In the coming weeks, Barbara Kitchell will have to transform MSU's new Animal Cancer Care Clinic from a bright and airy 42,000-square-foot facility into a functioning, cutting-edge treatment center.
But Kitchell, a professor of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, has undertaken lion-sized projects before.
In December 2003, a keeper at Lansing's Potter Park Zoo noticed that Samburu, a male lion, was eating but still losing weight. Tests showed Samburu had a deadly cancer.
"We started on a never-before-tried chemotherapy treatment," said Tara Myers Harrison, a veterinarian and curator at the zoo. "Dr. Kitchell helped come up with the protocol for that."
By giving Samburu chemotherapy in his meat, the veterinarians were able to send the lion's cancer into remission and keep him alive for 16 months — something that was unprecedented with a lion.
On Friday, Harrison presented Kitchell with a plaque commemorating the experience at the opening of the College of Veterinary Medicine's new $12.8-million cancer clinic. The building is the first phase of the MSU Center for Comparative Oncology — what college Dean Lonnie King called one of the nation's elite centers for treating and studying animal cancers.
"MSU was the last of the major veterinary schools to have an oncology program," said Kitchell, who is the director of the Center for Comparative Oncology.
MSU now has the largest program in the country, with seven resident veterinarians training under Kitchell.
The work that will eventually be done at the center could have significant implications for human cancer research.
"Myself and a dog share 90 percent of the same gene pool," Provost Kim Wilcox said. "It stands to reason, then, that the kinds of factors that affect my risk for cancer are going to overlap, to a certain extent, to my dog."
Kitchell said the current mouse models for studying cancer are "inappropriate," and don't necessarily translate to benefits for humans. Collaborations between the College of Veterinary Medicine and other researchers across the university and the state could lead to the next breakthrough in cancer treatment.
A working group has already been established to foster those collaborations, for which the center will provide animal models.
"Now that this (facility) is in place, we will be able to move forward with some of those connections we have started," Kitchell said.
The clinic includes exam rooms, holding areas and staff offices around a two-story atrium. The crowning feature is, in Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences Chairman Charles DeCamp's words, a "really cool" linear accelerator that allows veterinarians to perform radiation treatments.
"Bottom line is, you're setting up what anybody would be happy to have in any hospital right now," said Mike Summers, a representative of Acceletronics Inc., the company that sold MSU the accelerator.
The accelerator is the same technology that is being used in Lansing's Sparrow Hospital to treat human patients, he said. MSU veterinarians will be able to treat 15-20 pets a day with the machine.
The money to build the clinic was raised through fees for veterinary services and private donations.
"We've been associated with the veterinary school for a long time. We knew the quality of the people," said Randall Almirall, one of the project's major donors, who said he has been bringing his hunting dogs to MSU veterinarians for "forever and a day."
The college hasn't completely paid off the first phase of the center, Kitchell said, and needs to raise an additional $13 million to fund phase two. That phase will include the addition of research labs and more offices to the existing structure.
"It's constructed in a way that two or three floors can be added to it, and will," King said.
The clinic was built first to address a growing need, with more animals than ever being diagnosed with cancer, in part because many of them are living longer.
"It's largely a factor of better animal care in general," Kitchell said. "People are more willing to bring their animals for care, and we find things."
