WesternU Student Summer Research Receives Support from Bionet
WesternU’s College of Veterinary Medicine has received a grant to strengthen summer research in the college’s Applied Physiology and Clinical Pharmacology Laboratory (APCPL).
Bionet, an international manufacturer of bio-signal medical equipment, provided $8,000 in financial research support for summer research scholar anesthesia projects. The company also furnished a variety of equipment to assist the program.
Three anesthesia-related research projects involving ferrets, cats and dogs are underway this summer undertaken by WesternU students Carina Cortez (third year, DVM 2022), Kailynne Atkinson (third year, DVM 2022), and Heidi Luczynski (second year, DVM 2023). Faculty members Dr. Lyon Lee and Dr. Young Joo Kim are serving as principal investigators, assisting the students in their work.
With much of the WesternU campus under quarantine due to the pandemic, the research projects moved off campus in June. Work is taking place at the Central Orange County Emergency Animal Pet Hospital in Newport Beach, owned by Dr. Kim. The additional funding allowed for the transportation of equipment to the off-campus site.
The student projects are designed to study species-specific protocols that allow for safe anesthesia outside normal hospital settings. Ms. Luczynski noted that using anesthesia via injection could be used in shelter medicine or in relief work overseas. “Our research is also helping us build our teamwork and networking skills,” she added.
Dr. Lee and Dr. Kim worked with Bionet to attract the critical financial support. In addition, Bionet contributed state-of-the-art anesthesia monitoring equipment to the project in exchange for clinical evaluation of the devices, providing additional backing for the research. Dr. Lee praised the industry support provided by Bionet, noting the “industry cooperation is extraordinarily important” to WesternU’s research agenda.
Equipment donated for clinical evaluation include a BM7 Veterinary Patient Monitor, an anesthesia machine, glucometer, SonoQue wireless US image device, and a Vemo wireless ECG Patch monitoring system.
The new donations build upon Bionet’s longstanding support of WesternU’s CVM. In 2010, the corporation donated two monitors to the Pet Health Center and Upland Center, and in 2018, it donated two more monitors worth in excess of $10,000.
