19. In 1994, Orsher founded the Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center (VSEC), a 24-hour multispecialty referral and emergency small animal hospital in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. VSEC opened a second location in Philadelphia in 2013 and a third location in Conshohocken in 2017. VSEC is a member of the BluePearl Veterinary Partners Hospital Network.

1980s On March 28, The Seeing Eye in Morris Township hosted a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of a kennel upgrade to its Washington Valley kennels.

Bloomfield resident Dolores Holle, V’81, Seeing Eye Director of Canine Medicine and Surgery, is an integral member of the project team. Holle, who joined The Seeing Eye in April 1991, is responsible for the overall management of the canine health care system, from birth of a puppy through placement of the dog with a blind person.

Amy Attas G’83, V’87, a Penn Vet Overseer, returned to her alma mater, Barnard College, to represent Penn at the Inauguration of Sian Leah Beilock, the college’s eighth President on February 9.

2010s Apryle Horbal, V’11, was appointed to the Pennsylvania Board of Veterinary Medicine.

Horbal has most recently dedicated her career to the betterment of companion pets and large animals as the president of University Veterinary Specialists. Horbal is also the co-founder of VetNOW, a telehealth initiative dedicated to setting standards of excellence in the emerging field of veterinary telemedicine. As a board member, Horbal will guide legislation and streamline veterinary practices across the Commonwealth and the nation.

IN REMEMBRANCE Alice May Kelly Holton, 94, of Chestertown and Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, passed away on March 4 in Easton, Maryland. Holton retired as New Bolton Center’s librarian in 1996. She worked for many years as a librarian at the Bayard Taylor Memorial Library in Kennett Square before taking the job as librarian for New Bolton Center in 1963.

To honor her many contributions, Holton’s friends and family have launched a fundraising campaign to endow an Opportunity Scholarship in her name. This unique program combines financial aid with formal mentoring for qualified Penn Vet students throughout their veterinary education. To give, visit www.vet. upenn.edu/about/who-we-are/ penn-vet-passings/passings/alicek.-holton-memorial-opportunityscholarship

George Espy, V’45, passed away on May 13. He was a U.S. Army veteran and served during World War II, attaining the rank of second lieutenant in 1942; first lieutenant in 1945 with the Veterinary Corps, medical department, in the European Theatre; and, finally, as a captain with the Veterinary Corps, medical department Army Air Corps.

Elizabeth F. “Betty” (Fortune) Trainor, V’49, of Oxford, Massachusetts, died on March 22. Trainor was a veterinarian at Angell Memorial Animal Hospital in Boston, Abbott Animal Hospital in Worcester, and then private practice. Trainor was an active educator, breeder and later became a show judge. She was involved with numerous dog clubs including the New England Sporting Group Association’s Ladies Dog Club, and several Portuguese Water Dog clubs.

Thomas W. H. “Doc” Shoemaker, Jr., V’50, passed away on May 2. Shoemaker served Sullivan County and nearby areas as veterinarian for nearly 70 years and was Publisher Emeritus of the Sullivan Review newspaper since 1966. After serving in the U.S. Navy, where he worked as a chemist on thermal diffusion of uranium isotopes for the Manhattan Project, he attended Penn Vet on the GI Bill. Shoemaker was district veterinarian for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in 1960 and 1962. As district vet, he primarily tested dairy herds for Tuberculosis and Brucellosis (Bang’s disease). He also taught Biology and Chemistry at Cherry Township (Turnpike) High School in Mildred and then at Sullivan County High School in Laporte.

Lionel F. Rubin, V’58, a former professor at Penn Vet and pioneer in the field of veterinary ophthalmology, died on February 11 after a brief illness. Rubin taught veterinary ophthalmology for 31 years, retiring from Penn Vet 1992 as an emeritus professor. He served as president of the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists from 1976 to 1977, wrote four books and more than 100 scientific papers and abstracts, and was a consultant to pharmaceutical companies, as well as for the American Kennel Club. He developed an interest in ophthalmology while an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service and stationed at the National Institutes of Health after graduating from Penn Vet.

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ALUMNI NEWS

Carl G. Royer, V’63, passed away on April 27. He was born in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and lived in Roan Mountain, Tennessee, for the past 37 years. Royer was a practicing veterinarian for 53 years.

Glenn McCausland, V’78, of Glenmoore, Pennsylvania, passed away peacefully at home. McCausland served as a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Chemical Corp, receiving a Commendation Medal.

After the military, he attended Penn State University. He then worked for his father at the McCausland Funeral Home in Glenolden, Pennsylvania, as a funeral director before making a career change to become a veterinarian. With a VMD from Penn Vet, he established the Lionville Veterinary Clinic. After retiring, he worked at Colebrook Manor Animal Hospital and Absorption Systems.

James E. Simpson, Jr., V’78, passed away on March 27. Simpson was the owner of Main Street Animal Clinic in Manayunk since its inception in 1984. He began his career as an Associate Veterinarian at Dr. Rude’s Animal Hospital in 1978 and was active in the American and Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Associations and served as President of the Keystone Veterinary Medical Association, 1980-1985.

