Focus on Research for Health

by Dr. Ted Valli

In the last Veterinary Report dean’s column, I told how I became a veterinarian. My introduction to research is another story. When I left practice, I was relieved to lose the responsibility for payroll of a dozen employees and was amazed to be paid—though it was only a graduate student’s pittance—to do what I most wanted to do. 

My research career has brought me much interaction with colleagues in human medicine because of my mentor, Dr. Bernard McSherry. Bernard joined the Canadian Field Artillery the day after his 1941 graduation from veterinary school. After his military service (which included landing on the beaches of France on “D” Day), he returned to a profession he had never had the opportunity to experience, and he wisely decided to look around for a while.

At Harvard Medical School he witnessed one of the first renal dialysis machines in operation, which unlike the compact systems of today “more resembled a horse trough,” he said. The patient lost consciousness while talking to the clinician but recovered with the addition of some electrolytes to the dialyzing solution. Dr. McSherry was deeply impressed by this event and wondered what the impact must be for animals that are losing electrolytes, such as calves with diarrhea. He went on to develop balanced electrolyte solutions for animals, known as “McSherry’s solution.”

Dr. McSherry sparked my interest in researching why cattle with infectious diseases routinely become neutropenic, whereas dogs under similar circumstances develop a protective neutrophilia. Research for human medicine had used a dog model to develop a process of leukophoresis for leukemia patients. For many reasons, including the facts that cattle have 13 blood group systems and that the particular characteristics of cattle red cells prevents their blood from settling, the human process did not work with cattle. With my background in cow-calf and feedlot practice, I recognized the relevance of this work. 

I first had to master heparinization of the whole animal and management of an external blood circuit. With no DeBakey pump, I needed access to arterial blood obtained from carotid artery loops (an idea from surgeon Jim Archibald). Without compatible blood, saline was used to avoid hypotension while filling the external system. The neutrophils were removed by a system of glass wool filters I assembled. We determined that a normal calf has two billion neutrophils per kg of body weight and that it takes them a week to make a new one. We also found that dogs have the same number of cells “on hand” for emergencies, but the real difference is in their remarkable ability to mobilize their stem cell pool to begin marrow regeneration. As Oscar Schalm had observed, the ratio of neutrophils to lymphocytes in the peripheral blood predicted how animals would respond to infectious diseases. 

That was my master’s project. My Ph.D. work was simpler: I worked out the production times of blood cells in calves using isotopic tagging.

Before I came to Illinois, I had supervised 20 graduate students, most of them Ph.D. students and all but one a DVM. My approach was straightforward: I’d ask the top student in each class if he or she were interested in research and say “I have just the project for you!” 

My CV lacks focus on a particular area of medicine because I tended to work in a number of research areas, an approach that wouldn’t work today. For individuals and for institutions, this is the era of specialization. The complexity of the molecular age requires a complete commitment to a single area of work. 
Part of my role as dean is to encourage research strengths in areas that serve societal needs and to focus our efforts to achieve our goals. The College has identified research strengths in the areas of reproductive biology, infectious diseases, and environmental toxicology, with clinical imaging, oncology, and food safety as areas of emerging emphasis. Most or all of these call for interdisciplinary collaboration, and much work done here has immediate and invaluable significance for human well-being, as illustrated in the research profiles on pages 4 through 6 in this issue.

With the recent approval by the University Board of Trustees of the master plan for “South Campus” development, we move closer to meeting the single greatest need of the College: a biocontainment building for research in infectious disease. Such a building was approved in the Food for Century III program of 15 years ago, but has been delayed by the many priorities that face the state and the nation. 

Today the need for a biocontainment facility is urgent. The structure will permit safe work with infectious organisms that have grown resistant to antibiotics or have learned to evade current control systems, agents for which there may be no effective treatment. A biocontainment facility will allow research that will help protect and improve not only animal health and human health but also economic health, given the rising threat of agroterrorism. 

Our profession and our College are privileged to be engaged in exciting research areas that earn the respect and gratitude of society. And I am delighted that the winding road of my career led me to a position where I can help make the research happen.