Research Director to Director

Dr. Michael Kent and Dr. Carrie Finno, the Director of the Center for Equine Health at UC Davis speak about where their research meets and where it diverges.

Transcript

Vetrospective S01 E12: Research Director to Director

Transcript

Dr. Carrie Finno: But it was driven by a donor's idea. And I think some of that, you know it might come from the clinic when we're in the clinic, or it might come from someone sitting across from you saying, how do we do this in horses? How do we do this in dogs? How do we do this in cats?

Dr. Michael Kent: Hello, and welcome to today's episode of The Vetrospective. This is your host, Dr. Michael Kent. Today is going to be a little different. I've invited Dr. Carrie Fino here to talk about research. Now, I know we touch on research in almost every episode, but today we're going to the nuts and bolts of research and the impact it has. So, I am director of the Center for Companion Animal Health, which is focused on dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, all companion animals except horses. Dr. Finno is my counterpart at the Center for Equine Health at UC Davis for all things equine. So, Dr. Finno did her undergraduate work at Emory in Georgia and then her veterinary school and her large animal internship in medicine at the University of Minnesota. She then did her residency in large animal medicine and her PhD in comparative pathology here at UC Davis. From there, she held a postdoc position at the University of Minnesota and then was hired an assistant professor there before returning to UC Davis as a faculty member in equine genetics. Dr. Finno became the director for the Center for Equine Health in 2016. She has mentored multiple undergraduate, veterinary students, residents, and graduate students, and has published over 140 peer-reviewed studies. Pretty cool. I could go on with the list of her awards and grants she has received and the list of her accomplishments, but then we wouldn't actually get to speak with her. So, thank you for joining us today, Dr. Finno.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Thanks for having me, Dr. Kent.

Dr. Michael Kent: So, before we dive into this topic of research, I like to ask this question, why veterinary medicine?

Dr. Carrie Finno: That's a great question. I always wanted to do something with horses. And when I was younger, I actually wanted to be a horse trainer, I think as many young girls do. And my parents very wisely said, if you want to do something with horses, maybe consider the medicine side instead of the training side. And so I got kind of set on an idea of being an equine veterinarian, but I...

Dr. Michael Kent: How old were you then?

Dr. Carrie Finno: I was probably about 8 or 9.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah.

Dr. Carrie Finno: And I had no idea about research, though, right? Like when you learn that you're going to go to vet school, you want to go and treat animals. So, my vision was I would drive around in a truck and be an equine vet. And then I got to school and I thought maybe I should be a surgeon. But that was an awful idea for me. I don't have that skill set at all. So, I married one instead. But I got the chance to actually run horses on the treadmill during vet school. So, my second year of vet school, there was a job opening with Dr. Stephanie Valberg, and it was to run horses on the treadmill. And I thought, what this is the coolest job anyone could ever have.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah.

Dr. Carrie Finno: No interest in research or genetics, and that's how I got involved in it all.

Dr. Michael Kent: Running on a treadmill or have the horses running on a treadmill.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Definitely not me. That'd be awesome.

Dr. Michael Kent: So what kind of research were they doing running horses on a treadmill?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So Dr. Valberg studies inherited muscle disease in horses. So, she actually had a herd.

Dr. Michael Kent: I see the genetic link coming.

Dr. Carrie Finno: There it is. And I was awful. Like genetics undergrad, I got a C+. It was all flies and worms and not my cup of tea.

Dr. Michael Kent: Drosophila.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah. Had no interest in genetics.

Dr. Michael Kent: Or peas, right? Isn't that Mendelian?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Definitely peas, right?

Dr. Michael Kent: Peas, lots of peas.

Dr. Carrie Finno: But when you apply it to horses and you have these families of horses with these inherited muscle diseases, it just made sense. It was cooler and I got completely wrapped up.

Dr. Michael Kent: And it was clinically applicable.

Dr. Carrie Finno: It was very clinically applicable.

Dr. Michael Kent: So, I'm going to take us back and jump a little bit kind of broader picture. Why do we need research for society? What, in general, why do we need research? Why, what is your perspective on this?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So, I think the only way to push the envelope, right, the only way to discover new ways to diagnose diseases, to treat diseases, and I think for all of us to prevent diseases in the first place is with research. And whether that's, you know, basic research that you think about in a lab with somebody holding a pipette, doing things in cells, or like we do where we treat animals with diseases and we see if that can help people or clinical trials in people. There's all these different levels, but until you test those things and ask those questions, you can't move the field forward. And for all of us that have had ourselves or our loved ones with some illness or something where we just really were hoping there was a new treatment, this is the way forward.

