Critical Needs for Research in Veterinary Science (2005) / Chapter Skim
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5 An Assessment of Current and Projected Resource Needs for Research in Veterinary Science
5 An Assessment of Current and Projected Resource Needs for Research in Veterinary Science
Pages 145-168
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From page 145... ...
, and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, to name but a few examples. Veterinary research is critical to the advancement of our understanding of and response to those risks and many other animal health problems -- for example, chronic debilitating diseases.
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COLLABORATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH- A "ONE MEDICINE" APPROACH Veterinary research aims to prevent, control, diagnose, and treat animal diseases to ensure animals' health and welfare, and it contributes to both animal and human health, as illustrated in earlier chapters. Research in veterinary science and veterinary medicine as a whole are at the center of domestic and wild animal and human health (see Figure 1-1 in Chapter 1)
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From page 147... ...
· Identification of new targets for drug development, using wellcharacterized rodent and nonrodent animal models. · Development and promotion of preventive medicines and therapies-such as nutraceuticals, anti-infectives, immune modulators, and vaccines -- that use new immunogenic modalities to keep animals healthy.
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. On the basis of its members' experience, this committee concurs that researchers in different colleges of veterinary medicine (CVMs)
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, cannot be met unless there is more cooperation among the various programs that conduct research and educate the veterinary scientists of the future. Furthermore, as noted later in this chapter, there are far too few researchers in veterinary science to afford fragmentation due to fears of administrative retribution, turf wars, and other nonproductive activities that sometimes dominate the culture of academic research.
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The combination of the decline in production of trained veterinary scientists in the last decade and the predicted retirement losses of veterinary scientists indicates that the United States will be unable to meet critical research needs of animal health in the next decade. The shortage is due to the combined reluctance of veterinary students to pursue research, lack of financial incentives, and lack of funding for some kinds of research.
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A foundation for training this kind of translational research investigator incorporates interdisciplinary education in veterinary medicine with training in human biomedical research. To respond to this unmet national research training priority, the intramural research program of the CCR NCI has developed two training programs in collaboration with The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
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The shortage of qualified DVM-PhDs candidates has been in the specialty disciplines of pathology, infectious diseases, laboratory animal medicine, and microbiology (in the subspecialties of immunology, virology, and bacteriology)
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The additional CVM recruitment will contribute not only to teaching but also to veterinary research because CVM faculty collectively conduct a large proportion of research in veterinary science. The veterinary research enterprise will probably benefit from increased TABLE 5-2 New Faculty Requirements of CVMs Number of Discipline New Faculty Needed Animal health, food safety and security 65 Comparative medicine and laboratory animal medicine 63 Population medicine, public health, and epidemiology 70 Infectious diseases, zoonoses, and emerging diseases 91 Basic biomedical sciences 79 Miscellaneous disciplines including the above 34 Total 402 SOURCE: AAVMC Member Survey, 2004.
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From page 154... ...
Many veterinary researchers are trained in CVMs; others are trained in departments of comparative medicine, departments of veterinary sciences, colleges of agriculture, animal science departments, and other academic or research institutions. Data on education and training of veterinary researchers in CVMs were presented in Chapter 4, but the committee did not gather similar information from colleges of agriculture, CoMs, or other biology programs, because there is no rational way to tell which students are likely to pursue careers in veterinary research in those colleges or programs.
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· The lack of financial support for graduate students in veterinary science. · The failure to stimulate veterinary students' interests in research.
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. If veterinary science cannot adequately train the next generation of veterinarians for research careers, there will be insufficient scientific data to support decisions that affect animal health.
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, which directs the secretaries of agriculture and health and human services to "provide capacity building grants to colleges and schools of veterinary medicine, public health, and agriculture that design higher education training programs for veterinarians in exotic animal diseases, epidemiology, and public health" and "interdisciplinary degree programs that combine training in food sciences, agriculture sciences, medicine, veterinary medicine, epidemiology, microbiology, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics (statistical modeling) to prepare food defense professionals." The secretaries of agriculture, health and human services, and homeland security also are directed to "establish opportunities for professional development and specialized training in agriculture and food protection, such as internships, fellowships, and other postgraduate opportunities that provide for homeland security professional workforce needs." As noted in Chapter 4, nonveterinarians are critically important members of many veterinary research entities, none more than in the CVMs, where nonveterinary PhDs obtain a large amount of NIH research project grant (R01)
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From page 158... ...
