Sponsored by Elanco Animal Health

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA

Well, we are very excited my friends that we have the new canine parvo monoclonal antibody that's out there. And so Dr Lapin, can you just share with us some highlights of what makes this therapy a game changer?

Michael Lappin, DVM, PhD, DACVIM

I can and kind of back to our stories about having a Parvo puppy when you're a kid or me losing the first 8 of 9. It had been for CSU and other schools around the world and other researchers to find ways to prove survivability prevention, great with the vaccine pathway. But there's even a small window of opportunity in every vaccine, as well. And so finding ways to get close to that sounds like 90% for all the namebrand treatments, but to shrink fat to get closer to 100%. And this is actually an area that's been studied for many years. In fact, I remember Dougie McIntyre and her first publishing a study using serum from dogs that had high Parvo titers. And showing that that might actually get puppies out of Auburn, at the time, a little bit faster, save some hospitalization, but it was never standardized. We never had a pathway that we could use something that we knew had exactly the same amount of antiParvo antibodies to use as a treatment. And so as this was being developed by a previous company that now owned by Elanco, this new product, it's just been so exciting, waiting for it to get here that because we know the concept is solid. The concept of passive immunotherapy giving antibodies from someone else to help kill your virus today, which was emphasized again with SARS-CoV-2, saving a lot of people, it's just been amazing that now we can actually do it. We were so excited at CSU they actually have already administered product ourselves. So it's been coming for a long time scientifically, but to have it now is really boosted the excitement level.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA

Yeah, that's fantastic. I'm curious to get all of your perspective on this, because where does this fit in terms of workflow in treatment protocol.

Michael Lappin, DVM, PhD, DACVIM

For CSU, we've already made the decision. If the owner can afford plan A, which would be everything standard of care, this will fit right there. Because it is one of those game changers that could perhaps shrink the fatality rate from 10% to less than 10%. Maybe to o with our plan A people. But then we've got this great spot for it. Now for those folks that can't afford it because hospitalization and staffing is what costs us with the Parvo and we all know what a bag of fluids costs, what a catheter costs. That's not the expense. The expense is the people to keep a Parvo puppy alive. And so if we can then deviate away from having to hospitalized and all that staffing issues to a treatment that would fit with a outpatient protocol we've already kind of talked about today, that'd be fantastic as well. So it really comes down to pretty much every Parvo puppy I think should have passive immunotherapy and giving a standardized protocol with a big company standing behind it. It just makes it so easy to say let's do it.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA

Yeah. And Fathom, what does this mean for you and your...

Fathom Woods

Oh, we're extremely excited. We're such a high volume ICU and the prospect that these dogs won't get that sick is incredible. It'll boost morale, of course, it's exciting to be a part of the study. And we are just...that's all we talked about, really, this monoclonal antibody, and I don't know what it's going to look like for at-home treatment. I'm hoping that we can figure something out to where the owners can get it. Because, again, you know, they wouldn't really have to do much. And it's just really exciting.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA

And from an emergency medicine perspective, what does that look like for you and your team?

Erik Zager, DVM, DACVECC

I think the importance is early, early early. I can believe that the the kind of the main mechanism of this is trying to inhibit the virus's ability to enter new cells. And so, it is not going to repair the intestinal crypts that are already damaged. It's not going to bring those white blood cells that are already destroyed back. But if we can get this into these patients before the virus has a chance to enter new intestinal cells and destroy new white blood cells, that's when the iron is hot. And that's where you want to strike. And so I think that trying to target those cases unfortunately, in the referral hospital setting, a lot of these patients are coming in when they're already really, really sick. And so, I don't think that we should view it as a perfect way to reverse those but we need to be focusing on getting those patients at as early as possible. I think a lot of people think when they see a patient come in that is very mildly affected, it's a new snap positive for Parvo, where they think, "Oh, maybe this will be fine." No, those are those ones where you think that they're going to do okay, and then a couple of days later, they're crashing. And I think that those are the ones that are probably that worth it the most, is to get this therapy on board, prevent those additional cells from getting infected, and prevent the virus really doing its damage. Because once that damage is done, it's that same standard of care that those fluids, antibiotics, dextrose support that's going to be needed to to support them through the damage that's already been done.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA

And so puppies may not need to be hospitalized as long. And what would what does that mean from from a behaviorist perspective?

I think about that from a couple different directions. And I love the fact that we're talking about caregiver burden as one of the big pieces here, we can look at it from the individual animal's perspective, and what's the survivability of that individual. And I'm always reminded when we talk about something like a 90% survivability, it's like, well, that's great when you're talking about 100 puppies. But if you're 1 the 10 that didn't make it, it was 100% death, like that remembering what those numbers really mean. And so if we have the ability to really improve those numbers, getting as close as possible to 100%, from the standpoint of staff, to be able to say we can continue to invest our hearts and our effort into what we do. It allows us to, to some degree, move away from outcomes a little bit where you're kind of hoping and praying that this is one of the 90 rather than one of the 10. And we can actually really continue to invest in especially at a time when our profession is so affected by burnout, and overwhelming staffing shortages and all of those issues. I think about it, yes, from the perspective of the individual animal who's being treated. But again, that ripple effect goes out in so many layers to the puppy, their family, our staff, our teams, and just the overall education that we have the opportunity to provide. I think it's it's phenomenal.