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Third year DVM and PhD student Emily Pope is using veterinary medicine to create a better mouse model for treating human breast cancer. The human implications of her research caught the eye of the Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) Veterinary Scholars Program, a 10-week summer program through the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) that helps students better understand the role research plays in developing new treatment protocols or therapeutics.
Pope has been working on her research for four years, but she spent the 2018 BI Veterinary Scholars Program session analyzing her findings. What she knows for certain is that breast cancer is difficult to study at a genetic level. There is vast variety in the way breast cancer is expressed, which makes targeting individual cancer cells a challenge.
Pope’s research identifies novel targets that cancer drugs can latch onto. Identifying these new targets could lead to new uses for existing drugs and aid in the development of new ones. “Treatments would be tailor-made to each cancer. That’s the direction we’re headed in this field,” says Pope.
After veterinary school, Pope hopes to land a residency in small animal surgery and continue to develop targeted and individualized cancer treatment therapies. She’s driven to produce research that impacts both human and animal communities.
“The CVM’s decision to emphasize One Health—which recognizes that the health of people, animals, and the environment are all connected—has driven a lot of collaboration,” says Pope, who is advised by professors from both the University of Minnesota Medical School and the CVM.
Pope is the recipient of the Al Weber DVM/PhD Fellowship and won first place for her poster presentation at the CVM Points of Pride Research Day. She has been the recipient of multiple scholarships through the University.
“When you’re so early in your career but you already know what you want to do, to have that value reaffirmed by someone who wants to support you in your goal,” she says, “that makes you even more motivated to reach it.”
Illustration by Megan Murrell