Without the next generation of adequately trained veterinary researchers, veterinary science cannot provide the data required for informed decisions that govern day-to-day activity in animal health, such as decisions that underlie the economic stability necessary for adequate national animal health care. RECOMMENDATION 3 To meet the nation's needs for research expertise in veterinary science, changes in recruitment and programming for graduate and veterinary students will be required.
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Facilities in Universities CVMs conduct a large proportion of research in veterinary science and provide all the professional education for veterinarians and much of the clinical and research graduate education. The CVMs recently reported on their capacity to educate more professional and graduate students and on the additional resources required to support this expansion.
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The act would be an amendment to the Public Health Service Act to establish a competitive-grants program to build capacity in veterinary medical education and expand the workforce of veterinarians engaged in public-health practice and biomedical research. Research in colleges of agriculture at most land-grant institutions is an integral part of state economic creativity and inventiveness and provides an economic engine for biotechnology in food safety, livestock-animal health, and animal modeling for the life sciences.
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The urgency of the need for state-of-the-art biocontainment facilities was emphasized in February 2004 with the release of HSPD-9, whose paragraph 24 states that "the Secretaries of Agriculture and Homeland Security will develop a plan to provide safe, secure, and state-of-the-art agriculture biocontainment laboratories that research and develop diagnostic capabilities for foreign animal and zoonotic diseases." Similar needs probably exist at other federal and state agencies that conduct veterinary research and at nonuniversity research institutes, including zoos. The committee was unable to find specific data on such needs as related to research in veterinary science, but it points out that adequate facilities are critically important for such research.
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From page 162... ...
Tissue samples in diagnostic laboratories could be valuable research resources that offer exciting opportunities to study animal diseases and epidemiology if they are archived properly and made available to the broad research community. Clinical records of academic veterinary teaching hospitals could also provide valuable data for research (for example, on disease incidence)
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From page 163... ...
With a few exceptions, such as the National Swine Resource and Research Center supported by NIH, animal colonies are maintained only if they have specific research purposes. Permanent loss of unique animal models could result in a serious loss of advances in both animal and human medicine; their preservation is critical to facilitate research in animal diseases.
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From page 164... ...
The need for databases, animal health and surveillance systems, specimen collections, and other sharable research tools to support veterinary research should receive special attention. Organization of a working task force or national workshop to devise an operating plan for developing and managing these clinical and research databases and collections and to identify methods for their support would be an important first step toward the formation of national databases and archives (such as specimen banks and clinical databases)
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From page 165... ...
The committee noted in Chapter 4 that NIH and USDA are two of the largest sources of support for veterinary research. However, the mission of NIH is directly related to human health, so biomedical sciences and comparative medicine are two disciplines in veterinary research that are most likely to be supported by NIH.
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From page 166... ...
In fact, HSPD-9 calls for acceleration and expansion in "development of current and new countermeasures against the intentional introduction or natural occurrence of catastrophic animal, plant, and zoonotic diseases," which will include "countermeasure research and development of new methods for detection, prevention technologies, agent characterization, and dose response relationships for high-consequence agents in the food and the water supply." Paragraph 26 of HSPD-9 directs the secretaries of agriculture, homeland security and health and human services to submit an integrated budget plan for "defense of the United States food system." The need for more competitive funds for agricultural research prompted the Research, Education, and Economics Task Force of USDA to propose the formation of a new institute, to be called the National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) "for the purpose of ensuring the technologic superiority of American agriculture." "The mission of NIFA should be to support the highest caliber of fundamental agricultural research" ("research that addresses the frontiers of knowledge, while it leads to practical results and/or to further scientific discovery")
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From page 167... ...
Those disciplines include the ecology of zoonotic emerging diseases, dynamics of select agent, biodefense pathogens in wildlife, companion animal and equine research, wildlife and conservation research and, zoo-animal and exotic-pet research. Those disciplines contribute to animal health and important segments of human health research or have direct human social impact, but they do not have dependable, permanent financial resources that would ensure their continuing advancement in research.
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