FIP Episode 3 - Interview with the “Crazy Cat Vet” Shaping the Future of FIP Treatment
Join us for an in-depth conversation with Dr. Petra Cerna, a leading figure in feline medicine, as she discusses her latest research endeavors and clinical trials aimed at combating Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP). From her extensive collaborations with colleagues worldwide to her commitment to educating pet owners and breeders, Dr. Cerna shares valuable insights into the challenges and triumphs of tackling this complex disease. Discover the importance of research, the role of clinical trials, and the promising future of feline healthcare.
What You’ll Learn:
Insights into the previously fatal disease Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP)
Dr. Petra Cerna's groundbreaking research on FIP involving 61 cats
Global collaboration and the significance of sharing samples in feline research
Distinction between retrospective and prospective clinical studies
Monitoring and managing side effects of new antiviral medications for FIP
Understanding the different forms of FIP: effusive, dry, and ocular
Ways to support FIP research through donations and participation in clinical trials
Importance of feline behavioral understanding for cat owners and breeders
Dr. Cerna's passion for feline medicine and her work starting Crazy Cat Vet
Insights into the challenges and future prospects of combating FIP
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"We can really get about 80 percent success... with these new antiviral medications for these cats." - Dr. Petra Cerna
"I can only help the cats that I'm seeing, but you're helping all the cats that you can't even see." - Dr. Tyler Sugerman-McGiffin
Resources From This Episode:
Dr. Cerna's Instagram
Crazy Cat Vet Website
Dr. Cerna's FIP Clinical Trial at CSU
EveryCat Foundation
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Read The Transcript:
Dr. Sugerman: [00:00:00] Hey, listener. Welcome to Vetsplanation. The podcast that helps explain to you, the pet parent, how to keep your pet happy, healthy, and safe. I am your host, Dr. Sugerman. And did you know that there's research being performed that is specifically for cats?
Dr. Sugerman: They have turned a fatal disease into a curable one and are working on more ways to help extend our cat's lives every day. Today we're going to be talking to the Crazy Cat Vet, who is one of the researchers and one of our heroes trying to help do just that. Real quick, if you do like what we do, please make sure that you subscribe and give us a five star rating.
Dr. Sugerman: Let's jump into our interview now.
Dr. Sugerman: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Vetsplanation. I am your emergency veterinarian and host, Dr. Sugerman. I'm so excited today. So we have our third episode in our FIP Chronicles here. And we're going to be talking to Dr. Cerna today. She has been amazing, just so amazing, helping our cats who have FIP.
Dr. Sugerman: So thank you so much for coming on, [00:01:00] Dr. Cerna.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Thank you so much for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to talk about cats for me.
Dr. Sugerman: You do love cats. I have learned that about you so far.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I have six at home.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's, that's a lot of cats. Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: You could probably call me a crazy cat lady.
Dr. Sugerman: So tell me about your background.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, so I actually originally come from Czech Republic, which is a small country in central Europe and have always been in love with cats. Most of my childhood, despite my parents really trying hard for me to find a different profession.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I actually have a law degree because...
Dr. Sugerman: Oh my gosh! How funny.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Really against me going to becoming a vet.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I went I got myself a bachelor from law, and then I behind everybody's back at home, applied to vet school, which somehow I don't know how still I got in.
Dr. Sugerman: It's amazing all the different backgrounds that people have. [00:02:00]
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, I know. I know. And then, then I think my parents from when I was about 14 and I started being like very crazy about cats and breeding cats and going to cat shows every weekend.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I think when I then told them i'm quitting law school or actually didn't quit I got my degree and then I got my master's on distance studies, too. But I think they realized that there was like no way I was ever like not gonna be a vet.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah. You're like, I did this for you guys and now I'm going to go do what I want to go do.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Exactly.
Dr. Petra Cerna: But I actually went to vet school because I wanted to be a feline vet or a cat vet because I thought I was just like, paying all this money to my vet for those vaccines and spays of my kittens. And I just thought, I could do it cheaper myself, which obviously proved very wrong.
Dr. Petra Cerna: See how much my friends from law school make now, and how much I make. So that's a very wrong ... but I absolutely love my job. I would [00:03:00] not change it for a second. And I am so glad I proved most of my teachers in vet school wrong because they kept telling me I cannot be a cat vet.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Everybody's like, Oh no, I have a friend in, in vet school.
Dr. Sugerman: She was like, I'm just going to do puppies and kittens. And we're all like, you cannot do that. But she is an emergency vet now, just saying, but still.
