Blog Post #5: Charli Fant and Zoetis
This week, our Nanoscience class had a zoom call with Dr. Charli Fant, a Transylvania graduate who now works for Zoetis. Zoetis is the world's largest animal health company, providing medicines, vaccines, genetic work, bio devices, data analytics, and biosensors for animals both domesticated livestock and pets. Dr. Fant works at the Zoetis Incubator of Northern Colorado, or ZINC, and their goal is to build up what is referred to as in silico biology. In silico biology harnesses the power of computers — computational biology, statistical testing, artificial intelligence, and data sciences. This limits the testing directly done on animals, which is a huge benefit. Essentially, everything that can be done in computer generated programming is done; testing on animals is the last step, done only when needed. As mentioned earlier, the research done through Zoetis is done for the benefit of both livestock and pets. While I have a dog that I love very much, I have a decent background in livestock and equine health. The big challenge with livestock medication is the effect on the animal product, whether that is milk or meat. Thus, the medication must be harmless to humans or be out of the animal's system quickly. However, the best way to decrease medication cost and increase effectiveness is to extend the half life of the medication, or essentially make the medicine stay in the animal's system longer. So, there has to be some balance. Researchers must increase the half-life for some medicines (mostly for pets) and decrease the half-life for some medicines (for livestock). Because of this, researchers mainly focus on eliminating the impacts on human proteins.
Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) is an incredibly common illness that impacts cattle, and is the most costly disease impacting the beef industry. One of the products that Zoetis advertises is called EXCENEL RTU EZ, an anti-infective for the treatment of BRD. On the Zoetis website, the key points to the drug are "zero milk discard, short 4-day meat withdrawal, no hospital pen." For a cattle or dairy farmer, these points are huge. This means that the infected cow does not have to be isolated and if it is a heifer, its milk does not have to be discarded. For livestock, the medication working quickly and getting out of the system is key. However, for pets, the timeliness and effectiveness of the medication is the only thing that matters. I thought this was a very interesting dichotomy between the two areas. One would think that the treatment of both groups would be similar as it is animal health as a whole, but alas, this is one big difference!
F. 1 The product description for EXCENEL RTU EZ including the medication container.
At the end of Dr. Fant's talk, she asked us as students a few questions to get us thinking about our future. One of those questions was "what gets us excited about science?" Since I am a biology major, I am going to focus that towards what gets me excited about biology. Ever since I was little, I have always wanted to know "how?". How things work the way they do, how things are made, etc. I have also always loved nature. I have grown up on a tree farm (with occasional livestock) my whole life. Therefore, plants and animals have always fascinated me. I have also been around the water since before I could walk. My entire family scuba dives so marine life has also fascinated me. However, my grandpa was a family physician, exposing me to medicine at a very young age. As an athlete (and the child that always meets the family insurance deductible), I was around different physicians frequently. As a patient, I always wanted to understand what was going on with me so that when a diagnosis was made, I could fully understand what the doctor was saying. With all of this being said, I think my love for biology comes from a desire of wanting answers. I despise being clueless about a topic, and biology combines my background plus my need for answers. It also gives me space to wonder and hypothesize since so much is unknown. There is always an answer, it might just not be known at the time. With all that being said, I do not think my future entirely lies in research, but maybe a mixture of research and helping people...
Works Cited:
Excenel® RTU EZ, www.zoetis.com/products-and-science/products/excenel-rtu-ez. Accessed 12 May 2023.
I think this blog post is extremely well done. As I was not able to be in class on the day of the Zoom call I did not get to hear the talk Charli Fant gave about Zoetis and their purpose and I believe Katherine did an extremely good job explaining that. All I knew from doing my own research was that Zoetis was a very large animal health company. I did not understand what made them different from other veterinary medicine companies but with Katherine's synopsis, I now do. A company that focuses on the best and safest treatments and research. I also think Katherine’s explanation of the product EXCENEL RTU EZ used to treat Bovine Respiratory Disease was also well done, especially with the explanation of the dichotomy of treatments for pets and livestock. How for pets you want timely effective treatments, but for the livestock you need treatments that get out of their system quickly so as to not affect the product that will be sold by the farmer while still being effective. I admire how Zoetis creates products beneficial for all involved. When I looked at ProStride APS a product for horses I saw a similar principle, a product that would use the horse’s own blood as treatment. A more natural alternative than pumping the horse full of drugs and also cheaper for the owner. I also really enjoyed reading Katherine’s response to the question, what gets you excited about science? I believe me and Katherine to have pretty similar upbringings, both growing up on farms surrounded by nature and always in it. I believe I also am interested in science cause I want to know the answer. I want to know the “how” of things the same as her. Overall I loved reading this post as it expanded my knowledge of Zoetis and Katherine as a person.
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