University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture

Gluck Equine Research Center at Work

Photos & Story by Liz Harris

Dr. Tom Tobin

If you get a flu shot you know the annual components in the vaccine change each year. They take the top three suspected strains of virus of that year and make up a timely vaccine. When you think “Research” often times it's thought once a disease is cured then the work is finished but, as with the influenza virus, diseases and viruses mutate over time and continual research is necessary.

 

Research is not a “sexy” field with instantaneous rewards. Indeed it takes generations for research to show its promise. For example, in the 1950's, Dr. Elvis Doll was called to standardbred farms in Ohio, Pennsylvania and California to examine a herd of horses with unusual symptoms. Dr. Doll was able to isolate the organism, define Equine Viral Arteritis (EVA) as a causal agent in abortion that was separate and distinct from Equine Herpes Virus (EHV) abortion, and with a team of scientists, developed a vaccine. Since the problem seemingly disappeared, the vaccine was put into a deep freezer to await the unknown. In the early 1970's, after Dr. Doll's death, EVA began showing up in Thoroughbred horses in Central Kentucky. One of Dr. Doll's former colleagues who had worked on the vaccine, Dr. John T. Bryans, pulled the vaccine out of the freezer and put it into production quickly enough to quell the EVA problem within a few weeks and not in the over 10 years it had taken to develop, saving the Thoroughbred industry massive losses.

 

Collaboration is important and Gluck Equine Research Center facilitates the collaboration of many sciences. Dr. Tom Tobin was working on something in the ant-influenza department and hit a wall. He walked down the hall to a colleague, David Granstrom, who was working on EPM. This is a parasite that infects a horse's brain to the point he walks crooked and eventually dies. Once a practical test for EPM was established by Dr. Granstrom, an amazing story in itself, it was realized many Kentucky horses carried this parasite in their brains. This parasite has a long history; 800 million years ago it hooked up with a plant and acquired some chloroplast-related genes. 750 million years LATER this parasite became an opossum parasite. Fast forward to 2.5 million years ago the only marsupial that migrated into the North American Continent, the lowly opossum, carried and excreted this parasite in his feces, which got into the horses system. Together Granstrom and Tobin showed that a chicken drug chemically related to the herbicide atrazine, would attack the plant portion of the parasite and kill it, thereby developing the first FDA approved treatment for EPM in horses.

 

These are but a few of the amazing and vital success stories pouring out of Gluck Equine Research Center and Thoroughbred Charities of America is proud to be one of the organizations who support this legacy in the Thoroughbred Capital of the World. Click here to visit the website.