Equine Innovators

In this episode Dr. Emma Adam of the University of Kentucky describes the research that identified a novel strain of rotavirus in foal diarrhea cases this year.

This podcast is the twelfth episode in our “Equine Innovators” podcast series, brought to you by Zoetis.
Show notes:

• An Update on Rotavirus in Foals
• Sessions from the 2021 Rotavirus Workshop, funded by the University of Kentucky’s CAFE Gluck Equine Research Center Koller Emergency Response Funds and gifts from the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association/Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, Coolmore America, and Grayson Jockey Club.
• The Gluck Equine Research Center
• The Gluck Center’s newsletters, Equine Science Review and Equine Disease Quarterly
• Practical Biosecurity Tips to Protect Your Horse
• Infographic: Protecting Your Horse From Disease

About the Researcher:
Emma Adam, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVIM, ACVS, is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s (UK) Gluck Equine Research Center and the equine outreach veterinarian for UK’s Department of Veterinary Science. Her career focuses on the health and wellbeing of the equine athlete and she has worked in four countries on three continents. Adam received her veterinary degree from the Royal Veterinary College, in the U.K., after which she gained equine internal medicine specialty training at Texas A&M University and equine surgery specialty training at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center. She completed her PhD research in regenerative medicine as it relates to articular cartilage using RNA sequencing at the Gluck Center. Her primary role now is to connect the university with equine industry stakeholders through outreach and the dissemination of information.

Dr. Amanda Adams of the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, describes her senior horse research, which focuses on EMS, PPID, and immune system health.
This podcast is the fifth episode in our “Equine Innovators” podcast series, brought to you by Zoetis.
Amanda A. Adams, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of Kentucky Gluck Equine Research Center. She’s authored 25 peer reviewed scientific publications and presented her research at more than 40 national and international scientific meetings. Her research interests include the geriatric horse’s immune system; adiposity’s effects on horses’ inflammatory responses, particularly in EMS horses; and the mechanisms responsible for and pathways involved in EMS to identify potential treatments that target both the inflammatory and metabolic component of the disease.

Properly preparing racetrack surfaces is imperative for horse and jockey safety. It requires selecting the right materials, monitoring moisture content, watching the weather, and finely tuned maintenance from a highly trained crew. In this Equine Innovators podcast, we talk to Mick Peterson, PhD, director of the University of Kentucky’s Racetrack Safety Program. As a bioengineer, he and his team studies how horses interact with track surfaces to help improve safety and performance. They also monitor tracks throughout the United States.

This podcast is the fourth episode in our “Equine Innovators” podcast series, brought to you by Zoetis.
Michael “Mick” Peterson, PhD, is a professor of biosystems and agricultural engineering at the University of Kentucky, where he serves as directory of the Racetrack Safety Program. His research focuses on animal biomechanics engineering, specifically racehorses and racetrack surfaces.

University of Kentucky researcher and equine industry economist Dr. Jill Stowe gives an glimpse of how COVID-19 is impacting the horse world and looks at the financial challenges that lie ahead. This podcast is the second episode in our new “Equine Innovators” podcast series, brought to you by Zoetis.

Jill Stowe, PhD, is an associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s Department of Agricultural Economics (UK Ag) and previously served as director of the UK Ag Equine Programs. Her areas of specialization include economics of the equine industry, decision making under risk and uncertainty, other-regarding preferences, incentives, and neuroeconomics. Her research has been published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Economic Inquiry, Neuron, and Nature Neuroscience. Stowe received a PhD in economics from Texas A&M University (2002) and was previously on the faculty at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business (2002-2008).

As horse owners, we might not think about how research in humans can help horses, and vice versa. Carrie Shaffer, PhD, of the University of Kentucky ’s (UK) Department of Veterinary Sciences and the Gluck Equine Research Center, is working at the interface of human and equine medicine, creating tiny models of horses’ body systems to better understand how we can prevent and fight equine disease, and help body processes such as wound repair and tissue healing.
This podcast series is brought to you by Zoetis.
About the Expert: Carrie L. Shaffer, PhD, is an assistant professor in the University of Kentucky’s (UK) Department of Veterinary Sciences and the Gluck Equine Research Center. She holds joint faculty appointments in the UK College of Medicine (Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics) and the UK College of Pharmacy (Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences). Shaffer is a graduate of the UK College of Agriculture (BSc) and Vanderbilt University (PhD), and she completed National-Institutes-of-Health-funded postdoctoral fellowships at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the California Institute of Technology. An expert in host-pathogen interactions and microbial pathogenesis, her research interests include understanding mechanisms underlying equine infectious disease using novel in vitro biomimetic models. One major focus of the Shaffer Lab is developing an innovative “horse-on-a-chip” microfluidic platform and diverse equine organoid model systems to enable investigations that address fundamental questions in equine infectious disease, therapeutic and vaccine development, allergic and immune-modulated conditions, tissue remodeling in response to injury, developmental and reproductive biology, and the identification of genetic factors that determine disease outcome in the horse.