[00:00:02] Introduction: Welcome to All Cats Considered, a podcast from the Feline Veterinary Medical Association.
Here we interview professionals from across the veterinary world and take deep dives into the latest evidence based research, developments, studies and guidelines that improve feline health and well being.
We are the home for veterinary professionals seeking to enhance the care of cats through high standards of practice and continuing education and evidence based medicine. In each episode you'll hear interviews with a variety of experts in our field covering a wide range of topics and the latest developments in feline health. We'll share the key points you need to know to improve your patients care.
Let's dive in and listen to this week's experts.
[00:00:45] Cathy Lund: Hi, I'm Dr. Cathy Lund from City Kitty Veterinary Care for cats in Providence, Rhode island and I am delighted to introduce you today to Dr. Rebecca Windsor.
She is a boarded veterinary internist, a neurologist, and she's passionate about neuroinflammatory diseases. She's working at Gallant Therapeutics. They do cutting edge work bringing stem cell therapies to market.
Dr. Windsor, can you just walk us through how you ended up from emergency hospitals to Gallant?
[00:01:24] Dr. Windsor: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's been a little bit of a long path that I wasn't really anticipating.
So yeah. Dr. Lund, as you mentioned, I'm a neurologist. I've been practicing for 20 years, most recently at Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital in Colorado. And I'll be honest, I love practice. I never thought I would leave. I love my patients, I love my clients, I love what I do. But I've had this really amazing opportunity over the last about seven years now to work with a group called Ethos Discovery, which is a non profit organization that runs clinical trials within the Ethos Health Network. And so essentially for them, I oversee their neurology research. So I've had a really great opportunity to do a lot of projects, but definitely the one that's closest to my heart is trying to find a treatment for a disease that's called. The common name is pug dog encephalitis. If anyone's ever had a pug, they probably have heard of it. But the really long name is necrotizing meningoencephalitis. And the cool thing about that disease from a translational standpoint is it has a lot of similarities to an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis. And so pugs actually serve as a really good animal model for that subset of patients. And so we started about five years ago doing screening programs to see if we could identify pugs. Just earlier in their course of disease to try to see if we catch them early, can we treat them and keep them as terribly progressive condition. And interestingly, although I'm talking about neuroinflammatory diseases, what's really cool is that so many diseases that are inflammatory are similar. You know, regardless of whether it's in the brain or the mouth or the gut, the skin, they all have similar kind of immune mediated pathology there. And so I ended up starting to work with stem cells about four years ago, using them in my patients.
And originally, everything kind of circles back around, but I started working with the team at UC Davis, who, interestingly, has done a lot of the stem cell research for stomatitis. So I was friends with that group there just from connections from my residency. And so they were giving us stem cells for my study. And then they got to a point where they were unable to supply them for a while, and so they rec go through GALLANT to get stem cells from them. And so I was working with them on the investigator end, you know, of just getting the stem cells, administering the stem cells. And honestly, I had such an amazing experience just with stem cells and my patients. It was really life changing for me. So I've been treating inflammatory diseases for my whole career. And it's hard. I mean, you're using a lot of drugs, there's a lot of side effects, you know, they. You don't cure them most of the time, it's hard. It's hard on the animals, it's hard on their families. And so we gave stem cells to these dogs, and they were, you know, immediately better. Within 24 hours. It was like, literally unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. And then we kind of monitor them for a year to see which ones, you know, stayed better, which ones relapse, how long did they stay better. So just really cool to kind of follow the course of that particular disease specifically. But yeah, even then I thought I would just kind of stay in practice, you know, keep doing my research. And I got lucky. Just fortuitously, GALLANT reached out to me after I gave a talk at acvm. I want to say this was like two years ago now about my research and asked if I'd be interested in taking on this role as the director of.
And at first I was. I was kind of confused and unsure because I had never really thought about doing anything in the industry world at all. But what's really cool is that most of what I get to do is to work closely with the clinical trials team, helping with recruitment for Clinical trials. I get to do, you know, understand a lot of the science behind the stem cells and all of the research. And then most importantly, I get to be like me on the other side. So I get to work with veterinarians, you know, that are starting to adopt stem cell therapy just to feel comfortable with how to give it, how it works and just understand, like, the basics of, of what they are. I mean, it's a whole new therapy and there's so many misconceptions out there that people have, you know, so I get the joy of being able to try to really kind of set the stage for the truth, you know, first for stem cells.
