Issue 4, October 2009

Visiting Professor /  Bacteriology

We welcome back Dr Mike Collins to the Department of Pathology and Microbiology to teach the second half of VPM 201 Bacteriology from October 26 to December 02, 2009. He was here same time last year and taught in the bacteriology course as well as worked with UPEI faculty on the development of Pod casts and use of clicker technology in teaching. Dr Collins is a Professor of Microbiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his stay with us, he will be using office 418N.

New Research Associate

Dr Jan Lovy is a Research Associate with Drs Dave Speare and Fred Kibenge.  Jan grew up in New Jersey and after college worked for the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife studying diseases of wild and farmed fish.  With a strong interest in fish pathology, he completed a PhD and Postdoc at the AVC.  Jan's research interests are in the comparative pathology of fish, particularly studying inflammatory responses and seeing how they compare to other vertebrates.  He is also interested in working with other primitive animals such as corals, amphibians, and reptiles to see how disease responses have been molded through the evolution of animals.  His research has uncovered a novel cell type in fish that resembles human Langerhans cells; he is currently characterizing this cell type and studying its biology to see how these cells compare to human Langerhans cells.

Pilot Whale Stranding on the Magdalen Islands, QC

Members of the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Center (CCWHC) headed out to the Magdalen Islands to examine a group of 8 pilot whales, Globicephala melas, that had stranded on Oct 12, 2009. 

The team consisted of a collaborative effort between the Québec and Atlantic Regions of the CCWHC. Dr Guylaine Séguin and Dr Sylvain Larrat (Faculté de Médecine Vétérinaire, Université de Montréal), along with Dr María Forzán (Atlantic Veterinary College, UPEI), conducted the necropsy on three of the whales, two were males and one was a pregnant female.  The other five whales were inaccessible: three were in a narrow crevice in the cliffs with no access from the beach (see photo right) and the other two were partially submerged, even at low tide.  No significant pathologic findings were present. 

Lack of pathologic findings is common in cases of multiple whale strandings, which are more associated with strong winds and stormy conditions than with poor health of the individuals involved. 

The location and individual information of all 8 whales will be added to the Marine Mammal database of the CCWHC, which contains information from the Atlantic region dating back to 1992.

For more information on the Magdalen Islands click here.

Department of Pathology and Microbiology Strategic Plan

The Department of Pathology and Microbiology recently submitted its Phase II(a) feedback on the AVC Strategic Planning Process. To generate this feedback, the department held a faculty retreat over 2 half days, which was facilitated by Dr Maggie Coffey. The draft document from the retreat and the Strategic Planning Process Phase I finalized document were further reviewed by an ad-hoc committee made up of the Path & Micro representatives on the Task Forces and Dr Dave Speare. The combined draft document was then circulated to faculty for further comment and final approval. The final document, which received unanimous support from faculty, will also serve as the department's Strategic plan.

Dr Maggie Coffey is the Director of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital. She is also on the Board of Directors for a Detroit-based auto supply company owned by JPMorgan Chase and manages a family-owned design engineering company. Originally from New York, Maggie received her BA from Mount Holyoke College, an MBA from Harvard and a DVM from Cornell.  Maggie and her husband Calvin, a mechanical engineer, have four daughters and are expecting their first grandchild in November. We are pleased to call Maggie a friend of Pathology and Microbiology.

Board Examination for Clinical Pathology

In September, Dr Shelley Burton travelled to Ames, Iowa, to proctor and mark the intensive 3 day American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP) board examination for clinical pathology.  She is one of 8 examination committee members in North America.  In addition to proctoring and marking the examination, member responsibilities entail writing and critiquing questions for the glass slide, digital image, essay and multiple choice sections. Although these tasks take many hours over the year, Dr. Burton is excited by the academic challenge and the opportunity to improve the pathology residency training program in the department.

Special Department Seminar

Dr Knut Falk, National Veterinary Institute, Section for Fish Health, of Oslo, Norway, presented a seminar on Tuesday, October 20. His seminar was entitled, "An overview of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) pathogenesis". Dr. Falk is a co-PI together with Dr Fred Kibenge on a Novartis-AIF funded project, and he is an Associate Member of the Aquatic Virology Collaborating Centre (AqVCC).

 CCWHC Presentations

Dr Scott McBurney and Dr María Forzán, wildlife pathologists from the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre (CCWHC), attended the latest annual meeting of the Atlantic Society of Fish and Wildlife Biologists (ASFWB). 

Dr Scott McBurney reported on antler deformities and their potential implications for the recovery  of the endangered mainland moose population of Nova Scotia. 

Dr McBurney has been documenting the causes of death and health status of the mainland moose for the last 10 years; he is part of the team of scientists participating on the Endangered Mainland Moose Recovery Team, established by the Nova Scotia government in 2003. 

Dr María Forzán reported on the results of the survey of frogs on PEI conducted this past summer. The survey found that frogs on PEI carry the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a fungus that has been responsible for amphibian declines and extinctions throughout the world.  Dr Forzán is part of the Amphibian Health Research Network, recently established as a joint effort between CCWHC and theDepartment of Biology at UPEI

For more information, go to atlantic.ccwhc.ca

How to survive your first graduate supervisory committee meeting

For starting graduate students, supervisory committee meetings can sound intimidating. However, they are a very important part of your program, and for some students, they may be the only times you get to meet face to face with the members of the supervisory committee. It is important that you start off right and develop a good feeling for these committee meetings. We encourage you to use department secretaries to set-up these meetings. You want to circulate an agenda for the meeting and any meeting materials well ahead of the day of the meeting to make sure that the committee members read and think about the material to be discussed at the meeting. We encourage you to take minutes during the meeting; and then circulate a draft between the supervisor and chair before distributing it to the committee. The most convenient way to organize your first supervisory committee meeting is to have the agenda developed around the items on the Graduate Program Approval Form, after all, once these are approved by the supervisory committee, then the form is ready for submission to the GSR office.

Recent Publications

Clancey N, Burton S, Horney B, MacKenzie A, Nicastro A, Cote E. Evaluation of platelet function in dogs with cardiac disease using the PFA-100 platelet function analyzer.  Veterinary Clinical Pathology 2009;38:299-305.

Hag Elsafi HEH, Nor Elmadiena MM, El Hussein AA, Siddig MAM, Muckle CA, Cole L, Wilkie E, Mistry K. Salmonella Umbadah: A new Salmonella serovar isolated from cattle in Sudan.  Trop Anim Health Prod 2009;41:1605-1606.

Abstracts and Poster Presentations

Kibenge, F., Kibenge, M., Simard, S., Riveroll, A., Pallapothu, M., and Salonius, K. Development of a DIVA system for an infectious salmon anaemia (ISA) virus vaccine using a qRT-PCR test based on segment 6 of the ISA virus. 14th European Association of Fish Pathologists International Conference on Diseases of Fish and  Shellfish, Prague, Czech Republic, September 14-19, 2009.

Thank you

To Dr Sandra McConkey, Department of Biomedical Sciences, for filling in for Dr Cora Gilroy in Clinical Pathology service duty for several weeks in October and November 2009, and later in February 2010.

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