EU project COMBIVET on comparative medicine (Tartu Estonia) invited BBMRI.at partner VetBiobank for guest lecture

EU project on comparative medicine

Many health challenges that humans and animals face are the same, for example, cancers like osteosarcoma, age-related and metabolic diseases. Due to these similarities, knowledge gained from studying and treating animal patients can be applied in humans while developing new diagnostic tools and therapies for both humans and animals. This is what comparative medicine is about.

The H2020 project COMBIVET (grant no. 857418) aims to advance research in the field of comparative medicine and to exploit its largely untapped potential. One of COMBIVET’s objectives is to recruit outstanding researchers in the field of comparative/translational medicine and to increase interdisciplinary cooperation by bringing together the expertise of different universities.

BBMRI.at has a clinical veterinary biobank as partner: VetBiobank

As one of very few nodes of the European Biobanking Research infrastructure BBMRI-ERIC, BBMRI.at has a clinical veterinary biobank as partner. The VetBiobank (at University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (Vet Med Uni)) collects, processes and stores tissue and blood samples from cats, dogs and other animals. It works according to the high ISO standards for sample pre-analytics, which also apply to human samples. See VetBiobank’s sample collections in the BBMRI Directory.

Comparative medicine and one health are also an important topic in the work program of BBMRI.at. VetBiobank leads the respective work package “Veterinary Biobanks: Potentials & Comparative Medicine/One Health.”

Guest lecture for COMBIVET by experts from BBMRI.at partner

Two experts in comperative medicine from BBMRI.at partner Vet Med Uni were invited by COMBIVET coordinator Estonian University of Life Sciences (Tartu) to give guest lectures on “Exploring One Health Research and Veterinary Oncology: Insights from Veterinary Samples and Osteosarcoma in Dogs and Cats”.

• Prof. Walter Ingrid (Head of the VetBiobank and the Histology and Embryology working group at the Vet Med Uni Vienna) was invited to speak about the importance of veterinary samples as a valuable source for “One Health” research. Her highly informative lecture pointed out the promising perspectives of this interdisciplinary approach.

• Dr. Juraj Hlavaty, a postdoctoral researcher at Vet Med Uni’s Center for Pathology, gave a presentation entitled “Osteosarcoma in dogs and cats”, providing insights into research into this type of cancer, which occurs in both animals and humans

The guest lectures were very well received by the participants and certificates were issued to Prof. Walter and Dr. Hlavaty in recognition of their valuable contributions to the virtual event.