[00:05:17] Dr. Lund: So that's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating and, and thrilling to think about the flip the switch effect that you've seen.
We're talking today about feline chronic gingivostomatitis.
Everyone would agree. If we can put our hands on a flip the switch kind of therapy, it's a game changer. So can you explain, for those of us who know very little about this therapy, what exactly is stem cell therapy? Why does it help? And it's for immune mediated conditions primarily.
[00:05:52] Dr. Windsor: Yeah, I mean, immunity, a lot of it can, they can do a lot of different things, so you can use them in a lot of different contexts. And so, you know, we know just as a general rule, stem cells at type that we're using, they are, they come into a category that are called multipotent stem cells, which actually makes them like less stemy. So they really can't stem into that many other cells. So oftentimes we're thinking of stem cells like, oh, I'm gonna get some stem cells. And like, what if this becomes like, forms a liver and the nose or. You know what I mean? That's not how they, that's not how they work. Right? So they don't, they can't become whatever they want. So these types of stem cells are mainly immunomodulatory. So you, it's really cool. You can give them iv, they follow homing signals to get to the tissue, and once they're there, they work with the tissue to essentially kind of reset the immune imbalance. So again, to your point, a lot of these diseases are immune mediated or at least based in immune dysregulation. And then they can also help repair the tissue. So some of it is actually replacing cells, but a lot more of it is just getting the cells that are already there to be healthier. And the thing that's so encouraging about them is that pretty much all of the Other treatments we have for so many conditions, you are trying to treat symptoms, right? You're trying to give a drug to block something. And that's great. I mean, we don't want them to feel painful. We want inflammation to go down, but they're not really getting rid of the underlying cause of the disease. And so the nice promising thing about stem cells for a variety of different conditions is actually helping them truly get better, you know, like treat. Treat the underlying course of disease, you know, so that they can ultimately get off of all the other chronic medications and stuff they're taking. So.
[00:07:21] Dr. Lund: Oh, my gosh. So exciting. And these. These stem cells I have, it's fascinating to think about them being almost trained to go to where they need to go and to act in just that singular fashion. Absolutely fascinating.
So how does that work with our cats who have these incredibly exquisitely painful mouths, who come in to see us in the office, and you can't really even open their mouths. They're not grooming, they're miserable. They're just painful. How does this help them?
[00:08:00] Dr. Windsor: What?
[00:08:01] Dr. Lund: What does it.
[00:08:02] Dr. Windsor: Yeah, so this is really cool, Dr. Lund. I'll get into all kind of the geeky science behind this, because we've actually looked into all this specifically, even just for ourselves, for stomatitis and cats. And so. So a lot of it comes down to what the, like, basic immune dysregulation is for that particular disease. Disease. And so we know for stomatitis and cats, there are a few things that are risk factors. There's a lot. It's super complicated, but at least some of the things that we know to be the case are they certainly have a higher percentage of viral infection, especially feline calcivirus. So a lot of these kitties are going to be viral positive, and that probably contributes to this immune dysregulation.
And so one thing the stem cells can do is they can actually increase the ability of the body's T cells to fight those viruses and kill the viruses and reduce the ability of the viruses to replicate within the cel. So we know that they have this antiviral component to them.
We also know that there's an imbalance both in the type of T cells that they have in the body and also the type of cytokines they have in the body. So cytokines are essentially things that are produced by cells that can cause inflammation. And so they're all out of whack, you know, with. With stomatitis. And so we've been able to show that the stem cells can work with a specific receptor to reduce that proliferation of T cells, and then they can also reset that cytokine balance. So it's really cool, just for that disease al specifically what they can do. And there's a lot more work being done looking into it too, for other, you know, immunomodulatory mechanisms.