Dr. Petra Cerna: There are a lot of kittens and puppies.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes, exactly.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And then last year with my kitten, when she was lame and I was sure we have a broken bone, but it was just a muscle, like a pulled muscle.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh, good. Good.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, but yeah, so that's how I started with vet school. And then I left to Scotland and spent two years in Scotland after my vet school where I did my rotating and then my specialty internal medicine internship with actually very famous professor Gunn-Moore. She is probably the ultimate level of a feline veterinarian and she [00:04:00] was my mentor and I think I owe her probably everything I have now with my career.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So...
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: Very cool. And then how did you get into research then?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. So I actually came to Colorado and met Dr. Lappin, my other amazing mentor here at CSU, who was a friend of Professor Gunn-Moore. And when I came, I was supposed to just do my three year internal medicine residency at Colorado State University.
Dr. Petra Cerna: But he knew back from UK because he heard some stories about me and so he knew I was very much into research because I think with the research and I love doing clinics and helping cats on clinics, but with research, I think the impact that I have on so many more cats in that I can help is just what has fascinated me about veterinary medicine and how much I can change lives of so many cats.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Because even though, for example, now I'm doing this clinical trial over, we have 61 cats, which you would think it's a lot of [00:05:00] cats, but I really believe we are actually going to save, hundreds, if not thousands of cats showing people what these drugs can do.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, you're right.
Dr. Sugerman: You are helping so many more cats. So it's we can, as me as an individual doing ER, I can only help the cats that I'm seeing, but you're helping all the cats that you can't even see. Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And that's probably what I love about research.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay, tell me a little bit about research in general.
Dr. Sugerman: Like, what does it involve?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, I think that's a great question because I think if I tell somebody, Oh, I'm doing all this research, I think people always imagine I'm doing all these crazy experiments or something like that, but there are actually a lot of, a lot of roles behind doing research. So you cannot just wake up one day and say, Oh my God, I'm going to go and give all these drugs to these cats and see what happens.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So we actually usually start with healthy cat research. So sometimes we have to see, or even before then, most of the times we would start with [00:06:00] some in vitro work. What it means is that we take, for example, these cells in laboratory and we infect them with a feline coronavirus, for example, and then try to protect them from the coronavirus with these drugs that we would use in, in the cats.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I actually started with this clinical trial that we are doing now, we actually started doing some bench work or laboratory work a couple of years ago to, to get where we are. So it's definitely, not a short process. It usually takes years if you want to do research right.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So we started when I came to Colorado in about 2021, I came 2020, but it was COVID the first year, things were not great. So
Dr. Petra Cerna: After that, we started focusing on some lab research and then moved into doing some healthy cat research and making sure the drugs we want to use are safe to use in cats and [00:07:00] it got us to three and a half years later into starting a clinical trial for feline infectious peritonitis.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, it is amazing.
Dr. Sugerman: I don't think people realize like how early you have to start this and how long that process is to be able to do all of that research.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Absolutely. Plus there is all this paperwork because there are review boards that actually look at the study design I've designed and what I want to do. And they of course comment a lot on it because we wanna, one, make the study a success.
Dr. Petra Cerna: But also make sure that the clients and the patients that come through the hospital, of course, that are safe. And we have done everything as safely as possible for them.
Dr. Sugerman: And if I remember, the committee has not only. Like people who are veterinarians on it. It also has layman people as well, who have no, no animal experience.
Dr. Sugerman: Is that right?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Absolutely.
Dr. Sugerman: Veterinary experience at least. Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, absolutely. So we have a lot of people on the board who are researchers from different fields. So for example, immunologist, biologists, [00:08:00] virologist who are on the board as well, who are not veterinarians. And I think this is important because it is easier, I think, to explain the study to someone who has medical background, but a lot of my clients, they, they are not vets, right?
Dr. Petra Cerna: We need to make sure all the consent forms, all the paperwork and everything is written and explained in a simpler way. So even someone without medical background can understand what their pet would be going through.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely. Great. I've actually already gone a bit in depth on FIP, but can you just give me like a short synopsis on what FIP is?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Absolutely. So FIP, it's a viral disease in cats. It's caused by feline coronavirus. So actually, a little bit similar to the human coronavirus. They are not completely the same, but a little bit similar to the human coronavirus as well. And it's an RNA virus, same like human coronavirus.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And what that means is that we can actually use some of these human [00:09:00] drugs from COVID for feline infectious peritonitis. And the prevalence of feline coronavirus is actually very high. About 90 percent of cats would be infected with coronavirus, especially in multi cat households. I always say, I would bet you a hundred dollars that all my six cats are actually having coronavirus.
