Veterinary Medicine: Fertile Ground For Research And Development Of New Technologies In Human Medicine

Article originally posted at Nanotsunami.com 2004.There is a phrase that says, "medicine can cure men, but onlyveterinary medicine has the potential to cure humanity". Today thatphrase is becoming a reality of the world we are living in. In thefirst decade of the twenty-first century, veterinarians not only workhard to keep pets healthy, are playing important roles in savinghuman lives. As a member of this prestigious yet, underpaidprofession, I am proud to say that veterinarians would soon be at thevanguard of both human and animal care. This can be contributed togovernment regulations, ethical concerns of our society and theefforts of pet owners across the world. Stem cell research, genetherapy, therapeutic cloning and even under certain circumstancesnanotechnology are words that most politicians fear to discuss andsome sectors of the religious community even abominate.Veterinarians, on the other hand, simply love and embrace these newmodalities of technologies that represent new ways to diagnose andtreat multiple disease conditions affecting animals and humans alike.Through the last decades, controversial government regulations havebeen effectively delaying as well as stopping the use of newtechnologies in the field of human medicine. Regulatory agenciesusually adopt an adversarial position against new therapies derivedfrom the biotechnology and nanotechnology fields. They try toregulate individual devices and drugs and assume that new therapiesare both unsafe and don't work until proven otherwise. Theseregulations are well known to create a bottleneck effect in thedevelopment of new therapies and to increase the approval time forthe commercialization of new technologies. The moral quandaries andbioethical concerns about new frontiers of medical science representanother obstacle for their implementation as routine forms oftherapies. Research and development of new medical technologies canbe also considered a waste of time and money by some sectors in ourgovernment. But thanks to the entrepreneur spirit and theunderstanding that in our society different moral and ethicalstandards apply to the health care of pets, veterinarians are takingadvantage of regulatory loopholes to bring these technologies intothe field of veterinary medicine. After all, it may be unethical tosave a human live using a treatment derivative from human stem cellresearch, but there may not be any opposition to animal stem cellresearch if it is used to save a beloved pet.It is not a secret that veterinarians have always been a drivingforce in the world of medicine. Starting with their contributions onagriculture a couple of centuries ago, they progressed to be thefirst people performing certain medical procedures using reproductivetechnology. Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization andcloning were introduced into the veterinary field long before thehuman medical field. In the first decade of the twenty-first century,veterinary medicine has become very sophisticated. The commongeneral practitioner of the mid twentieth century performed spays andneuters, which were considered among the most elaborate procedures ofthat time. Since then, they have evolved into different specialtiesthat have nothing to envy of the human medical profession. Today itis common to see pets being referred to cardiologists,ophthalmologists, and oncologists. According to the AmericanVeterinary Medical Association there are approximately seven thousandor more veterinary specialists in the United States alone. Lasersurgery, endoscopies and even magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) arebecoming part of the standard of care in certain veterinary hospitals.When it comes to technologies like gene therapy, tissue engineeringor nanotechnology, there is no doubt their use on veterinary medicinewill yield immediate insights for human medical research. For a longtime, research on animal diseases has been used as models for thesame or similar conditions affecting humans. Lets talk for exampleabout Osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is a syndrome affecting thesynovial joints that is characterized by pain and dysfunction,associated with degeneration or the articular cartilage and changesin the surrounding tissues. In severe cases this condition producesconstant pain along with severe functional disability. Currenttherapy is for the most part palliative, aiming to reduce pain andinflammation while maintaining or improving joint function withoutaltering the pathologic process in the tissues. In some casesanalgesic and anti-inflammatory products do not provide relief ofsigns and are less than perfectly appealing because of side effectsand cost. Research projects are underway to investigate the use ofadult and embryonic stem cells as cartilage producing cells that mayone day be used for transplantation. Adult stem cells can be obtainedfrom bone marrow aspirations of healthy patients. Embryonic stemcells are taken from the inner cell mass of blastocysts (one of thestages of the embryo development) and grown into colonies calledlines. Because during the process of collection of stem cells theembryo is destroyed, some sectors of society oppose to the procedure,likening it to abortion. Some fear that allowing the use of stemcells would create a market for human embryos, while others believethis can progress to the eventual creation of a human clone.Scientists had discovered that through manipulation of cultureconditions, both types of stem cells could differentiate intomultiple tissue-specific cells including cartilage and bone producingcells. There is some concern over the use of adult stem cells fromaged animals as they may be less successful to produce cells that candifferentiate into cartilage or bone. Embryonic cells however don'tseem to have that same problem. Another area of investigation inOsteoarthritis is the use of gene therapy. Gene therapy is themodification of genetic material of living cells for a therapeuticprocess. The gene of interest can be delivered into cells through aviral agent or a nanopharmaceutical compound. Once into the cell, thetransferred gene is meant to synthesize growth factors that wouldencourage the production of healthy cartilage by the body. To date,gene therapy experiments in articular cartilage have achievedexpression of active proteins in cultured cartilage producing cellsand after transplanted into live horses and rabbits. As we canappreciate, gene therapy holds tremendous promises for medical use inOsteoarthritis and other health conditions.Another example of the contributions of veterinarians to the world ofmedicine is the research on Retinitis Pigmentosa, a condition thataffects more than nine million Americans. This is an inheritedcondition commonly diagnosed during childhood and in young adults. Itproduces severe vision loss that can lead to blindness. Thanks to theuse of gene therapy, veterinary researchers have been able to restorevision in dogs born with a severe form of this ocular condition.Other researchers have slowed vision loss by transplantinggenetically engineered retinal cells into