But the cool thing is if we can reduce the viral load, if we can reduce the overall kind of inflammatory pattern, then it just kind of resets the whole, you know, system within the mouth so they can actually start healing. Other really cool thing, I don't know specifically for FCGs, but people are starting to look at it, is that we know that stem cells can help reset the oral microbiome as well. And so we know a lot of these kitties with ST GS have really severe oral dysbiosis. So the bacterial loads, the type of bacteria are way out of whack. And so those things can be contributing into the inflammation too. And so it's really cool all the different ways they can potentially work at, again, like a disease source, you know, way, you know, to try to kind of treat things.
[00:10:11] Dr. Lund: So fascinating. So as a, as a practitioner, you know, we see a spectrum of folks who have cats who have stomatitis symptoms, and they will, you know, sometimes they'll let us take all the teeth out, sometimes they can't, you know, financially, they just can't go down that road. Does this have potential for cats where you can't go to that nth degree and do everything right?
[00:10:39] Dr. Windsor: Yes. Yeah, that's a great question, because I have gotten that from so many people, including a lot of dentists, you know what I mean, that don't want to have these kitties go through this process. And so I will say that the subset of cats that we've looked at, and this is also the same subset of cats that the Davis Group looked at. And they did a lot of really, really great work, you know, before we were able to get to this point. And they've been advisors for us. They have all been cats that have had at least partial or full mouth extraction. Just because those cats, you know, that that failed recovery with extraction and medical management for at least two months, redefined those cats as being refractory, you know, and so we kind of said at that point they're unlikely to get better, you know what I mean? If we've taken some of their teeth, we've gone back in and make sure they don't have retained roots, you know what I mean? They've been chronically medically managed, they're unlikely to get better. There's not a lot looking at cats that are not refractory, but my suspicion is they probably would work, but we just don't know, you know what I mean? So, so I think that we'll have more looking into new studies and cats that haven't had extractions. One thing that was interesting though, at least from the study we did, we had a small number of cats that just had partial mouth extractions. Not full mouth. They do just as well as the full mouth. And so it's hard to have a ton of numbers to say, you know, but it could be a situation where it could work with, with like even as little as one tooth, you know what I mean, being removed from what we've seen.
[00:12:03] Dr. Lund: So yeah, it's so interesting. Do you have any sense what, what is your suspicion as far as the main cause here? Is it calicivirus? Is it the gut, the biome in the mouth? Is it.
[00:12:16] Dr. Windsor: Yes, all of the above. Right. So I think it's probably a combination of.
It's got to be contributed quite a bit by the viral infection because so high in so many of these kiddies, I think we had about 75, 80% of our kitties were calacy positive. But then you add that to that something else just with their particular immune systems response to that virus plus or minus having oral dysbiosis, which is where maybe the extractions come into play, right. If you're removing those teeth, removing some of that nidus for bacterial and viral load, maybe that helps them get better too before the stem cell therapy. And then I think some of it is just individual cats. And so we that multi cat households, cats for multi cat households are much more likely to be refractory and have FCGs like 7 1/2 times more likely. And so it, that is partly just viral, you know, positivity. And in multi cat households with some that some it might be stressed, you know. So I think a lot of things kind of come, come into play. What's interestingly too, when you look at kitties, you know, you have these groups of cats, you know, where they get stomatitis and then you have about a third of cats, if you do extractions, things totally resolve, you know, they come back to normal. Are the ones we want, right? Those kids are, kitties are great. But then you have a third of cats that they get a lot better. But they need to be on meds and like hard, you know, these poor kitties to your Point, like their moms are so sore and you're trying to medicate them. Right.
And then we have this relatively big group, I think about a third of them, that it doesn't seem to work if you, you know, do either. And those are really the ones we're trying to target, which, when you look at how many cats there are and how common this disease is. So like, if you look at nationally, it's about 10%.
Internationally, it kind of ranges between 10 to 25%, kind of depending on where you're in. And then definitely in shelter populations too, they have a lot higher percentage of somatitis. Right. So 10% of cats is not a small amount of cats to get stomatitis. Then you take a third of them being refractory. So this is a lot of kitties, you know, unfortunately, that are affected by this disease.
[00:14:09] Dr. Lund: So, yeah, it's. It's just a horrifying disease. And I know I'm not the only one out there who's thrown the kitchen sink at these cats.
We end up doing full mouth extractions. And then a lot of times they're maintained on prednisolone, antibiotics, pain relief, you name it, but their quality of life is not good. And when I saw the paper that you guys produced and the score assessments from cat caregivers about what they thought their cat's quality of life improvement was, was really compelling.