Dr. Michael Kent: No, it's I hear you and it resonates well with me because I know, you know, you, like I said, are a center director. And can you explain what the role of a center is within the university like here? What is a center for equine health? What are your goals?

Dr. Carrie Finno: I mean, we are so fortunate. I know you and I have talked about this, right, to have centers. So, UC Davis is incredible in that there was the foresight to develop these species-specific centers where the focus is to actually do research in the species we're supporting. So, a lot of times we talk about translational research, right, where we look at something in the horse, something in the dog, something in the cat that can help people. But a lot of us are really interested in doing research in horses for the sake of diseases in horses. And there's not a lot of funding for that, right? 

Dr. Michael Kent: No

Dr. Carrie Finno: And so to have these centers where they are completely philanthropically supported, and we can do that kind of research for the sake of the horse, the dog, the cat, the llama, the alpaca, right? But also a lot of it does translate to humans. It's kind of it's kind of a, you know, double bang for your buck, so to speak.

Dr. Michael Kent: And you mentioned translational research. I know we also have basic science research and we have clinical research. Can you kind of explain what each of those are and how one can lead to the other?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, so each of those has a really important role. So, when we think of basic research, we think of fundamental questions, right? And in my case, in my lab, one of the things we're really interested in is vitamin E in horses and also in people, right? And so how does vitamin E protect the nervous system? That would be a very basic question. You could take cells, you could take mouse lines, and you could try to figure this out. And then you've got the clinical question, right? And for me, that's why are there some horses that vitamin E deficiency completely impacts more than others? What's the genetics underlying that? So now we have a clinical question we can answer in horses. And then you take it a whole other level, and there's people that have inherited genetic mutations that are vitamin E deficient, and they need very high doses to not develop neurologic disease. So now you have a disease in people that you've also studied in horses that started maybe way back when with mice and with cell lines.

Dr. Michael Kent: And you need that basic mechanism to be able to figure out the problem and then how to tackle it. Do you find, have you found that the genes in people are the same quote unquote genes in horses?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah. I mean, the great thing about genetics, and I always, my students will tell you I'll dork out on this a little bit, but there's four letters. There's ACTG in genetics and every single species has the same letters. So,

Dr. Michael Kent: There's only four of them, right? 

Dr. Carrie Finno: There's only four. There's lots of combinations of the four. But It's amazing that you can have a disease in people and that same gene is implicated in horses or dogs or cats, and you can learn so much. I mean, we can learn from humans, but they can learn from our species of interest too.

Dr. Michael Kent: I was asked kind of an interesting question and something that I didn't really understand the question in some ways when it was asked to me by someone who was thinking if they should give money or not for research. And they asked me, how do you separate interesting from actionable research? What's your take on this?

Dr. Carrie Finno: That's a great question because I always say the research isn't complete until we bring it back to the pet owner, the horse owner, the veterinarian, whoever the end person is where there's going to be that impact. And that can be at a basic research level, right? The who cares? You have to be able to answer it for every project you do. If I walk into the lab and I say, why are you doing this? Who cares? You need to have an answer for me and you need to have a target group for who cares. And if you can answer that, that's why you're doing it, right? 

Dr. Michael Kent: That’s actionable.

Dr. Carrie Finno: It may be 10 years, right, before you get a test or this, but you're on your way versus, and I do think we all fall into that, right? As researchers, sometimes for you, it's so interesting and you get so involved in it. But if nobody other than you cares, right, you really should direct your your effort into something that's going to help society and individual folks.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah, when I first heard that, I went, well, a lot of times what I'm interested in is what I'm doing research on, but it may not be actionable yet because I don't know what the answer is going to be. So sometimes you need to also do a little bit of the research to find out is this a path we need to go down? And sometimes you have to flip the question or think outside the box in order to find out if it will be actionable, too. I like your take on it, though. I think you were thinking of it probably more how she was.

Dr. Carrie Finno: The other side of that is when it starts in the clinic, right? When you have a problem, you have a dog, you have a cat, I have a horse that comes in. 

Dr. Michael Kent: I see a problem.

Dr. Carrie Finno: I can't solve that with the tools I have. So how do I go back to that basic science to answer that question? So, I think you can bring it up both. both directions, but the who cares is really important.