the eye. Geneticallyengineered tissues can eventually be considered as a safe source ofdonor tissue for the treatment of eyes and other organ conditions. Ina country where every year approximately eighty-four thousand peopleare waiting for organ transplants, the use of tissue engineeringlooks very promising.Cancer is a condition associated with the uncontrolled growth ofabnormal cells within the body. These cells may form tumors that cancreate a variety of painful and serious problems. A diagnosis ofcancer is always equally frightening for both pet owners and humansalike, but with today's medical treatment, nutrition and newtechnologies our opportunities to conquest this condition are betterthan those of a couple of decades ago. The experience of veterinarymedicine indicates that there are certain factors that can influencethe incidence of cancer in the pet population. Those factors includeage, breed, gender and environment. One of the newest fields ofresearch that could have a positive influence on the diagnosis andtreatment of cancer is nanotechnology. Thanks to nanotechnology, acomplete new set of tools for the diagnosis and treatment of cancerin the pet population will be available to veterinarians all aroundthe world. For example, with the use of magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) along with fluorescents nanoparticles researchers are able tovisualize the lymphatic drainage of mice affected with breast cancer.This technique may have a very important application in the diagnosisand treatment of human breast cancer. According to the AmericanCancer Society, every year an estimate of approximately two hundredthousand women will be diagnosed with breast cancer that had alreadyspread to other organs. Excluding skin cancer, breast cancer is themost common cancer among women. The use of nanoparticles couldsimplify exploratory surgeries by localizing tumors and affectedlymph nodes more efficiently, making the surgical procedures in somecases less invasive. Recently there has been some concern about thepotential toxic effects of nanoparticles in both human and animals.While the potential benefits or toxic effects of these nanostructureshave yet to be determined with the use of more research studies, itis important to recall that the use of these nanostructures couldalso help with other health problems besides cancer. Nanoparticlescould highlight cells or processes of interest in an animal, andcould provide us with a lot of information about how the body works.Unfortunately, most members of our government, along with the bio andnanotechnology industries and the general public, don't understandthe full potential of veterinary medicine for the development andcommercialization of these technologies. Because of their broad-basedunderstanding of medicine, public health, environmental determinationon health and population medicine, the veterinary profession can be astrong ally in forming public policy development. New technologiesare always misunderstood and unfortunately the industry may befailing in explaining its potential. Bad publicity of newtechnologies is always the result of public misunderstanding ofscientific information. The experience of the veterinary professiondealing with the media bias and negative publicity can be anotherasset that may prove useful for these industries. While veterinarymedicine is considered one of the most trusted professions, it is notimmune to the effects of negative publicity by the media. The mostrecent publicity crisis the profession has been dealing with inrecent years had to do with the use of vaccines in companion animalsand the pressure of some animal right activists groups in regards tothe treatment of farm and laboratory animals. How the professiondeals with those issues can prove very useful for the bio andnanotechnology industries; after all veterinarians and the industrymay be sharing the same objective, which is to improve the health andlongevity of both humans and animals. Usually negative publicitycomes from people who are off based and infused with emotions. Theveterinary profession knows that emotions grab headlines. They alsoknow that the use of good science, common sense, showing compassionand being honest have proven to be the best weapons against a badpublicity crisis. We just need to remember that perception iseverything, and if the industry can develop an educational programbased on those four points, then the general public is going to lookat the opponents of the use of these technologies as a sector that isoff beat and in some cases aggressive.Once the use of new technologies becomes widely spread in veterinarymedicine it will yield immediately new and useful insights for humanmedicine. Soon veterinary medicine would be in the position to offermedical marvels that may transform the legal, ethical and regulatorysectors of the medical field. We can't finish this article withoutdiscussing the enormous influence pet lovers can have in the bio andnanotechnology markets. Pet owners across the United States spendapproximately nineteen million dollars per year on veterinary careand that amount is expected to increase in the years to come. In thebeginning, the applications of these technologies are going to beexpensive. Some people may even be reluctant or not able to paythousands of dollars to save the lives of their pets. But we can'tforget about those hundreds of thousands of pet lovers who would doanything to save the lives of their cherished companions. The veryeffectiveness of these technologies and the influence of pet loversdemanding services based on bio or nanotechnology will slowly, butinevitably, undermine the religious, moral and ethical argumentsagainst the use of therapies derived from research on stem cells,gene therapy and nanotechnology. Once you have a healthier petpopulation with an increased longevity rate, the demand for the samekind of therapies in the human medical field is going to increasedramatically. Pet lovers across the world can be an important ally tothe industry in the fight to overturn those government regulationsthat are restricting the use of new technologies and depriving usfrom their potential benefits. There is much to be learned about howto make these technologies useful against health conditions affectingthe human and animal population, in the mean time, their applicationsin the veterinary field can serve as a guideline to deal with them inthe future of human medicine.BiographyDr. Jose Feneque, DVM, received his Bachelor of Science degree inAnimal Industry at the University of Puerto Rico in 1991 and hisDoctorate in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia in1996. He practices as an associate veterinarian at Crossroads AnimalHospital in Miami, Florida and is a member of the Science AdvisoryBoard for the Nanotechnology Development Corporation. His specialinterests include the veterinary applications of nanotechnology,veterinary pediatrics, soft tissue surgery and internal medicine. Hecan be contacted by phone at (305) 279- 2000 or via email atjfeneque@nanotechnologydevelopment.com.

Veterinary Medicine: Fertile Ground For Research And Development Of New Technologies In Human Medicine

Comments

Activity