“Using spontaneous animal disease models to improve clinical outcomes in man and man’s best friend,”, Dr. Karin Allenspach Jorn and Dr. Jon Mochel.

Allenspach received her veterinary degree from the University of Zurich. She did an internship in small animal emergency medicine and critical care at Tufts University and a residency in small animal internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. She was awarded a PhD in veterinary immunology from the University of Bern, Switzerland for her work on canine chronic enteropathies. She is currently employed as Professor of Comparative Medicine at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, and is a PI of the SMART Translational Medicine Lab at UGA, which focuses on the development and culture of adult stem stem-cell-derived organoids from various species. Karin is widely published and has a current H factor of 43. She has been internationally involved in several large-scale efforts to change governmental policies for veterinary medicine, for example by being a member of the ENOVAT group which is providing language for antibiotic use in dogs with diarrhea for all European countries. Furthermore, she has been a Board member of both the European and Comparative Gastroenterology Societies, as well as being president of the European Congress of Veterinary Internal Medicine for 12 years. Her latest efforts have resulted in the founding of a start-up company (3D Health Solutions, Inc.) with the goal of commercializing assays for drug screening based on organoid methods.

Mochel obtained his Veterinary Medical Degree from the National Veterinary School of Alfort (Paris, France). He completed his Doctorate studying Neurosciences in collaboration with the College de France and received the Silver Medal from Paris XII for his work. Dr. Mochel holds a MS in Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics and is a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology (ECVPT). He completed his Ph.D at Leiden University (Netherlands), with a focus on the mathematical modeling of the cardiovascular system for optimization of ACE inhibitors dosing schedules in patients with congestive heart failure. He is a founder of the Animal Health Modeling & Simulation Society which aims at promoting the dissemination of mathematical modeling in Veterinary Sciences. Dr. Mochel is a Professor of Systems Pharmacology in the Department of Pathology at the University of Georgia and a Fellow of the American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He is an ad hoc Study Section Reviewer for the US National Science Foundation, the UK Medical Research Council and the CNRS/INSERM ATIP-Avenir Program. He is currently the President of the European Association of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology and the recipient of the 2022 Research Award from the American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics. His research pertains to the analysis of (pre)clinical data obtained from spontaneous animal models of human diseases to bridge the knowledge gap between experimental models and patients. He has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications in select biomedical journals and is the co-founder of LifEngine Animal Health, a Y Combinator company developing gene editing solutions for canine oncology, and 3D Health Solutions, a platform for efficient drug screening in pharmaceutical research.