Delicate pink vessels twist through the body. Arteries carry oxygen-rich blood from the heart. Veins transport depleted blood back to the heart. A cycle emerges, the lungs breathe, the heart thumps, the blood moves and the creature lives. But sometimes those systems fail. Vessels harden, cells incorrectly divide, tumors form and the animal needs relief for survival. Then comes N.C. State’s new Center for Comparative Medicine and Translational Research (CCMTR), where top scientists are getting creative to solve serious health issues.
“The work of the CCMTR is critical,” Dave Green, director of college relations at the College of Veterinary Medicine, said.
The CCMTR functions as a melting pot of ideas, bringing veterinary and human medicine together. Translational research focuses on animals with structures similar to humans, allowing the species to assist each other.
“A mouse is not helpful for comparison to human hearts but dogs and pigs are. And so we need to be working on appropriate species for size,” Dr. Jorge Piedrahita, the interim director of the center, said. “We cannot do human-based research, but we can provide essential expertise for finding models for humans. And at the same time we are helping the humans, we are helping the animals.”
The Center not only draws upon veterinary medicine, but many specialties NCSU has to offer. Textile development, biomedical engineering and many other departments add valuable knowledge and skills needed for research. The interlacing thread running through NCSU gives the CCMTR the ability to be virtual, and thus flexible.
“There is no facility, and that is important because some people see that as a weakness, and we see that as strength,” Piedrahita said. “None of the members of the center are located in the research building — it would be counterproductive — they need to be in their departments, surrounded by their colleges. We can’t take a textiles professor and put them by themselves and expect them to be successful. That person belongs in the College of Textiles.”
The unique atmosphere of NCSUÕs campus has helped determine five main concentrations for the Center: allergic diseases, clinical genomics, oncology, emerging zoonotic diseases and mucosal pathophysiology.
“We had to make a decision on what are our strengths,” Piedrahita said. “So these five things were selected because we felt they are really possible. They are areas we are very competitive in.”
Allergic diseases refer to those pesky pollen allergies as well as more severe allergies. Dogs offer great research capabilities because they are very sensitive to allergens, like humans.
Clinical genomics extracts genetic information from DNA to help understand diseases or disorders. Oncology is dedicated “100 percent to understanding and curing cancer.” Emerging zoonotic diseases researches diseases that are just coming out and could potentially harm humans, like the avian flu. And mucosal pathophysiology studies the diseases of the lungs and the gut, such as asthma.
Three initiatives have evolved to help explain the purposes of CCMTR: discovery, translation and implementation.
“We have a discovery phase which is very important, and then we test in the translation phase to see if we are successful,” Dr. Piedrahita said. “Once developed and tested, we have partners for the implementation.”
Translational research is quickly becoming an important tool, and NCSU is one of the first to implement such a center. For example, Duke announced plans to begin a translational center in spring 2006, as reported by Michael Wagner in the Triangle Business Journal.
“We started this three years agoÉso we are ahead of the curve,” Piedrahita said.
And so NCSU has begun, submerging themselves in work benefiting animals and humans alike.
