Indiana, Purdue to initiate Program of Comparative Medicine

By Eric Schoch

Photo by Rocky Rothrock
The new Program of Comparative Medicine is the newest of many ongoing collaborations among Purdue and IU researchers. IUSM’s Mu Wang (right) and Frank Witzmann, are leading the Proteomics Core Facility in Indianapolis and organized a proteomics symposium that brought together speakers from higher education and business. A second symposium is planned in the spring in West Lafayette and a third will be held in Bloomington in the fall. For information: fwitzman@iupui.edu.

The Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) and Purdue University researchers have launched a collaboration to increase knowledge of diseases and develop better treatments for humans and animals.

Scientists from Purdue’s schools of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, and IUSM are initiating the Program of Comparative Medicine through a $2 million, two-year start-up grant from the Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund. The program has a total of $4.5 million in initial funding due to contributions from the Purdue schools of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, the IUSM Department of Pediatrics and the Indiana Genomics Initiative.

"Much of the work we do at Purdue in both the Department of Animal Sciences and the School of Veterinary Medicine impacts both animal and human health," said Randy Woodson, director of agricultural research and co-author of the proposal that netted the state funding. "Purdue’s role is to develop animal models for human diseases that also will provide benefits for improved pet and livestock health and productivity."

IU scientists bring to the program expertise in understanding disease development and treatment, said Dr. Mervin Yoder, a professor of pediatrics, biochemistry and molecular biology at IU. The researchers believe the best way to understand human disease is to understand similar diseases in other animals, said Yoder, who co-wrote the grant proposal with Woodson.

"By studying multiple species, we’ll learn more about diseases and ways to treat them," he said.

The research at Purdue will involve a number of current animal sciences and veterinary medicine faculty members and also researchers in two new positions for which the Department of Animal Sciences is recruiting, said department head Alan Grant. "This draws on our existing facilities and faculties at both universities and also calls for some renovation of laboratory space for the new researchers we will be adding," Grant said. IUSM and Purdue currently are studying scientific areas that apply to diseases such as muscle wasting, obesity, diabetes and cancer, he said.

IUSM also is recruiting two additional researchers and renovating laboratory space for the Program of Comparative Medicine. The program already has two laboratories devoted to animal stem cell research in rodents and Zebra fish. Currently, IUSM researchers are utilizing mouse models of Fanconi anemia, neurofibromatosis, inherited anemia and chronic granulomatous disease to devise new methods of diagnosis and treatment

Harm HogenEsch, head of the Purdue veterinary school’s Department of Pathobiology and an immunopathology professor, said the new program will focus on developing and using animal models of human diseases and on the comparative analysis of stem cells. Stem cells are immature cells that can develop into different types of cells. For instance, under special circumstances muscle stem cells will differentiate into fat cells, bone-forming cells, blood cells and endothelial cells—the cells that form the lining in blood vessels, the heart and some other organs. "This collaboration will allow us to be more competitive for federal grants from such sources as the National Institutes of Health," said HogenEsch, who co-directs the program with Yoder.