Veterinary Today Podcast: Northgate Pet Clinic Clinical Trials Program

An innovative veterinary pharmaceutical clinical trials program has been operating at a central Illinois pet clinic for more than 10 years, allowing pet owners to enroll their dogs and cats in breakthrough drug treatment research.

Pets benefit from potential life-changing and life-saving medicines being developed, treating such conditions as flea infestations and osteoarthritis afflictions, in addition to a wide range of other medical conditions. In the meantime, a pet owner can benefit from free-of-charge attentive medical care for their pet when options for treatment for a medical condition may be non-existent.

Veterinary Today Podcast host, Joanne Carlson, DVM, talks with Larry Baker, DVM, DAVDC, FAVD, owner/operator of Northgate Pet Clinic in Decatur, about the clinical trials program that partners with both pharmaceutical companies and pet owners. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the veterinary today podcast produced by the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association. I'm Kelley McLaughlin your podcast moderator. Veterinary today shares current and developing trends in the veterinary profession, providing information so veterinary professionals can serve clients in their pets livestock and manage their practices and to establish a more informed, knowledgeable and educated clinical staff. Veterinary today also allows pet owners and animal producers to view into the world of veterinary medicine from clinicians and technicians shedding light into the world of animal care and treatments from their experienced professional points of view. Our host is Dr. Joanne Carlson, Chief Medical Officer at Loving Care Animal Clinic in Palatine and immediate past president of the is VMAs Board of Directors Dr. Carlson Hello. Hi, zoic so good to be back with you and our listeners. I'm excited to discuss today's topic episode something unique to Illinois. Yeah, not only is it very intriguing, but interestingly, our guest today is my former veterinarian when I lived in Decatur, Illinois, kind of a small world, right. Isn't that right? How funny the way our lives crossed paths. Well, this is a nice reading you for your joy. Absolutely. Beyond being an outstanding venery practitioner. Dr. Larry Baker is a veterinary pioneer in central Illinois. Beyond his state of the art Veterinary Clinic indicator. He has built a regionally renowned Animal Hospital comprised of three buildings, offering services not typically found in our veterinary practices. North Gate Pet Clinic features all the medical services you would expect from a small animal veterinary practice true, but it also features veterinary dentistry services for all kinds of animals. Dr. Baker is a board certified veterinary dentist. How about that? Essentially, there are about 200 of these folks in the United States. Dr. Baker's dentistry practice also offers dental training seminars and labs for students and veterinarians, from which to learn and grow in a dedicated training facility. On the fun side of the operation is a bakery that makes all kinds of delicious treats for clients pets. But what's super intriguing about Dr. Baker and his team is they offer a clinical trial program for pharmaceutical research for both dogs and cats that pet owners can voluntarily sign up for in exchange for medical services and treatment for their beloved pets. Very interesting and something you don't see everyday. Right, Dr. Carlson? Absolutely, indeed. And this clinical trial program has a dedicated facility with its own veterinarian running the trial procedures with Dr. Baker's oversight. So let's allow Dr. Baker to tell us about this clinical trial program, how it came to be, what to research and how clients can get their furry friends involved. Welcome, Dr. Baker. Dr. Carlson, thank you for the kind introduction. That was very nice of you. Joy, I think I'd enjoy talking about clinical trials, because I don't have a chance to do that very often. And we have a I think we have probably the only building building in the United States that's private, dedicated to clinical trials. We have three buildings and what I'm this used to be dedicated to the Humane Society, and they needed a larger place. And so we turned it into clinical trials. So that's what we do here in the building. And that's all we do there. And I enjoy it. That is so interesting. Can you share with us any of the pharma companies in which you've engaged at your clinical trial facility, I see that you offer a variety of options. Actually, do we have trials from all almost all of the major pharmaceutical companies is even some private trials. I remember, especially an interesting private trial was from a retired physician who wanted to use capsulation. And he used capsulation into joints, because the nerves get I can I can turn that around get used to capsulation. So he thought if the nerves in the tongue is katholischen, which is why many people that like spicy foods can eat hotter and hotter foods that might work in the joints too. That was one trial that didn't go very far. But it was fun to do an interesting so it was just happy to be an instrument trial. But most of the trials are from major pharmaceutical companies. And often they have companies that work for them that promote and provide the clinical trials through us. I see that you have several that involve the osteoarthritis and the senior pets. We do been something very interesting to me the monoclonal antibodies, it as we have, there are more and more studies involving monoclonal antibodies in humans as well. I'm just reading about that this morning. But actually, all this started with a, if I could go back to 2014, we weren't even doing any osteoarthritis trials, then we were doing Exia products on the market called Derek Cox. And then I'm sure you're familiar with, and that need for that asked me to, if I'm used to doing. They didn't use the word clinical trial, because at that time, I don't think there are many clinical trials. They asked me if I would check and see with them if if Dr. Cox it was effective for dental pain? And I said, Sure, how do I do that. So they just kind of told me how to do it. And it's a, it wasn't nearly as complicated as it is now. But we did