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Diverse backgrounds bring innovative solutions to swine health and welfare

  • (From left to right) Noelle Noyes, Declan Schroeder, Kim VanderWaal, Matheus Costa

    Diverse backgrounds bring innovative solutions to swine health and welfare

    (From left to right) Noelle Noyes, Declan Schroeder, Kim VanderWaal, Matheus Costa

The swine group in the Department of Veterinary Population Medicine at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine has a tradition of excellence in swine research. More recently, it has positioned itself to tackle the swine industry’s greatest challenges by relying upon the group's innovative and unique perspectives in order to have a lasting impact on animal welfare and swine production. Get to know a few key players:

Declan Schroeder, PhD, associate professor

Declan Schroeder
Declan Schroeder

Before coming to the University of Minnesota, Schroeder was in the United Kingdom researching viruses in algae and honey bees. He became interested in applying this knowledge to honey bees in the United States, as the US has more problems with honey bee diseases than the UK. He connected with Marla Spivak, Dominic Travis, and Michael Murtaugh stateside. His interaction with Murtaugh in particular made him notice a gap in understanding how viruses interact with swine, and he found parallels in viruses infecting honey bees. For one thing, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus and many honey bee RNA viruses belong to the same superfamily. PRRS virology is dominated by research based on one part of its genome; Schroeder’s lab developed a new technique that can describe the full genomic strain profile of PRRS virus within 24 hours of sampling. His research gives veterinarians a better tool to rapidly diagnose the infection in animals.

Noelle Noyes, DVM, PhD, assistant professor

Noelle Noyes
Noelle Noyes

Noyes purposefully became a veterinarian after spending six years studying international relations and foreign languages in Germany and China and then doing mergers and acquisitions strategy consulting for high-tech companies. Preparing for veterinary school, Noyes developed a strong interest in data analytics, so she pursued a DVM/PhD in epidemiology and livestock medicine. Now, Noyes’ research focuses on antimicrobial resistance and the swine microbiome. “We are trying to understand whether there’s a ‘typical’ swine microbiome or resistance profile. How does it change with different antimicrobial exposure, diets, management practices, and the life cycle of a pig?” Once Noyes and her team establish a baseline of data, researchers can help producers leverage the swine microbiome to promote well-being.

Kim VanderWaal, PhD, assistant professor

Kim VanderWaal
Kim VanderWaal

VanderWaal specializes in understanding connections and anticipating patterns of pathogen spread within populations. She started out using network analysis to investigate microbial spread through wildlife in Africa. Contact networks are essential to identifying how diseases spread, so VanderWaal has recently been applying this approach to two swine industry-wide game changers: porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus. To VanderWaal, the U of M is the perfect setting for her research. “Combining my ecology background with the more traditional veterinary epidemiological approaches has allowed me to bring some out-of-the-box thinking to veterinary medicine while also making me a better scientist,” she says.

Matheus Costa, DVM, PhD, assistant professor

Matheus Costa
Matheus Costa

Costa wanted to work with animals since childhood, first considering a career as a biologist and ultimately focusing on veterinary medicine. He says his favorite part about his research is diving into the unknown. This is reflected in his efforts to lessen antimicrobial use in herds, particularly for diseases that lack any other treatment options, such as swine dysentery. In these instances, antibiotics are most often relied upon to eradicate the bacteria. But Costa is asking, “What if there is an enzyme here interacting with the bacteria to result in clinical signs? What if I can stop that enzyme?” The bacteria responsible for swine dysentery hinders infected pigs’ bodies from regulating blood vessel production. So, Costa is exploring how he can manipulate the host reaction to improve the host’s ability to live with it.