Dr. Sugerman: Probably. Even the stray cats that we think about, there's yeah, I'm sure that's a high number. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Absolutely. It's just so sad and most of these cats just never develop any clinical signs, but about 5 to 10 percent of these cats, unfortunately, have this other form of the virus, which is called the feline infectious peritonitis virus.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And in these cats, instead of it just being in their gastrointestinal tract, it goes and moves into their organs like liver, spleen, in their eyes, or neurological tissue. And these cats then become very sick. And this disease used to have a hundred percent mortality.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Almost [00:10:00] all cats would die within one month of being diagnosed.
Dr. Sugerman: That's, I feel like that's even such a high number being one month, I feel like most of mine died within days to weeks.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is very sad disease. And I have actually lost a lot of my own cats to FIP when I was a cat breeder. And that's what it got me very passionate about wanting to do more research on this disease.
Dr. Sugerman: So what does your research involve? What exactly are you researching?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Absolutely. So right now I am actually researching a lot of things, but right now my main thing is we are doing a clinical trial with a new drug called molnupiravir, which is an antiviral drug for patients with COVID. And we are giving it to cats who have natural, what we call naturally been infected.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So we are not infecting any cats with FIP. These are all cats that have become sick in their homes. And we are treating them twice a day with this antiviral medication. And on [00:11:00] top of it, actually, we are testing a new immune stimulant as well. So half of the cats on top of the antiviral received an immune stimulant and half of those cats received placebo.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Because we want to see if the immune stimulant together with the antiviral will give us a better chance of a success for treatment, but also help us decrease the relapses for the disease.
Dr. Sugerman: Wow. Okay. And so how exactly do those medications work then?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, absolutely. So the antiviral medication, actually with the one that we use is molnupiravir, it actually induces mutations to the virus.
Dr. Petra Cerna: To make the virus become lethal to itself. So it's actually very,
Dr. Sugerman: that's really cool.
Dr. Petra Cerna: It's very, very, very smart drug. Outsmart the virus,
Dr. Sugerman: Right?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. And the immune stimulant actually works on different pathways to try to help these cats stimulate their immune system to fight the [00:12:00] disease. Because we see, we have a lot of studies from the past and we know that the cats with FIP, usually have some immune system dysregulation and they are unable to fight the disease. So that's why in these cats, we are hoping when we treat them with the antiviral and immune stimulant, we will get better outcomes.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay. And how, how has this been going so far? Has it, have you seen really good results from it?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, actually, I'm very excited. So we definitely have been seeing a very good success. So I think I of course do not have the full statistics to share, but I think we are around about 80 percent success. So 100 percent lethal to about 80 percent chance of survival. So that is really, really good so far.
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, we have still a lot of patients enrolled in the current clinical trial and still not having finished yet the full therapy, so I cannot comment on the relapses, but from the cats that have relapsed [00:13:00] so far, it is under about 10 to 15%. So we're excited about that too.
Dr. Petra Cerna: But these are very preliminary data and we still have about 40 more patients to finish this.
Dr. Petra Cerna: A lot of them are finishing actually this month, which is very exciting. I just had one finished today, which it's always very sad because we've been seeing them from very sick cats to becoming big and healthy cats.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And we get used to the owners and of course, the patients, but I always tell them, I hope I'll see you never again.
Dr. Sugerman: Right? Exactly. I feel like most people say the same thing to me. I'm like, I'm the overnight vet. Nobody ever wants to see me again. So I get it. So tell me what does this mean for our FIP kitties?
Dr. Sugerman: I know one big problem is, is that these drugs are not FDA approved yet. So what does this mean now?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, absolutely. So it is unfortunate that a lot of these drugs are actually not FDA approved in the United States because Australia and United Kingdom actually have such a [00:14:00] huge variability in what they can treat these kitties with.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I'm quite hopeful that the molnupiravir can one day get a full FDA approval for humans, and then we could be prescribing an off label for our cats.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And there is actually another drug on the market right now that has full FDA approval now for COVID patients. And I think that's probably something we're going to be doing the next clinical trial on as well.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We are just finishing some again, in vitro, so the lab work for toxicities and everything, and I'm collaborating with other researchers from all over the country, but also abroad. And I'm hopeful that we might actually have a new drug that is already FDA approved for humans and we are hoping to do some clinical trials with that later this year.
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing. So do you, will you be opening that up to like people in the households again? So not, what did you call it? