Fall 2012/Winter 2013 Aesculapian Magazine - University of ...

participate in research through the program as well. Now,
he’s a diagnostic imaging resident at North Carolina State
University, something he attributes to his researching
opportunities at the UGA CVM.
Savage teamed up with research mentor Scott
Schatzberg, DVM, PhD, a former associate professor of
neurology, for some extra research experience during his
fourth year at the
UGA CVM. Along
the way, Schatzberg
recommended that
Savage and another
student, Dan Regan
(DVM ’11), submit
a joint proposal for
some research they’d
been conducting.
Their project looked
at canine degenerate
myelopathy, a disease
similar to amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS;
often known in the
United States as Lou
Gehrig’s disease)
in humans. They
focused on creating
a molecular test that
could be applied
toward dogs with the
disease to see if any
underlying infectious
agents existed, and if
so, if there was any
correlation between
the infectious agents Erica Noland shows off her work in the lab.
in dogs with the disease
and in dogs without it.
“What we were really looking to do was see if there was
any infection going on in these patients that we could
treat,” he said.
Having mentors along the way has helped Noland, too.
Noland would like to thank Claudia Baumann, PhD, a
research associate in the De La Fuente lab, for teaching
her the necessary skills to function independently in the
lab, as well as for all her guidance and help with data
interpretation. Noland also would like to thank her official
mentor, De La Fuente, for his encouragement. In fact, it
was De La Fuente who suggested Noland apply for the
Morris Animal Foundation scholarship.
“It’s a very prestigious award and it’s also a unique
opportunity for veterinary students to get supported to do
basic research,” he noted.
Doing research during the summer means that these
projects require a fast pace, which makes the work both
fun and challenging, he said. Noland hit the ground
running with several techniques, and ended up with a
set of data that is now being polished up and prepped for
future publishable work.
“It’s rewarding to have a set of data at the end of the
project period that’s in good
shape for an abstract,” he said.
“Eventually, what we intend
to do is publish a full research
paper.”
The work is important for
many reasons, but namely
because in veterinary
oncology there’s a real need to
understand very basic biological
mechanisms, knowledge that will
provide value in basic research
in other species and potentially
be directly applicable to human
oncology.
For Noland, the opportunity to
work with a wonderful research
mentor and venture into the
field of veterinary research for
the first time has been not only
exciting and fun, but has also
opened up the possibility of
research as a potential career
option in the future.
Currently Noland is tying
up loose ends with the project,
making sure that the markers are
reproducible in the cell lines, and
Photo by Sue Myers Smith
honing in on a new technique
to quantify protein expression at
the single-cell level.
Eventually, a bigger goal of the project will be turning it
into a global epigenetic analysis, she said.
The preliminary results of her work have already been
presented at the Georgia Veterinary Scholars Program
Research Day in July 2011, the Merial/NIH National
Veterinary Scholars Symposium in Orlando, Fla., in
August 2011, and the Science of Veterinary Medicine
Symposium at UGA in October 2011. All were great
opportunities to network, show others what the team has
been doing in the lab, and to see what others are working
on in the field, Noland said.
After her time at the UGA CVM, Noland says the
window of opportunity is wide open for what the future
may hold. She’s interested in a career in laboratory animal
medicine and also has a strong interest in pathology.
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