Wednesday
May212025

Foot In Mouth Disease

Submitted by Rhea Amatya, Colorado State University

 

Monday
May192025

Externship Experience

Submitted by Eleanor Kharasch, Tufts University

My externship at the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) combined my passion for large animal medicine and public health. PCC is an agricultural research institution whose mission is to serve and support local and commercial farmers in the Philippines. Many farmers livelihoods rely on the health and production of their water buffalo, and PCC’s cutting-edge research and community engagement in 13 locations around the Philippines. This externship allowed me to participate in pregnancy diagnosis of water buffalo, collecting data and analyzing samples for their climate-smart research initiative that focuses on heat tolerance genetics, and contributing to their disease surveillance laboratory that screens for diseases including brucellosis, blue tongue, tuberculosis, and others. It was incredible to learn so much with amazing people who have a sincere passion for research and science with the primary goal of supporting farmers.

 

 

 

Friday
May162025

Cases/Abstracts

Submitted by Purva Nagarajan, University of Pennsylvania 

Generation of swine gamma delta CAR T cell lines

Purva Nagarajan, Lidia Flor Cuenca, Jack Swain, Hannah Thomas, Nimisha Pattada, Raimon
Duran-Struuck
Department of Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies use T cells engineered to target antigens
expressed in cancer cells. Research has been developed to optimize this technology using animal
models such as rodents. Unfortunately, rodent models have demonstrated poor clinical predictive
value, limiting the translatability to man. Swine share many anatomical, physiological, and
immune characteristics with humans, making them ideal for clinical translation. Gamma delta T
cells (GDCs) are a subset of CD3+ cells that can be found in the peripheral blood and mucosal
tissues and have strong anti-tumor properties and no MHC restriction. This makes them an
attractive cell type as there is minimal risk for inducing graft-versus-host disease compared to
alpha-beta T cells. We sought to take advantage of both CAR technology and GDC
characteristics to generate a large animal CAR GDC. Using swine peripheral blood mononuclear
cells, we isolated and expanded GDCs for transduction with a characterized CAR molecule.
Optimization of expansion techniques are being studied using zoledronic acid, IL-2, and artificial
antigen presenting cells (aAPCs) based on a K562 cells line expressing human CD86 and CD64
loaded with anti-swine CD3. To date, using 1uM ZA, 1000 IU/IL2 and a 10:1 aAPC:GDC ration
lead to a >4-fold expansion of absolute GDCs within 8 days. Flow cytometry data suggests that
the majority of these GDCs are CD4- and CD8-. Lentiviral transduction of GDCs with an anti-
HLA A2 CAR, characterized previously in human and swine T cell effectors, yielded up to a
24.8% CAR transduction making them a viable new cell line for clinical application upon further
refinement of the protocol.
Research grant: ITMAT
Student support: Internal funds

 

 

Wednesday
May142025

Cutest Pet

Submitted by Taylor Hudson, Michigan State University 

Monday
May122025

Photography

Submitted by Varun Seth, University of Illinois