Who We Are
The EQUID core faculty members are Drs.
Robert H.
Mealey,
Donald P. Knowles, and
Stephen A.
Hines, veterinarians and faculty in the
Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology department.
Each is specialty board-certified in a clinical
discipline: Drs. Knowles and Hines in veterinary
pathology and Dr. Mealey in equine internal
medicine.
Additional key faculty and staff members of the
EQUID program include Dr. Massaro Ueti, USDA-ARS
scientist and expert in equine piroplasmosis
pathogenesis, transmission, diagnostics, and
treatment;
Dr. Wendy Brown, Regence Professor in the
Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology
and expert in large animal tick-borne diseases,
immunology, and vaccine development;
Dr. Katrina Mealey, Professor in the Department
of Veterinary Clinical Sciences and expert in
internal medicine, clinical pharmacology, and
mechanisms of drug resistance and director of the
Veterinary Clinical Pharmacology Laboratory; and
Lowell Kappmeyer, molecular biologist and
geneticist, and expert in equine piroplasmosis
pathogenesis, diagnostics, and genome sequencing.
Altogether, this group has published over 500
scientific papers and has an impressive history of
animal disease and equine infectious disease
research, supported by the National Institutes of
Health, USDA, Grayson Jockey Club, Morris Animal
Foundation, and the generosity of private
donations.
EQUID also includes numerous graduate students,
many of whom are equine veterinarians; post-doctoral
fellows; veterinary students; undergraduate
students; and several highly qualified research
technicians and horse care technicians.
EQUID was built on WSU's long-standing history of
pioneering equine research. Early ground-breaking
work on the critical importance of passive transfer
of immunity from mares to foals in the first 24
hours of life via the first milk (colostrum) was
performed here. Without this passive transfer
protection, newborn foals develop life-threatening
infections. Early recognition and treatment of
Failure of Passive Transfer (FPT) in newborn foals
has become the standard of practice and has
prevented countless foal deaths throughout the
world. In addition, the fatal genetic disease in
Arabian horses called severe combined
immunodeficiency (SCID) was first described here, as
was the nature of the disease and its inheritance
pattern. This work was built upon by others
eventually leading to the discovery of the genetic
basis of the disorder and a diagnostic test for the
genetic defect, which is widely used today.