[00:14:46] Dr. Windsor: Yeah. And that's what matters really, I think the most. You.
When we did our study, we, you know, we looked at two owner assessments. So we had like an over, you know, overall score and then also looking at three specific things that were unique to their kitties. So we call that the see some and just seeing how they were before or after. And what was so cool to see is not only the percentage that respond, but like, how much better they. They went as they went along. You know what I mean? So, like, they might have been mildly improved, but they went to more being greatly approved. And for, again, you're looking at the worst of the worst cats. And we had, by the 90 day mark, 75% of those cats, you know, per. The owners were, were better. And then the lesion scores are interesting because we had veterinarians score those as well. We definitely see those get better in about half the cats. And if the lesions are better, the cats are better. Those correlate really, really well, not surprisingly, but not the same percentage there. Right. So you have some cats that are still going to have some residual visual pathology in the mouth, even if they're Feeling a lot better. So then you kind of have this like, like what, what's most important, you know what I mean? So just like as veterinarians are just like, I want to see nothing, I want everything to look normal. But you're also just like, but the cat feels way better, you know, so, so it'll be interesting to see more. We followed our kitties for a long time. So that, that study that just got published was our short term, kind of 90 day study. But we just actually submitted our 365 day follow up study too. So it was really important like that we saw did they stay better, you know what I mean? And the overall numbers there are similar. I would say estimate a little lower just to be safe of like 65% I think is a safe number to us to estimate as a long term response. And interestingly that's like almost identical to what they saw in the long term studies. For Davis too, that seems to be pretty consistent that 65% of them are going to be significantly better if not cured.
And we had, interestingly, 22% of our kitties were totally cured, you know, after, after therapy. So no lesions in the mouth, you know what I mean? Which is just so, so amazing.
[00:16:38] Dr. Lund: Happy cats.
[00:16:38] Dr. Windsor: I know. Yes, I know. It's for us, it's the story. So it's always hard to talk about this. You're like 75% this 65%, 22%. But like at the end of the day it's the cats that matter. Right. And so we get all these stories and pictures and videos and it's just like, I can't even tell you. We like regularly cry in meetings like, you know, looking at these like kitties and the follow up and stuff. And it's just so rewarding, you know, and obviously there's some that aren't going to respond and it's really hard. And for me, from like a scientific perspective would love to know why. Like why is there a group that doesn't and a group that does. And these numbers seem to be pretty consistent. Consistent. And you know, there's probably something within their specific immunology that they don't respond as well, you know, And I think that's true across the board for a lot of conditions where you use stem cells, where you have patients that do great and then some that just don't seem to respond to them for whatever reason.
[00:17:29] Dr. Lund: So what are the nuts and bolts of this for, for a general practitioner? If I, what do I have? I have a vial of stem cells.
Yeah.
[00:17:39] Dr. Windsor: How Do I do it? For sure, for sure, yeah. So I'll tell you kind of how we get think is also really cool because it's really sustainable. So, like, one thing that was really important to us as a company is to make stem cells accessible to any cat that would need it, right? And so we didn't want to be like, oh yeah, we made this, but like, this is three grand. Like, that's not what we're going for, right. We want to make it affordable for people. And so in order to do that, you have to have a platform that's sustainable to produce a large number of cells from a small amount of tissue. And so, so one really cool thing is we get all of our stem cells are from healthy donors that have been screened to make sure they don't have any pathogens, because we know those can affect, affect the quality of the cells. But from one donor, we, we get the tissue from uterine tissue just from a routine spay, you know, so they'd be spayed anyway. And then one uterus gives us 30 million doses of stem cells. It's unbelievable. Like 30 million kitties from one uterus. It's, it's shocking. So, so, you know, so people like, what happens to all the cats? I'm like, well, there really aren't a lot of cats because we don't. They were so few can provide so many. So that part is so amazing.
