Top-ranked veterinary hospital a showcase for new therapies

Los Angeles Times

DAVIS, Calif. — A Saudi royal cat was flown in for a kidney transplant. Bulldogs with spina bifida come for stemcell therapy.

Lame horses arrive to get diagnosed using a scanner found in no other animal hospital.

A dog who became a hero in the Philippines when she threw herself between a speeding motorcycle and two children was brought here because her upper jaw and snout had been torn off in the crash.

You never know what will come through the doors of the University of California, Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, a showcase of pioneering therapies, advanced technologies and elite researchers. The topranked veterinary program in the world offers 34 specialties including cardiology, oncologyand neurology.

Morethan 50,000 animals a year — as small as hamsters, as big as buffalo — are cared for by its 120 faculty veterinarians and nearly 600 interns, residents, fellows, techniciansand students.

Its specialists assist endangered gorillas in Africa, penguins in Brazil — even residents, including tarantulas and giraffes, of the nearby SacramentoZoo.

The hospital recently launched a $508-million project to double its size in 10 years, which would make it one of the world’s largest veterinary hospitals.

“It’s a real gift to have a world-famous vet hospital an hour away,” said Mary Shallenberger of Clements, who brought in her 4-year-old quarter horse, Oscar, for a spinal tap after she noticed weakness in his hindquarters. He has since made a completerecovery.

Here’s a look at some of the animals in need and the doctorswho cared for them.

Spanky and Darla

Spanky and Darla bounded into the exam room, all floppy-eared and wrinklyfaced. The English bulldogs seemed perfectly normal — except for their diapers, held up by animal-print suspenders. Brother and sister, they were born with spina bifida, and their improperly formed spinal columns made them incontinent and not so steady on their feet. The dogs’ owner planned to euthanize them. Val Vallejo, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who runs the nonprofit Southern California Bulldog Rescue, brought them to UC Davis instead.

At UC Davis, Darla and Spanky became medical pioneers when the medical and veterinaryschools teamed up in February to provide them with the first-ever spina bifida treatment for dogs that combined surgery and stem cells.

A team led by Dr. Beverly K. Sturges, a veterinary neurosurgery professor, repositioned misplaced tissue around the dogs’ spinal columns.

Then specialized placental stem cells developed by Drs. Aijun Wang and Dori Borjesson, professors and stem cell researchers, were applied to cover the gaps in the spinal columns and promote regeneration.

The dogs still need their diapers. It’s unclear whether that issue will ever be cleared up.

But, said Ms. Vallejo, who drove all night for the recent check-up, “Their gait looks better.”

And so do their prospects. Darla and Spanky, Ms. Vallejo reported, are happy and living with a permanent familyin New Mexico.

Scooby

Scooby is 15 years old. He’s a chestnut-colored German warmblood horse. His specialty is dressage. He’s an expert in show riding. But when he began limping in March, no one at first knew wherethe trouble was.

In April, UC Davis veterinarians hoisted all 1,300 pounds of him onto an examining table and placed tubes for oxygen and anesthesia gas in his mouth. His right hind leg poked though a wide circular tube in a positron emission tomography, or PET, scanner. UC Davis was the first veterinary medical hospital anywhere to use sucha machine on horses.

By injecting the leg with a weak dose of a radioactive substance that attaches to areas of abnormal bone, the veterinarians were able to see detailed images of Scooby’s injury.

“This can detect lesions missed by MRI and CT scans, which could prevent catastrophic breakdowns in racehorses,” said Dr. Mathieu Spriet, an associate professor of surgical and radiological sciences. And the low-level radiation doesn’t hurt the horse.

After months of medication and rest, Dr. Spriet said, Scooby is back to being ridden at a walk and trot pace and appears to be on the right track.

Gigi

Gigi, an 8-year-old mixedbreed dog, was strapped down on her belly, ready for a CT scan. A local vet had removed a tumor in her jaw, but it had grown back into the bone. Enter Drs. Frank Verstraete and Boaz Arzi, two UC Davis veterinary oral surgeons famous for developing, with the school’s biomedical engineering department, the first procedure to regrow jawbonesin dogs.

The surgeons can reconstruct removed sections of a jawbone using a titanium plate and screws, and then pack them with a material soaked in a protein that adheresto the original bone and stimulatesregrowth.

To shorten the time a dog has to stay under anesthesia, they make 3-D models of each jawbone and prefit the plate and protein material before surgery.

They have successfully treated more than 30 dogs, including Frankie, a spaniel who was found in a Marin County forest by campers after he had been shot in the face and left to die.

Crystal

Crystal, a 4-year-old Australian shepherd, had become lethargic. Her gums were pale. Dr. Larry Cowgill explained that the dog’s immune system “got confused” and was destroying red blood cells faster than it was producingthem.

So Dr. Cowgill prepared Crystal for one of his pioneering blood purification therapies.

Called therapeutic plasma exchange, the treatment removes plasma tainted with damaging antibodies, toxins or abnormal proteins and replaces it with healthy donor plasma.

The plasma is separated from the blood by a centrifuge. Dr. Cowgill’s team hooked Crystal up to the machine’s two blood lines, then hit the start button.

The blood treatment helped turn Crystal around withina week.