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GASTROINTESTINAL VIEWPOINTS - Spring 2000 The Newsletter of the Comparative Gastroenterology Society - Allen J. Roussel, President of the Society and Noah D. Cohen, Editor of the Newsletter - |
Apologies to all CGS member for the hiatus in publishing the newsletter. I am hoping that we will be able to distribute information to members on a regular basis. Pursuant to discussions with Dr. Allen Roussel, we plan to publish the newsletter semiannually: one edition in the spring and one edition in the fall. I will solicit ideas and items for the newsletter from the membership a few months prior to each edition; however, I will gladly receive items from anyone at any time. Thank you for your patience.
Members in the News:
Congratulations to the following CGS members who were winners of the 1999 Pfizer Animal Health Award for Research Excellence at their schools: Dr. Frank Andrews (University of Tennessee) and Dr. Kenneth Simpson (Cornell University).
President's Note (Prepared by Dr. Allen Roussel, Texas A&M University):
One of the duties of the President of CGS is to attend the Congress for Research Workers in Animal Disease in Chicago. I consider it a privilege rather than an duty. There was a wide array of interesting topics at this year's Congress (for a large animal internist and gastroenterologist, at least) although several of the most interesting GI abstracts were in the sessions for Food Safety and Epidemiology. As you know, CGS presents an award to a graduate student or resident with the best abstract in the Gastroenterology Session. This year's winner was Roberto M.C. Guedes, Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN. His award-winning abstract was entitled "Comparison of Different Methods for Diagnosis of Porcine Proliferative Enteropathy". Many thanks to Dr Gerald Duhamel who does most of the legwork to make the CGS-sponsored activities in Chicago happen.
Dr. Roberto Guedes (right) of the University of Minnesota, recipient of the CGS award at the 1999 Congress of Research Workers in Animal Disease, with CGS President, Dr. Allen J. Roussel.
Call for Proposals:
The CGS is once again offering a research grant award in the
amount of $5,000 in the discipline of gastroenterology and gastrointestinal biology. Eligible applicants must be new investigators holding intern, resident, or graduate student positions. The supervising mentor or the applicant must be a member of the Comparative Gastroenterology Society. The deadline for submission is May 1, 2000. For complete information and a grant application, see our CGS WebSite (http://www.vet.upenn.edu/cs_phila/sam/cgs.htm). Please consider the following description of the CGS research grant program.
Grant Description:
Eligible applicants must be new investigators holding intern, resident, or graduate student positions. The supervising mentor or the applicant must be a member of the Comparative Gastroenterology Society. The research proposal must involve aspects of either function or disease of the alimentary system (GI tract, liver, or pancreas) in any animal species. The study must be a stand-alone study, and be able to be completed with the funds provided by the grant. There is a two-year time limit for completion of the study. The maximum budget is $5,000 which will support expendable materials and animal costs. The CGS will not pay institutional overhead. A written report or a manuscript written for journal submission must be submitted to the CGS Research Chair within six months of termination of the grant. In 2000, it is likely that there will be a single grant awarded with a value up to $5,000.Grant Instructions:
The following is the format for he grant proposal. The proposal should be limited to four typewritten, single-spaced pages, exclusive of the application form, biographical sketches, references, and budget.Proposal Format:
I.Application formII.Significance of the research
III.Literature review
IV.Objectives of the study
V.Research method
VI.Animal care and use
VII.References
VIII.Budget
IX.Biographical sketches (no longer than 2 pages per investigator)
Send six(6) copies of completed proposal(s) to:
Dr. Robert J. WashabauDepartment of Clinical Studies
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6010
Proposals must be received by May 1, 2000 to be considered for funding.
Update on GGS Grant Recipient
Proposal for Clinical Trial Funding (Prepared by Dr. Susan Bunch, North Carolina State University)
Proposal: Would the Comparative Gastroenterology Society consider funding a clinical trial?
It seems to me that good research ideas are shared every year at the time of the Annual ACVIM Forum, and that some focus on relatively uncommon naturally occurring diseases. To be able to generate meaningful data, multicenter involvement is often necessary. We all know this is a competitive arena, with fewer funding agencies than good ideas.
At last year's CGS board meeting, it appeared that we were in sound financial condition. Our organization awards money for resident/graduate student research grants, and other worthy causes. In an informal poll of the membership last Fall, there was a generally favorable reaction to the concept of funding a clinical trial in addition to the current commitment to supporting resident and graduate student research.
May I request that the membership give thought to a proposal that the CGS sponsor a multicenter trial (or other clinical study) and that everyone comes to the annual meeting at the Forum prepared to discuss it.
Editor's Note: As a clinician with training in epidemiology, I strongly support the proposal for a CGS-sponsored clinical trial. If a clinical trial per se is not feasible, it would behoove us to consider other multicenter observational epidemiologic study designs (cohort studies, case-control studies, etc.). The value of observational studies is often overlooked. By combining resources, it may be possible to better exploit the wealth of information from our patients and clinical experiences.