And so we develop all the cells and then we, we actually, we look at the uterus, like within a specific uterus, what the characteristics are. Because even though it's all cat uterine tissue, some are better than others as far as their immunomodulatory properties. And so the specific drugs, although they are similar in a way, they definitely are targeted of like, we have our FCGs uterus, you know what I mean? Because we know that that particular uterus has qualities that make it even stronger for that disease. And then we free, you know, we're able to freeze the batches and so we have the batches frozen in our lab. Diego. And then the way that it will work, and this is how it works for all of our clinical trial sites currently, is essentially, you need a dose. You just, I would say call, but nobody calls anymore, right? You're going to do an online submission, you know what I mean? We're going to be in the modern, modern days and then you'll get these stem cells shipped to you in a box on dry ice. And so the only holdup with stem cells in general is they have to be kept ultra cold. And so you can't have them, like, sitting in your shelf unless you have a negative 8 freezer, which most people won't, obviously, you know, so you just call them and get them shipped as needed. And then they're really pretty easy after that. So it comes in a small vial. It has about 2 mils in there. You let that thaw at room temperature. And then the way we are treating our stomatitis kitties is a little bit different because these kitties are sicker, you know, so we know they have the stomatitis, obviously, but so much has come out about these kitties, about just being systemically ill.
[00:20:10] Dr. Lund: Right.
[00:20:10] Dr. Windsor: They have hyperglobulinemia, they have neutrophilia, they have a lot of high rate of esophagitis, like tracheobronchial secretion. So they have a lot going on. Right. And so we try to go slower with our dosing in those kitties specifically. And so what happens is you. You take the medication, you dilute it out into. We're currently using about 20 mils total of saline and just going really slow. So you essentially give about 5 mils and wait 5 minutes or so, give another 5 mils. And the reason we go so slowly is we're just waiting to see if they have any sort of reaction to the therapy. And.
[00:20:49] Dr. Lund: Yeah, go ahead intravenously.
[00:20:52] Dr. Windsor: This is done intravenously, okay? Yes.
[00:20:54] Dr. Lund: And you give it slowly?
[00:20:55] Dr. Windsor: Yep, just through a peripheral catheter. It doesn't have to be anything special as far as type of catheter or you don't need any, like, fluid setup or anything like that. You're just injecting it.
And so we go pretty slowly, mainly just to see if they're having a reaction. And from what we've seen from looking at side effects to the stem cell therapy, luckily the adverse event rate is really quite low, which is great. The adverse event rate to the. What we think is actually the stem cells is really low, you know, but kitties are stressed in the hospital, right? So sometimes, like, they're stressed just from you looking at them, much less giving them anything, and then you're giving a fluid. So we just go really, really slow with them. And what I'm telling people to watch out for is about. I'd say about a third even Maybe we said 30 to 40% if we wanted to overestimate of cats, you'll probably notice something like they might seem a little lethargic sometimes they'll look a little nauseous. So Oftentimes, we'll recommend just giving cerenia, you know, before you give it. Other things would be, like increased respiratory rate. So some. Again, it's like, is it stress? Is it the cells? It's hard to know. But just like, that's why we go slow. And the good news is if they are going to show any response to. It's typically very quickly, like within that first half hour. And then after that, they're usually pretty good to go, even if they have any, like, transient reaction. And so the way that the dosing goes is they get that first dose, so those kind of little separate things, and then they have a second dose that comes about 14 days later, could be a little bit after that, and that should be it. And so they get those two doses.
Although in the clinical trials, we had to get them off of all of their other medications essentially to go on to the study.
The newer phases of this study, we don't have to do that. But the one for our FDA conditional approval, we did. But the good news is, in practice, you won't need to do that. You know what I mean? You can. You can have them on their other medications. They don't have to get off pred or cyclosporine to give the stem cells. Our hope is that ultimately they will. Right. That's why we're doing it, to get them off their meds. But you don't have to be. Let's go. I gotta taper all the way off to be able to give the stem cells. They're gonna work well, you know what I mean, with the other medications and stuff, you know, as well. So.
[00:23:03] Dr. Lund: Yeah, and It's a. It's two doses, 14 days apart, and there's no application if. If your CAT happens to be in that group that doesn't respond well.
Do you ever repeat a dose?
