The Animal Health Lab has been successfully accredited for five years by the American Association of Veterinarian Laboratory Diagnosticians. AHL is currently one of two Canadian laboratories the achieve accreditation from the AAVLD.

"I'm delighted that Animal Health Lab has achieved full accreditation. Congratulations to all those who worked so hard to ensure this outcome," said AHL director Grant Maxie.

The five-year accreditation period, the maximum term granted by the Accreditation Committee, runs from 2010 to 2014.

Prof. Elizabeth Stone has been reappointed to a second five-year term as dean of the Ontario Veterinary College. The appointment received final approval today from the Board of Governors.

Stone became the 10th dean of OVC, and the first woman to head a veterinary school in Canada, in 2005. Her reappointment takes effect in 2010.

"Elizabeth has shown tremendous leadership and vision since arriving at Guelph and has implemented a number of initiatives that will ensure the University remains a world leader in veterinary education, research and service," said Maureen Mancuso, provost and vice-president (academic). "I'm very pleased with her reappointment, and I thank the review committee for its efforts, as well as members of the college and campus community for their input and participation in the process."

Stone's achievements at OVC include spearheading the college's integrated plan, the Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses, the Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation and a primary health-care initiative. This new vision for primary health care, education and service delivery attracted major public and private investments to create the Hill's Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre. During her tenure, OVC also raised funds to endow the Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Chair in Canine and Feline Clinical Nutrition. Stone continued the work begun by her predecessor, Alan Meek, to bring about major infrastructure improvements including a new Pathobiology/Animal Health Laboratory building, a large-animal isolation unit and major upgrades to the OVC Teaching Hospital. Under her leadership, the college received full accreditation from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and the American Veterinary Medical Association for the next seven years and developed a new master plan for the OVC complex.

Stone is committed to highlighting the role of veterinarians and the relevance of veterinary medicine in society. She launched a seminar series to raise awareness of OVC's 150th anniversary in 2012 and created a course in veterinary medicine and literature to help students see their roles as veterinarians within broader cultural and emotional contexts.

"I've been privileged to be part of the U of G community and am delighted to have the opportunity to serve another term as dean of OVC," Stone said. "Our accomplishments have come about because of the enthusiasm, hard work and dedication of our leadership team, faculty, staff and students, and the generous support of our alumni and friends. This is a special place, and I look forward to creating our future over the next five years."

A Department of Biomedical Sciences researcher has been awarded a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship worth more than $1 million over three years to advance pioneering research into using stem cells to treat cartilage injuries in horses.

The fellowship will allow Dr. Thomas Koch, PhD '08, to continue the work he began as a graduate student in the Biomedical Sciences using stem cells obtained from the umbilical cord blood of foals to repair damaged cartilage. The funds from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation will support a transAtlantic collaboration involving U of G and the largest human orthopedics laboratory in Denmark along with researchers in veterinary and human medicine in Sweden, Canada and the United States. Dr. Koch is a DVM graduate of the University of Copenhagen.

"I'm very grateful for this support, which will allow us to carry out the first controlled studies on live animals using the protocols developed here at Guelph for obtaining stem cells from equine cord blood," said Dr. Koch, adding that the fellowship was the largest awarded by the Danish funding agency in a highly competitive process.

"This is also great news for U of G and the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) because it recognizes that the horse is the premier animal model for studying the potential of using stem cells to repair cartilage injuries. Equine joints are similar to human joints in some respects such as joint thickness, and horses are also prone to spontaneous athletic injuries. So there is a great deal of interest in our work from the equine industry and in human medical circles as well."

Dr. Koch's collaborators in the project include his former PhD supervisor, Prof. Dean Betts, now at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), as well as OVC professors Mark Hurtig, Judith Koenig and Dorothee Bienzle. He will also be working with Kjeld Soballe and Michael Ulrich-Vinther at Aarhus University's Orthopedic Research Laboratory in Denmark; Katarina Le Blanc of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm; Rita Kandel at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital; David Hess at UWO; and Lisa Fortier at Cornell University.

Dr. Koch and Betts were the first to establish a protocol for isolating stem cells from equine cord blood samples, a process that is non-invasive and simple compared with obtaining cells from embryos or bone marrow. They are able to differentiate the stem cells into unique cell types, including chondrocytes – the building blocks of cartilage – and hope to refine their techniques to identify the characteristics of cells that have the most therapeutic potential. The research team will use mesenchymal stem cells – the kind that grow into connective tissue, muscle and bone – in combination with engineered grafts made of cartilage and bone-like material to treat cartilage injuries in the stifle joint, equivalent to the human knee.

"The goal is to screen these cell lines and pick the ones that are really good at creating cartilage in the lab and then test their regenerative potential in live horses at OVC and Cornell University," said Koch. "If we can make it work in horses, then there is the potential to apply the same principles to make it work in people, too."