that and found out that the animals that we provided the terracotta to, didn't show the signs of clinical pain that other animals without it did. And I didn't even really know how to recognize all the signs of pain and animals. So I had to do a little research with education, found out a lot of things about animals and how they can show pain, other than just yelping or barking or screaming or running away, you know. And so, as a result of that trial, I actually got to speak pretty much all the United States. And I think probably our trials got out there and in the government, one of the government websites, and I started getting calls. And so that's what started our CO clinical trial program back in 2014. And the osteoarthritis trials. Now we've done both dogs and cats, and we've had requests to do quite a few. So we can only do one at a time. We don't want to impose upon one company, when we're doing clinical trials for osteoarthritis, where another company asked us to do that. So we separate those trials, we've got quite a few of them going on different times. How do you staff this operation? How many team members do you employ? And who's responsible for specific duties? That's a good question. I'm the Principal Investigator. So I tried to look over everything. But I also hired a veterinarian, that just actually that's what he does is the trials themselves. And we have a coordinator, Tory, who takes all the calls from various companies, lets him know if we be interested in or not, and often asked me if we're interested, for example, anything dentistry, I'd be interested in something like maybe cardiac trials, I wouldn't be because we may not see enough cases there. But Tory takes care of all that lets me know. And then if I'm interested, we tell the company and they send us a protocol, and we sign the protocol. And then they normally send a person to us, or even sometimes by a zoom call. That explains what they want us to do. If we can do that, then we we sign up for it. They tell us the type of computer program they want to use. And because there's a couple companies out there that basically does computer programs for clinical trials. And then we sign up and we have, we have our assistants that generally do a lot of the paperwork and the pharmaceutical handling and reports back to the company. It's actually quite an involved process compared to what it used to be it's very similar to human trials. And we'll be right back after this. Consider your ISVMA your one stop shop for all of this CE you need to renew your Illinois license, whether you're a veterinarian or a CVT. From veterinary medicine to practice management to technician tracks, and your careers ongoing development. Your ISVMA has compiled courses from its annual convention and from collaborative veterinary educational providers that allows you to earn practical CE for licensed renewal. You can also sign up for mandated courses required by the state of Illinois for you and your staff, including sexual harassment prevention, training, and opioid management training. So let's talk about affordability. Your ISVMA provides all of these courses at incredible cost savings to you. It even provides value added courses in collaboration with veterinary related professional organizations offered at a great discount, giving you more variety than ever before, leverage your membership by taking advantage of these timely and relevant courses at an incredible value. Visit the ISV AMA's websites@www.isvma.org and click on the ISVMA drop down menu at the top of the page. Then click on is VMA event registration to read about all the courses available to you today. And now back to veterinary today with your host Dr. Joanne Carl's To and special guest, Dr. Larry Baker with Northgate pet clinic. So how do the clients or the client components of these clinical trial programs work? Can you please share with us how the pet owners sign up their dog or cat? And what kinds of concerns do they express about enrolling their pet into the trials? I'm sure there's lots of questions. Sure. Well, for example, let's just pick a trial like let's say a fleas in cats, we've done clinical trials, using a drug for fleas and cats, and you for to kill fleas and cats. And so what we normally do is, in that case, I would call the groomers in our area, all the groomers and say, Hey, if you come across a cat, with fleas, if you want to, don't treat it, send it to us, we'll, we'll pay you a stipend for sending it to us. We'll treat the pet for free. And we get some clinical results that can help other pets as well. That's one example. Other things like, let's say, a nerve block for post operative pain in cats, we might ask anyone coming in, that's going to have surgery done on their cats if they'd like to be involved in the clinical trial. And until and they always have questions like, Is this is this dangerous is you know, and boy, I don't remember over the years, I don't remember, one problem, real problem with the clinical trial, causing a serious injury or death of a pet ever. Now, the other thing to keep in mind is even though we do that, about 9070 to 90% of the clinical trials, fail to show a pharmacy pharmaceutical, that's better than the one we already have, for example, still, it's interesting. And often in our office, often we use a drug that's well known, for example, for pain, as a counterpart to drug we're using as an investigate drug. And so that's, that's how we pretty much handle that. I also, we can go through our records for, for example, let's say we've got they want to do a cat osteoarthritis study, we simply go through our records, look at all the cats that have had trouble that we might think have osteoarthritis, call the owner, say, Hey, if you want to get into clinical trial, we can do that. It doesn't cost you anything. You can perhaps even get paid for it, we'll provide the drugs, we'll do a CBC complete blood count some bloodwork, your analysis, good exams, and we might have to do at the beginning of the trial, in during the trial itself at the end of the trial, perhaps even later, because some of these trials may last for two weeks. And some trials may last for years. So there's all depends on the trial that we're doing and and what kind of trial it is. So clearly, the benefits for