[00:23:17] Dr. Windsor: That's a great question. Yeah. So what I always kind of say for this study and for so many of the studies that you will see with this two dosing is like, everybody does what everybody does because that's what everybody does, right? And there's so many questions of like, do I need to do it that way? Like, can I just give one? Why don't I give one and give one in six months? And the honest answer is, we just don't know, you know, and we were not any better than anyone else. We're doing what everybody else has done. We followed kind of in the path of what the Davis team did because, like, well, if it works, why would we change it? But we have all those same questions, you know, and we're looking a little bit more into like what if they, if they like slipped back, can you just redose them or you know, so it'll be interesting to see over time. The good news is that that for the majority of Cassidy we have seen the stem cells seem very safe. There does not seem to be a risk for a reaction with a second dose. So like if you had, you know, some nausea at dose number one doesn't mean you will at dose number two, you know. And so it's a potential that you could think about redosing them but for right now we just don't know. So we just have to say this is how we studied it, this is how it's going to be labeled. For now we just have to follow exactly how it's written on the label, you know, and that's for the two doses, 14 days apart. Yeah.
[00:24:26] Dr. Lund: And. And there's an opportunity to cure some of these cats.
[00:24:30] Dr. Windsor: Yeah.
[00:24:30] Dr. Lund: Enhanced quality of life is so compelling and so really so wonderful because it's just a horrifying disease for our cats.
[00:24:40] Dr. Windsor: It's awful. Yeah. And it was really cool. I mean we saw about half the cats were better like just after a single dose, like when they're coming back in for that two week recheck, owners were like noticing they already looked quite a bit better. But it still takes a little time. And that's the other thing to try to kind of get people to understand is this a completely different type of therapy than we've given before? So most of the other drugs we give, they are meant to block a pathway. Right. And those things work quickly, you know what I mean? If you give baba Pentagon, you'd expect within a day at least that they're going to be on full threshold for pain control. Right. Same thing with anti inflammatories, maybe a day or two. But you expect it's going to be working. Right. Whereas stem cell therapy, because they're, some of their effects probably are pretty immediate because of those anti inflammatory effects effects. But some of them, those immunomodulatory effects and repairing tissue, that takes time. Right. And so we always tell people like just give it a minute, you know what I mean? If it seems like it's taken a few months, that's not abnormal. You know, we've had some cases where like at two weeks that they're like, well they don't seem, that's much better. And then at three months they're dramatically better, you know, so just kind of giving them that time, you know, so.
[00:25:42] Dr. Lund: These cats may continue and continue and continue to improve, which would, could give our clients hope. And that's just beautiful, really beautiful.
So when are, when can we use it? When is it available?
[00:25:57] Dr. Windsor: Yeah, so everything is on track now. So one thing that is very different from our therapy is that we are going through the very rigid FDA approval process. And so, you know, all of the quote, unquote stem cell therapies that are on the market are not FDA approved, you know, and so they're usually kind of coming from the patient and going back into the, the patient. And there's a lot of concerns with those to some degree in that, well, when you're having to take tissue from an animal that's sick, right, to harvest the cells, but also, like, if they're sick, you don't really want to give them their own sick cells back, right? You want to give them healthy, healthy cells. And so, so the process to get FDA approval is long, which is honestly good, right? Because I think the most important thing with our patients is that we are giving them things that, number one, have been proven to be safe, right? That has been tested over and over to say that it's safe. We also have good efficacy data. And then the other thing is just making sure that we can count, that every single dose is going to be the same as far as potency, quality and stuff like that. And so we were getting there. And so the nice thing about this particular disease is because it is so terrible and we don't have great treatments for it, we're able to do a conditional approval process where we're able to kind of get the drug conditionally approved to have people be able to have access to it. And then over the next five years, after our conditional approval, we'll get full approval by doing a bigger study. Our, our study that we just completed had 46 cats. We'll probably have a hundred plus cats, you know, in the, in the kind of next phase of the study. And so as long as things are going on track, we're looking at the spring of having the product available. So unless something changes there, that's what things are looking like, timeline wise. And then we will plan on being able to start kind of taking some early orders and stuff a couple months before that. And then probably the best way for people to know about is like, keep in touch on our website. So like www.gallup.com is our website website. The other cool thing that we were working on just to get people ready is that We've designed our own learning platform, so it's a free online CE platform.