Dr. Michael Kent: No, it's essential. And this gets a bit more to the question of what we decide to fund given limited resources. So, you know, you have a limited amount of money and you have proposals. How do you, how do you, I know how my center runs. How does your center run in deciding how you divvy out funds?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So we, just like the Center for Companion Animal Health, we have a scientific advisory board. So, we have a group of faculty, many are at UC Davis. We also have outside equine veterinarians that serve on that board. They honestly, they bring a lot of the who cares to the discussion. And we sit and we go through every single proposal. They're reviewed and they're scored, and then we discuss them. And the way we score them, so significance and innovation, right, that's important. But for us, impact actually carries the biggest score. And you could still have a study that's very basic science, but if you can answer that question, the impact in the clinic…

Dr. Michael Kent: Could be huge.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Could be huge, right? So, you're going to get a very high score on that because it is impactful, even if it's not immediate. And having that outside perspective, I've had a lot of the equine vets that have sat on there and they said, well, the science, I agree with you guys, the science is really good, but we'll never use this. And for us, then that's not worth putting, right, this limited amount of money towards. We need it to be something that equine vets are going to use for their clients.

Dr. Michael Kent: So now I have an answer for this for myself and you decide to take the center director role on. I'm going to ask you why. You know, we all have our own clinic. We all have our own research projects we want to do. Like, it's not easy. You've got to raise the funds. You've got to figure out the process to deliver it. You've got to like push research agendas. So why are you doing it?

Dr. Carrie Finno: It's a great question. And there's two reasons. So ,one is I've been passionate about horses and research and pushing the agenda for since I was 8, right? Since we start at the beginning, right? So that's that passion has been there. But as you said, it's a lot of work. And there is a degree of pay it forward in this profession. And I think that that's across a lot of professions, but we feel it really strongly here, right? So I had, I talked about Dr. Valberg as a mentor in vet school. When I came to UC Davis, Dr. Greg Ferraro was the director for the Center for Equine Health. And as a resident, I walked in and I asked for support to do a lot of projects. I was excited about research and he supported me. He provided the enthusiasm. He provided the funds. And I just saw this incredible machine and opportunity, right, where you could push equine medicine forward. So, Dr. Ferraro never asked a thing of me until he asked me to take the role of center director. And I couldn't really say no to that. So those two reasons.

Dr. Michael Kent: I had a very similar experience with Dr. Pedersen.

Dr. Carrie Finno: I know you did.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yes. And he told me he couldn't retire until he found someone who loved the center as much as he did. And as a resident, when we were needing a linear accelerator and all of a sudden I am a second year radiation oncology resident and deciding what linear accelerator is going into our new cancer clinic. And he was funding it, you know, and my first project that I did, I was doing research on looking at angiogenesis or new blood vessel growth in thyroid tumors. Guess where I got my funding? Center for Companion Animal Health. So, I do hear that pay it forward thing. And I think one of the unique things about Davis is our funding, that we have this intramural funding that can help you start. You know, and you get to ask those questions, that actionable research, If it works, it's really going to work. But maybe an outside funding group in a really competitive area is going to go, that's a stretch. But sometimes the magic happens, right?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, we can do the high risk, high reward. And then we can make pilot data for those stronger grant applications, right? Sometimes you need a smaller amount of money to just get some data to say, hey, bigger granting agencies, this is worth putting your money towards. And we can do that here.

Dr. Michael Kent: Can you give me an example of research in horses from your center where it's made a big difference?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So, I think one of the fields we've been most impactful for is a lot of the infectious disease work on equine herpes virus, myeloencephalopathy. So Dr. Nicola Pusterla is our…

Dr. Michael Kent: So, what is that disease first?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yep. So, herpes virus, right, in any species comes with a bad connotation…

Dr. Carrie Finno: As it should. As it should.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yes, as it should. So, in horses, this particular virus can cause either respiratory disease, it can cause abortion in pregnant mares, or the one we're all scared of is it can cause this awful neurologic disease in these horses. And it is highly contagious.

Dr. Michael Kent: I was like, is that the one that could also jump to people?

Dr. Carrie Finno: That one can't, thankfully, thankfully. Venezuelan can, but not this one. 

Dr. Michael Kent: That one does not. 

Dr. Carrie Finno: But this one is the one that'll shut down horse shows. So, if there's one affected horse, there've been a lot of worldwide outbreaks, it effectively shuts an entire horse show down, which is millions of dollars. And you've got the risk of these amazing athletes now having a potentially fatal disease. So, Dr. Pusterla really kind of led the game, I think on a lot of this EHV-1 as we call it, equine herpes virus 1. 