Joel Bigger, V’79, of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, passed away on February 5. Bigger moved to Philadelphia to attend Penn Vet. He then moved back to Pittsburgh in 1979 to work for Dr. Thomas Moore at the Avalon Veterinary Hospital.

Bigger remained there for 35 years before retiring in 2014.

Kathleen Boldy, V’80, of Los Angeles, California, passed away on May 29 after a long battle with cancer. Born in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, Boldy graduated from West Mifflin South High School.

She received her undergraduate degree from Penn State and earned her VMD from Penn Vet, followed by a graduate degree in Veterinary Ophthalmology from the University of California, Davis. Boldy enjoyed a successful veterinary practice in Brentwood, California.

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Deborah Roberts, V’81, of Landenberg, Pennsylvania, passed away on June 20. She was the founder of Nonantum Veterinary Clinic, which opened in 1983. In the years since, Roberts was proud to be joined by an outstanding group of colleagues at the clinic, all of whom shared her value of quality patient care first and foremost.

Joseph A. Crowley, V’87, of Montrose, Pennsylvania, passed away on January 15. He owned and operated Montrose Veterinary Clinic and was a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

For nearly 25 years, the Montrose community adored Crowley (“Doc”) and his dedicated and talented staff.

Ellen Fitzgibbon, V’99, passed away on June 8 after a brave, four-year battle with ovarian cancer. She taught high school biology for four years before attending Penn Vet. Since 2000, she had worked as a veterinarian at VCA Old Marple Veterinary Hospital in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Fitzgibbon loved nature, world travel, and photography. After her diagnosis, she combined these passions and founded Shooting for a Cure to support ovarian cancer research through the sale of her powerful photographs.

SEND US YOUR NEWS Penn Vet graduates achieve remarkable successes every day. Whether you have a new address, are moving forward in your career, announcing an addition to the family or honoring the life of a fellow alumnus, Alumni Relations wants to hear about it.

Please share your news!

Visit the Alumni page of the Penn Vet website, email your news to the alumni office at grovessh@vet.upenn.edu, or write to us at Alumni Relations, Penn Vet Alumni Office, 3800 Spruce Street, Suite 172E, Philadelphia, PA 19104. We may edit submissions due to space considerations.

BOARD OF OVERSEERS

WELCOME TO DR. DEBORAH SACHS ROTHMAN

P

enn Vet is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Deborah Sachs Rothman to its Board of Overseers. An advisory body to the Dean, Overseers are professionals, experts, and informed lay people who provide volunteer leadership and serve as ambassadors and spokespersons for Penn Vet by linking the School to the world.

Sachs Rothman is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City. She specializes in working with children, adolescents, and young adults and was an Adjunct Professor at the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University.

Sachs Rothman earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts & Sciences and PhD from the School-Child Program at Yeshiva University, where her research interests focused on the emotional intelligence of young adults.

Also interested in clinical neuropsychology and neuropsychological assessment, Sachs Rothman completed a pediatric internship at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at NYU Medical Center followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in childhood learning and assessment at the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services.

Sachs Rothman has a lifelong passion for animals, and it was her love for her Tibetan Terrier, Cooper, that first connected her to Penn Vet. She lives in New York City with her husband, two daughters, and a Tibetan Terrier puppy named Otis.

DODSON

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NOVEMBER 2018

Microbes, Metabolomics, and Modern Diseases

NOVEMBER 2 White Coat Ceremony NOVEMBER 6 First Tuesday Lecture Series A free educational series for horse owners and horse enthusiasts “Colic Surgery 101” Presented by Dr. Louise Southwood New Bolton Center – Alumni Hall Kennett Square, PA NOVEMBER 7 Fifth Annual Penn Microbiome Symposium Microbes, Metabolomics, and Modern Diseases Science Reporting in the Age of Fake News Speaker: Carl Zimmer, New York Times columnist and best-selling author 6:00 PM–7:30 PM Penn Vet – Hill Pavilion Philadelphia, PA Free event

DECEMBER 4 First Tuesday Lecture Series A free educational lecture series for horse owners and horse enthusiasts “Success Stories from the Healthy Mare Foaling Program” Presented by Dr. Michelle Linton and Dr. Jennifer Linton

NOVEMBER 8 Fifth Annual Penn Microbiome Symposium

8:00 AM–6:00 PM Perelman School of Medicine Biomedical Research Building Auditorium Philadelphia, PA Free event

New Bolton Center – Alumni Hall Kennett Square, PA

NOVEMBER 15 Continuing Education Anesthesia Speaker: Dr. Ciara Barr

Penn Vet Philadelphia, PA

MAY 17–18 Alumni Weekend & Reunion Philadelphia & Kennett Square

JANUARY 5–12 Farm Show

DECEMBER 2018

Harrisburg, PA JANUARY 22 North American Veterinary Community (NAVC)/ VMX Conference & Alumni Reception

DECEMBER 3 American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) Alumni Reception 6:00 PM–8:00 PM San Francisco, CA

MAY 20 Commencement

SAVE THE DATE

JANUARY 2019

Penn Vet — Hill Pavilion Philadelphia, PA

MAY 2019

7:00 PM–9:00 PM Orlando, FL

CALENDAR

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