Take Me Back to Italy

Catherine Lang, Texas A&M University

Experiences, Honorable Mention

With my first semester of my third year of veterinary school under my belt, I’m missing the time I spent in Europe. This summer, I had the opportunity to take a Food Safety and Public Health workshop at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Padua in Italy. The class consisted of three students from Texas A&M, Dr. Christine Budke (a professor at Texas A&M that teaches Public Health to first and second year veterinary students), another student from St. George’s University in Grenada, and eight Italian students.

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Christmas for Dually

Patricia Wonder, Texas A&M University

Life as a Vet Student, Honorable Mention

    One Christmas, about ten years ago, my mom decided to forego the usual Christmas turkey and prepare a prime rib instead.  Needless to say, since we are always tired of turkey by Christmas time, the Christmas prime rib became a tradition in our household.  One year, my mother was very sick and I had to prepare Christmas dinner on my own.  After all the stress and worry, I was amazed at how smoothly everything went.  Our family and guests loved the meal and we were all retiring to the living room to chat and watch TV for a bit.  I just wanted a half hour of sitting before I got up to put everything in containers and clean the kitchen, but that was not to be.  After about ten minutes of rest and relaxation, I heard a clatter coming from the kitchen and my Great Dane, Dually, came running out with the five pounds of prime rib which was left over from dinner. 

    As if it wasn't bad enough he stole our dinner for the next few days, Dually went to town on that beautiful, juicy, medium rare prime rib right on the living room couch.  We all immediately jumped into action to get the dog, and the prime rib, off the couch.  Dually was having none of it.  We all know Great Danes are usually very docile and quiet creatures.  However, all bets are off when there is a prime rib on the line.  After a large to-do, the prime rib was quickly scooped off the couch with a flat shovel and heaved out the back door with Dually, and four other dogs, chasing it down.  Dually enjoyed his prime rib immensely and came back in the house, ready for bed, about an hour later.

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My SAWorldVets Conservation Experience

Brian Tighe, Ross University

Experiences, Honorable Mention 

Often times when a person says you’ll have the opportunity to collaborate with a multimillion dollar industry, the opportunity to take care of animals that run into the tens of thousands of dollars per individual, a lot of feelings can come rushing towards you.  Excitement at the opportunity, disbelief in the trust placed upon you, anxiety over the possibility of a single mishap ruining your entire career, but the one emotion you would never expect is complacency.   Sable antelope, Hippotragus niger, is a species of antelope found in the savannahs of Africa.  Its rarity is dependent on the subspecies, spanning the spectrum from critically endangered to least concern, but that “least concern” label didn’t happen by itself. 

The farmers of South Africa have learned what valuable assets these animals can be, allowing offers from wealthy folks all over the world to spill in to purchase them for a variety of reasons, the most being hunting.  This gave great incentive to increase their numbers.  So when this student says he grew complacent seeing these creatures, he wasn’t bored or uninterested in them.  It was the sheer fact that on any given day as he drove threw the country, visiting farm after farm, these animals were everywhere.  Ever been to Pennsylvania and seen all the white-tailed deer?  Or how about sheep in New Zealand?  Or castles in Ireland?  It was kind of like that.  By the end of the trip we had seen so many Sable antelope we stopped taking pictures of them.  And you know what other emotion that made us realize on our journey back?  Pride in the efforts of conservationists, farmers, and veterinarians who were able to take an animal who used to have such low numbers and blow them up into a common sighting.

            I was one of fourteen students who went on an excursion to South Africa to follow a wildlife veterinarian as he worked to help farmers and maintain conservation of the animal species there.  The group was called SAWorldVets and was worth every penny.  Essentially we were following him on a day to day work schedule, awakening each morning before sunrise to whatever was scheduled, lunch, going out to calls, and then finally coming back in the evening to crash around the campfire.  Luckily for us, we just so happened to arrive two weeks before a giant auction that would involve many of the farmers in the area and, of course, they all wanted their animals in top shape.

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Meme + Vetmed

Morgan Jacobsen, Western University

Foot In Mouth Disease, Honorable Mention

Stemness and the Post-Injection Response of the Equine Joint to MSC Injection

Jessica Xu, Texas A&M University

Cases/Abstracts, Honorable Mention

Jiajie Jessica Xu, Amanda-Jo Joswig, Ashlee Watts
Comparative Orthopedics and Regenerative Medicine Lab, College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M University
Merial Veterinary Scholars Program and the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M University
Link Equine Research Endowment

Stemness and the Post-Injection Response of the Equine Joint to MSC Injection

A mesynchymal stem cell (MSC)’s ability to undergo trilineage differentiation into osteoblasts, adipocytes, and chondroblasts in vitro is one of the defining characteristics of MSC stemness. This quality allows MSCs to be used as a source of cells in tissue engineering and cell therapy. In addition to cellular differentiation, MSCs also play a role in modulating inflammatory responses by releasing anti-inflammatory factors during tissue repair. Though traditional stemness has been associated with effective tissue repair, the relationship between MSC stemness and immunomodulatory function is unknown. To study this, bone marrow derived MSCs were collected from 6 horses, and injected autologously. The same MSCs were also injected allogeneically into 6 separate horses. Joint fluid cytologic analysis was performed on injected joints to assess the inflammatory response. Stem cells from the donor horses were then cultured in vitro and tested for their ability to undergo trilineage differentiation using visual grading systems. By comparing MSC inflammatory response with stemness qualities, this study re-examines the criteria of what it means to be an effective stem cell.