Dr. Michael Kent: And he's one of our faculty in internal medicine. So, he's an infectious disease specialist.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Exactly. Equine internist. And all of the work he's done on biosecurity and how we would control for this and how we need to be careful about this actually came in handy a few years ago. There was an outbreak down at Desert Horse Park, which is the big facility in Southern California that has huge horse shows. And the CEO at the time of that facility reached out to Davis and said,

Dr. Michael Kent: We have a problem.

Dr. Carrie Finno: We have a problem, and I don't know what to do about this. And Dr. Pusterla, myself, Amy Young from our center, we all got on a plane. We went down there. We helped him manage it. We collected samples at the same time for a graduate student.

Dr. Michael Kent: And this is all because of the research that was done previously.

Dr. Carrie Finno: So, it has made a huge difference in managing those and also educating folks, right, that have these horses that are exposed as to why we're there.

Dr. Michael Kent: So, I know from my center, donors really are our lifeblood. We're 100% funded by our donors. You know, we have no state money. We don't have university money. I mean, there just isn't that available. So, I believe it's pretty much the same for you, right?

Dr. Carrie Finno: It sure is.

Dr. Michael Kent: So why do you think people donate to support animal research?

Dr. Carrie Finno: I think a lot of people, if they've had, in our case, right, a horse that's experienced some disease that we don't know a lot about, and they've had that kind of personal interaction with it, they want to move the field forward, right? They want to have their horses experience help the next animal that comes in. So, I think that's a big piece of it. And then the other part that we have at the center, which is really unique, is we have 150 horses that live there. And they're horses that are owned by the university. They've been donated for a variety of reasons, lameness, some have neurologic disease, some have, we have a horse with narcolepsy. I call them very lovingly my herd of misfits from time to time. But those horses not only teach the veterinary students, but they allow us to kind of examine some of these questions in horses that really at that stage had no other purpose for their owners, right? So, we're a bit of a sanctuary for these animals, and yet we can do this teaching and this really integral mission. So, in addition to the research, we have to support the 150 horses. And I always joke, my dad used to say when I was younger, he's like, you always wanted to have 150 horses. 

Dr. Michael Kent: And now you do. 

Dr. Carrie Finno: And now I do. It's a lot, but protecting those herds and the value of those herds is near and dear to my heart.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah, and that's where our centers are a little different. I don't have 150 dogs here. I might have 150 cats at home, no, just two, and only one dog. But no, I think it's a unique thing again about Davis that we're actually able to support a sanctuary teaching group.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Exactly.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah. And can you give me an example where a donor has really impacted your program? So, what came out of their investment basically?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So, we can talk about the large farm we acquired.

Dr. Michael Kent: That was my softball to you, because I was thinking Templeton Farms and you could tell me what that is. 

Dr. Carrie Finno: Is that amazing or not. And it was from one of our alums.

Dr. Michael Kent: You're glowing right now, actually.

Dr. Carrie Finno: I am. I just love this part so much, right? So we had One of our veterinary alums who graduated from here who had a client down in the Paso Robles area who had decided that she was going to leave California and was thinking about selling her farm. And this vet, UCD grad, said, you know, what about considering potentially donating it to UC Davis because we run an import program for horses and we can potentially have those horses down there.

Dr. Michael Kent: And so the import program, I know that's a quarantine type facility. Why do we need that?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So, that is actually from the federal government, that's USDA mandated, that horses that come into the United States from other countries have to go through a quarantine to make sure they don't have any infectious diseases. And then the quarantine we do, we kind of lovingly call it the STD quarantine. It's for venereal disease in horses. So, it's for mares and stallions, and we have to test them and make sure they're negative because If they were to get into the breeding population with that disease, it could be devastating.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah. So back to Templeton Farms.

Dr. Carrie Finno: So, we run that. And this particular donor had imported horses before. She had horses come through Davis. And she knew that- 

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah, we're in Northern California. 

Dr. Carrie Finno: We're in Northern California, right? The horses come into LA, they have to come all the way up to Davis, and then most of them go back to Southern California. So, the idea of having this farm and potentially using it for that purpose was tremendous. So, they reached out to us a few years ago and we drove out there. It was Associate Dean Pascoe before his retirement and myself. And I will never forget driving down the driveway. And this farm, I have never seen anything as nice as this farm. And I looked at him and I was like, if we don't make this work, and he just said, calm down, it's going to be a lot of steps. We might not make this work. And I said, we have to make this work.