And a lot of our content right now is focused on FCGs, so we have a lot of speakers talking about SCGs and oral inflammatory diseases, and also just a lot of basics about, like, what is a stem cell? Where do they come from, how do they work? You know, and so our hope is to really have people feel comfortable because. Because one of the big issues we have is that they don't teach stem cell therapy in school. Right. So no one's coming out. You even go to conferences. And I, you know, speak at a lot of conferences. I'm like, where's the regenerative medicine track? You've got to leave. We're like the other. You know, we got to, like, wedge our way into some sort of track somewhere, you know, and so there's just a big need to have this education out there, you know, so hoping to get that for people. And we'll have a lot on our website and have a lot as far as, like, training materials for clinics. Clinics, not only just for the veterinarians, but for the staff. Right. They're the ones who are going to be administering most of the time. So, like. And we all know they're the ones taking the questions, you know, they're the ones answering the phone. They're the ones talking to the clients. So just making sure they feel comfortable, you know, answering questions and stuff. So.
[00:28:51] Dr. Lund: Yeah. Well, this is such great news.
Light at the end of the tunnel, finally, for feline chronic gingivostomatitis. Thank you, Dr. Rebecca Windsor. I really, really appreciate your time and all the information you've given us.
[00:29:07] Dr. Windsor: Yeah.
[00:29:08] Dr. Lund: Is there anything we need to cover that I've left out?
[00:29:11] Dr. Windsor: Oh, gosh, no. We talked about so much. It's so exciting.
[00:29:15] Dr. Lund: Yeah.
[00:29:16] Dr. Windsor: That's one question I get pretty frequently. So I'll just bring it up now just in case it's in people's mind, is that, you know, we give the. The stem cells iv, you know, and so, you know, kind of, like I mentioned, they're. They're smart and they. They know where to go. And so I'll commonly get a question like, what? Well, can I just use it for osteoarthritis and kidney disease and asthma and IBD and all of the things. And my answer to that is, like, not this one yet, because this one is one that we have conditionally approved for this particular indication. However, it's really good to be thinking about that globally, because I think that they have so much potential. There's so much research going on both with our group and a lot of people that we are communicating with and collaborating with across the US Trying to get a lot more research for a variety of different conditions. And so the hope would be, ultimately we're going to have enough availability for various indications that they can become a mainline therapy. Because I think a lot of. A lot of what people think of now because we're trained in a certain way, is like, I'm going to use this and then this and this and this. And if that all fails, then I'm going to try stem cells. Right. Whereas what we hope over time is people recognize, like, hey, if I try stem cells now, maybe I won't get to this point where I have to try all of these other things and have animals on. On chronic medications. And, you know, kitties specifically are tough. I mean, they're tough to medicate. They have a lot of side effects to meds. So kind of understanding, hey, if I can start modulating that immune system earlier in the course of disease, then hopefully we can, you know, either cure the disease or really reduce the likelihood they'll need those chronic meds or at least the amounts, you know, that they'll need those medications.
[00:30:47] Dr. Lund: So it's just absolutely fascinating. And cats are just bundles of inflammatory problems, so, I mean, the potential for different applications is breathtaking.
Lymphomas, ibd, It's.
[00:31:02] Dr. Windsor: It's so exciting. And honestly, in humans, like, literally, you name it, and they are looking at it like, I can't keep up. You know what I mean? It's like every week there's just more and more and more. It's like, I'll prepare, you know, a presentation, and I'm like, I'll just do a little search and see if anything's changed since two weeks ago when I got this together, I'm like, oh, there we go. I need to add another reference now. You know, it's crazy what they're doing, and it's super, super exciting. And also big interest in using animal models. You know what I mean? You know, especially things like asthma, inflammatory bowel disease. Really, really strong correlations with some of the human conditions, too.
[00:31:32] Dr. Lund: So super cool. Thanks. I mean, this has been incredibly interesting. I really appreciate it.
[00:31:39] Conclusion: Thank you for listening to this episode of All Cats Considered. We hope you enjoyed this interview. For more information on the topics discussed in this episode, please head over to catvets.com podcasts and explore the links in the show. Notes. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice so you won't miss any episodes as we release them. Have thoughts or ideas about the interview you heard today. Share them with us by leaving a comment on our Facebook page or shoot us an
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