CGS Newsletter: Focus on Texas A&M University
In the Department of Veterninary Large Animal Medicine and Surgery, several collaborative clinical research programs have been developed. These collaborations are intra-departmental, inter-departmental, and inter-institutional. Within the department, Drs. Allen Roussel, Peter Rakestraw, Neil Hooper, Noah Cohen have conducted studies of post-operative ileus in horses and the effects of erythromycin lactobionate as a pro-kinetic drug during the post-operative period. These studies have included retrospective analysis of clinical cases and experimental studies in vivo. In conjunction with Dr. Anne Bahr (a radiologist and member of our faculty) and our colleagues in the GI Laboratory in the Department of Veterinary Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, we have an interest in evaluating gastric emptying in horses. Studies have included comparison of scintigraphy (the "gold standard" for measuring gastric emptying) with various parameters of the pharmacokinetics of acetaminophen absorption in apparently healthy horses and in horses with induced delay of gastric emptying. This work was largely conducted by Dr. Katharina Lohmann, for which she received a CGS Resident Abstract Award in 1999. Planned studies include evaluation of gastric emptying in horses with gastric ulceration. Also in conjunction with our colleagues from the GI Laboratory ( Drs. David Williams and Joerg Steiner from the Department of Small Animal Medicine & Surgery), we plan to investigate the use of sucrose as a marker for gastric ulceration in horses. We have had a long-standing interest in the epidemiology of colic, with particular interest in dietary factors and their association with colic.
Inter-institutional collaborations have been exciting and important to us. Collaboration and consultation with Drs. Al Merritt and Guy Lester at the University of Florida have been vital and stimulating. Collaborations with investigators at the University of Georgia are planned. The value of multi-center epidemiologic studies (both observational and experimental) has been apparent to us, and we are pleased at the prospects for participating in such studies.
Resources for our clinical research include the laboratory of Drs. Rakestraw and Roussel, case records and materials from our hospital, and the Link Equine Colic Program. The Link program is funded by the estate of Ms. Patsy Link, which she bequeathed to Texas A&M University for the purpose of improving the health of horses.
GINI - Gastroenterology and Nutrition Initiative at Texas A&M University - an Alliance for the Future (Provided by Dr. Joerg Steiner)
Digestive Disease Week attracts thousands of human gastroenterologists every year and as one of the few veterinarians participating at this meeting I am always reminded of the tiny number of veterinary gastroenterologists that exist. Of course most human gastroenterologists are in private practice and often don't play a major role in the quest for new knowledge, but still the number of academic gastroenterologists in human medicine is higher by many orders of magnitude than those in veterinary medicine. Often times a single human medical institution employs almost as many human gastroenterologists as there are members of our Comparative Gastroenterology Society. While a single small animal or large animal gastroenterologist is clearly able to tend to patients with gastrointestinal disorders, I believe that this situation puts us at a clear disadvantage in the research arena.
It is astounding how little is known about gastrointestinal disorders in human beings, but even more so in veterinary species. The first stage in trying to investigate gastrointestinal disorders is to characterize the disorder. The working description and definition must be specific enough that the disorder can clearly be distinguished from similar disorders. In the next stage, one of two approaches can be taken. Usually, only small advances are achieved when clinical research is done by doing retrospective studies about patients with the disease or by performing trials concerning the diagnosis or treatment of the disease (Editor's note: Epidemiologists would countermand this arguement - much important information can be derived from patient-based studies). More profound findings usually require the investigation of disease mechanisms involved and definition of a suitable model for the disease becomes necessary. Once a model has been described far-reaching discoveries are often possible changing the very approach to the disease. One strategy to acquire funding for veterinary gastroenterology research and to learn more about gastrointestinal disorders in our patients is to define animal models for human gastrointestinal disorders in the species we are interested in as clinicians. However, such an effort can only be successful if we are able to describe gastrointestinal conditions in these species well enough that they are suitable as animal models of human gastrointestinal disorders. Otherwise, researchers of this disorder will select rats, mice, or pigs as experimental animal models. In other words we need to learn more about gastrointestinal disorders in veterinary species before we will be able to receive the funding to investigate these disorders in more detail. This seems like a vicious cycle, since we clearly don't have the resources to be competitive with research groups at human medical academic institutions. Therefore, strategies are needed in order to increase our competitiveness in this area.
In my view one of the most important strategies is to try to build critical masses. My decision to stay here at Texas A&M University signifies my commitment to that philosophy. However, most veterinary schools don't have the resources to hire new faculty in order to build these critical masses in veterinary and comparative gastroenterology. Nonetheless, often times critical masses can be built by forming alliances of people with similar interests that are already present at an institution. Last spring we formed the Gastroenterology and Nutrition Initiative (GINI) at Texas A&M University. The idea was to bring together interested individuals that are in one way or another interested in comparative gastroenterology and nutrition. Initially, approximately 10 faculty and staff joined the group. Members included faculty in small animal internal medicine, small animal nutrition, food animal medicine, equine medicine, and human nutrition. Several goals for the group were agreed upon. One goal is to meet on a regular basis and discuss each others research interests. We think that this greatly facilitates planning of new projects since often times expertise is already present in the group. Another goal was to increase visibility of veterinary and comparative gastroenterology and nutrition within the vet school. In order to accomplish this task, we identified a center research field for the group - comparative investigation of gastric function. Several smaller research projects were developed under that umbrella and we applied for internal funding for a "signature program" grant in order to pursue these projects. We have received initial funding for two years and 2 of the 5 projects have since been started. The remaining three will start in the spring of 2000. Looking back on the first year of the existence of GINI I am very positive about the development. I believe that we have been able to set the stage for a strong comparative gastroenterology program here at Texas A&M University and I do believe that the founding of GINI was an important step in that direction.