the pet owner is perhaps preliminary lab work, and also then promising outcomes as far as the osteoarthritis. So I know that I've been thrilled with the Solensia for the cage, because there's very few pain options for osteoarthritis in cats. Yes. And you know, what's interesting is, I had to look back and see, because some of these trials, the drug we're using might be labeled B 23. You know, we don't know what that is. And then if it gets on the market, we often know it. And what's nice, is some of these trials do have a placebo. So maybe we'll be using the drug, and two out of three cats, and a placebo and one out of three. So a lot of times we depend have to depend upon the owner, the owners diary, they keep every day on what the pit is doing or not doing. And so generally these pharmaceutical companies are really good about this sort of thing, if it looks like to them that the new investigative drug is working. And the placebo has not been they will often provide at the end of the trial, the investigating drug to the people that had the placebo. And normally that people get paid by simply medic medications for mass or office costs or mass or whatever in the future, whatever it's worth. And it depends. It used to get paid pretty well. And the cvcs the profiles and analysis can easily add up to three or$400 for for a client that they wouldn't would be paying otherwise. So you know, what have you learned from conducting these trials as to why it has been important for Animal Health Care? Sounds like you've had some very positive outcomes. But what are some of the challenges you face Dr. Baker? I think Maybe the biggest challenge sometimes is ascertaining whether the patient is better or not that clients may be better at that. And some of the trials are difficult in terms of the client must have a computer must check in every day, they must be some of the trials, that computer has to be quiet has to be computer savvy. And if they're not, we can't put him in the trial. On the other hand, there are pets that can't get into trials. Because the been on a drug recently, within the last week, within the last month, and sometimes there are only a limited number of pets we can put into trials. And so for example, we we couldn't put a pin in a clinical trial that's been on an anti arthritic drug during the past month. So that's probably the biggest thing. It seems like it's not a problem. I'm, I'm kind of excited about the clinical trials. So it's not a problem for me to talk to a client about it. And most of the clients I've talked with, are, are interested in and they, you know, have some clients? Well, I said, you know, you're an hour and a half away, you probably don't want to come for this. Oh, yeah, we'd like to do it. So we have quite a few clients interested whether they're old or are not local? Well, obviously, these medical trials are a unique opportunity in central Illinois. But how unique is this operation that you have? Well, you know, I've had several veterinarians call me and they've heard that I do clinical trials, clinical trials, and they are interested in him. So I give him the company's name, and name and phone number. And they call and I don't know, anyone is taken advantage of that yet. I think it's because it's pretty involved in terms of keeping track of the patient, of doing exactly the way the pharmaceutical company wants it done. We don't cut any corners, everything if it's not, if it's not written, it's not done, you know. So it's not, it's difficult, and you can't exactly work a clinical trial, in your, with your regular appointments with our, we have these we do clinical trials all day long in this building, that makes it a lot easier. But if you're a veterinarian, and you want to do clinical trials, you've really got to dedicate yourself to doing it and making sure you do the accurate record keeping and have employees who can assist with it. I can tell by your enthusiasm that you really enjoy facilitating this program. I do I do. i i And I can say I've done it since 2014. And it's really nice to see, sometimes the human counterpart counterparts to this, I've seen. So when I read in, I think the New England Journal of Medicine too, as well as the JAMA, and ISVMA. Any reports and so when I read any of these, I always kind of compare him to see what trials in humans are compared to trials in pets, and oftentimes every Safar especially some of the Browse involving genetics, you know, 10 years and running. So what is the future of this program? Dr. Baker? Well, we don't tend to stop I like doing it. And he could, we just have to turn down some trials, because we don't have the time to do it. So I think you know, I worked our pay on keeping doing as long as we can. This has been really fun talking about this. And I have to say I'm always amazed at the different facets of Veterinary Medicine and the things that we we can do and we participate in and I'm just thrilled. So for clients that might be listening, how can they find out more about your clinical trials at your facility, and our fellow veterinary colleagues? How do they find out more about these trials? Dr. Baker, I have no problem with him calling me directly at my at Northgate Pet Clinic indicator and I have no problem with them calling on my cell phone 217-520-4653 I'd be glad to tell them how they could do clinical trials and many I'm certainly could be interested in it. You know, I know that our our teacher and mentor dr. Irwin small is up there clapping right now and haven't saying go align I veterinarians. Dr. Spa was one of my favorite instructors. And I spent quite a bit of time with him and really enjoyed his teaching. He was good. Well, he was he was the best. I'm sure he's very proud of you. So thank you for joining us today was nice to meet you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Really appreciate to being able to discuss our clinical trials. Thank you, doctor, speaker and Carlson for yet another insightful view into the veterinary medical profession here in Illinois. And thanks to our listeners for tuning into this episode. Join us again and check out our previous podcast episodes there Available at veterinary today podcast homepage or wherever you download your favorite podcasts on Shelley McLaughlin thanks again for joining us