Dr. Michael Kent: And you did.

Dr. Carrie Finno: And we did. And it is so nice to have a footprint in central California for our equine program.

Dr. Michael Kent: No, I think it's pretty amazing. Now, I know your center like mine also helps fund equipment and research equipment. And so that may also get used in the clinic sometimes. I know, for example, you supported the first PET scanner for horses. So, can you tell me a little bit about this? What's the process and what's been accomplished by your support of research equipment?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, the PET scanner is an amazing example. So, for those of you that don't know about the technology, it's positron emission tomography. You probably talked about it here before.

Dr. Michael Kent: I don't think yet, but you know, anything with antimatter in it is way cool, right?

Dr. Carrie Finno: My gosh you’re such a dork.

Dr. Michael Kent: I’m a radiation oncologist. What do you want?

Dr. Carrie Finno: No, true. So, PET scanners, so a lot of us from, you know, the human field know it for cancer, right? Is when you're looking for metastasis screens, you might get a PET scan. And it's they inject you with an isotope that labels certain cells, and then you can kind of image them. So, for horses, there was a question many years ago of, could we do this as kind of a test of functional, right? You have a horse that's lame, we can get a CT, we can get an MRI, you might see some changes there, but there might be a lot of changes in which one is actually-.

Dr. Michael Kent: But are they significant? Do they mean anything?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Making that horse lame. So, if you have a marker that lights up, you could say, hey, it's right there, that's the problem. So, Dr. Mathieu Spriet was actually the one that spearheaded that research and was looking for some initial pilot funding to see, could we take a human PET scanner, which is actually used for brains and people, could we anesthetize a horse and put their leg through it because it was big enough? And so we did. We were able to pilot that.

Dr. Michael Kent: And it was a small, portable one, actually.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah.

Dr. Michael Kent: That actually came here because of a study I was doing on dogs, and we didn't have a PET scanner yet. And this was a spin-off of someone from NIH, and this was... this PET scanner was being developed to be portable to take it to people in nursing homes to look for Alzheimer's.

Dr. Carrie Finno: That's amazing, yeah.

Dr. Michael Kent: And Dr. Sprier walked by and he's like, hey, I could put a horse leg in that. I'm like, talk to him. 

And he did. 

Dr. Michael Kent: And he did. But so, you had this idea or he had this idea and brought it to you. And I mean, I know it took hundreds of thousands of dollars…

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah. And it was actually, Dr. Claudia Sonder, she was a director before me. She started it with Dr. Spriet and her and I talked about it and she's like, “I know this is a gamble, but if this works”, and I said, “if it works, it'd be amazing”.

Dr. Michael Kent: And has it worked?

Dr. Carrie Finno: And it's worked.

Dr. Michael Kent: Softball question again. 

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah. And now we've got a standing PET for horses. And now there are, I think, over 10 now within the world, but UC Davis was the first place to have this.

Dr. Michael Kent: Well, and it was a human device that we brought back for horse use, which is pretty cool when humans are the guinea pigs for our patients, right?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yep, sometimes it goes in that direction.

Dr. Michael Kent: You know, we get asked sometimes if we're doing animal research, does that mean we're hurting the animals? And it's like, you know, sometimes we use people as the guinea pigs, right?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Exactly.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah. And so, how do you take an idea, something you see in the clinic, how does it become a project? How do you think about it? What's that process for you?

Dr. Carrie Finno: I think for me, a lot of it is actually really donor driven. You know, I spend a lot of time talking to people that are really passionate about a topic, right? And then my goal is to kind of matchmake them, right? As is yours with one of our faculty that's working in that field and see if that synergy together can bring a project. 

Dr. Michael Kent: Does it align? Yeah.

Dr. Carrie Finno: And we have, you know, the other example we have is the precision medicine project out at CEH. So, we had a donor that I had this whole plan. I thought he wanted to fund stem cells. I had a whole proposal. I went in. And he sat down and said, how do we do precision medicine in horses?

Dr. Michael Kent: And you threw out your plan and said, let's think about this.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah. And so we ended up, I mean, that herd I told you about those 150 horses, 100 of them have their whole genome sequenced and they have their microbiomes profiled. You know, we got a manure sample and looked at all the bacteria in their gut. They have their metabolites profiled. So, they've become this incredible, but they're even more valuable than they were initially, right? Because we have all this information on them, but it was driven by.

