Purina Petcare and Texas A&M partner to advance microbiome health

Nestlé Purina PetCare Global Research and the Gastrointestinal Laboratory at Texas A&M University’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences are partnering to uncover breakthroughs in the frontier of pet microbiome health. (Image courtesy of Nestlé Purina PetCare Company)

Texas A&M Veterinary Gastrointestinal Laboratory and Nestlé Purina PetCare Global Research announced a 5-year partnership to advance microbiome health. The partnership is made possible through a $2 million Purina PetCare Research Excellence Fund.

According to an organizational release,¹ the fund will go from 2023 to 2028 to support diagnostic and interventional research performed at the Texas A&M Microbiome Research Laboratory while also training future research to understand the pet microbiome.

"We believe the research projects and training made possible through our Research Excellence Fund and the newly endowed chair at the GI laboratory will shape a future where the veterinary profession has safe, novel tools to diagnose and nutritionally manage a range of pet health conditions that result from microbiome imbalance," expressed Sheri Smithey, senior vice president, Global Petcare R&D at Purina, in the release.¹

"We are confident this Purina PetCare Research Excellence Fund will yield benefits to veterinarians and their patients for many years to come," she continued.

Along with the support of the Microbiome Research Laboratory, Purina will also support a newly endowed chair position, the Purina PetCare Endowed Chair for Microbiome Research, at the Texas A&M GI Laboratory. Jan Suchodolski, MedVet, DrVetMed, PhD, AGAF, DACVM, is the recipient of the new chair and serves as a professor and associate director of research at the laboratory.

"In recent decades, scientists have learned a great deal about the intestinal microbiome and its role in long-term pet health. This has led to discoveries such as a new way of evaluating the microbiome of individual animals," said Suchodolski, referring to the PCR-based Microbiome Dysbiosis Index developed by his group at the Gastrointestinal Laboratory.

"Through the Purina PetCare Research Excellence Fund, we look forward to seeing how learnings such as these will help us discover new strategies for veterinarians to use in our approach to the management of patients with chronic GI disease and other conditions believed to be associated with dysbiosis," he concluded.¹

Reference

Purina Petcare and Texas A&M Veterinary Gastrointestinal Laboratory Join Forces to Advance Pet Microbiome Health. News release. Nestle Purina PetCare Company. April 19, 2023. Accessed April 20, 2023. https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com/news-releases/purina-petcare-and-texas-am-veterinary-gastrointestinal-laboratory-join-forces-to-advance-pet-microbiome-health-301802258.html