Dr. Michael Kent: And you're now following them.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, and we have longitudinal data, exactly.

Dr. Michael Kent: Longitudinal, in other words, data over time.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Over time. But it was driven by a donor's idea. And I think some of that, you know, it might come from the clinic when we're in the clinic, or it might come from someone sitting across from you saying, how do we do this in horses? How do we do this in dogs? How do we do this in cats?

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah, no, I think sometimes we get so caught in our day-to-day, we may not think a little bit differently sometimes. And sometimes it just takes a little help from the outside. And it doesn't hurt if they've got funding to help you do it.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, we say, well, this is how we do it. This is what it would cost. And they say, done. That's amazing. It's just so powerful.

Dr. Michael Kent: So, I mean, I hope we've kind of gone through a bit of the process of how we think about research, how we take something there and the importance of it, what it means for veterinary medicine. What else should have I asked you?

Dr. Carrie Finno: I think we touched on a lot of things. I think at the end of the day, one of my favorite things to do is walk people around and introduce them to the horses that we have out at the center and talk about everything that we've learned from that horse and how it's changed what we're doing in the clinic and what we're doing with the next patient that comes in. And I mean, I can't say enough about the value, right, in being able to do that, to train veterinary students on actual horses that have certain conditions, and then to also learn from those conditions, so similar to what we see in the clinic, these dogs and cats coming in, and if we can treat it with something new and it's gonna help across species and humans, hopefully too, that'd be amazing.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah, or maybe something you learn on a horse we bring back to a dog, you know? 

Dr. Carrie Finno: Exactly

Dr. Michael Kent: It is one health... 

Dr. Carrie Finno: It really is.

Dr. Michael Kent: We're many species, but really, we share a very similar biology.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah. All right. Anything you want to ask me?

Dr. Carrie Finno: Oh, good. I get to turn the tables now. This is kind of fun for me. 

Dr. Michael Kent: Why not? Why not?

Dr. Carrie Finno: So what do you feel like for CCAH has been maybe the biggest hurdle or the biggest challenge that you've overcome in the past few years?

Dr. Michael Kent: Biggest challenge or hurdle we've overcome? That's a really good question. Now I'm stalling, right? You know, I guess our funding sources have always been the issues and probably, you know, the need when we bring new faculty in to be able to help them start their career and start a new lab and making sure they have the resources to do it. You know, I want to make sure our next generation that comes in has the same opportunity I did, and that's not cheap. So, trying to make sure we have the resources in hard economic times when we're not getting the same kind of campus or state support because the money's not there, we've got to find it. And that's been some of the challenge. I think part of the challenge also is what's our next big topic? What's our next big push? You know, we've had such success with our FIP treatment program that Dr. Pedersen started, and now we've got a whole team working on the vaccine for it. And I'm always like, okay, this is our success. What's our next one? You know, our group's been working on trying to make monoclonal antibodies for dogs. And it's, I literally sometimes wake up at night and I'm, I can't fall back asleep sometimes because I'm thinking, last night I woke up and I had a dream that a friend's dog came down with hemangiosarcoma and then I had to euthanize it, which is pretty horrible, right? And so this is, I don't even know what time it is, but so now I'm thinking about the problem of that because today I was meeting with some really lovely people who are helping fund initiatives on hemangiosarcoma. So, now I'm trying to think of how do we treat this better? You know, and we've got grant calls out for it. So, I guess the biggest problem is making sure we stay relevant, making sure we continue to fund the cutting-edge research, and that we still are able to come up with the resources to be able to support all the people here. And sometimes that's what I worry about.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Yeah, I think you and I have that in common. 

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you spending the time with me today. And Maybe we'll have to have you back to talk specifically about equine genetics.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Oh, I would love that.

Dr. Michael Kent: Yeah, no, I would love that too. So, thank you very much.

Dr. Carrie Finno: Thanks for the invite.

Dr. Michael Kent: The Vetrospective, as with life, takes a village. I want to thank those who suggested I start this project and everyone who has encouraged and supported me along the way. Particularly, I want to thank our producer and director, Danae Blythe Unti. Nancy Bei, who is our program coordinator, our sound mixer, Andy Cowett, and theme music was composed and produced by Tim Gahagan. Thank you all, and we'll see you next time.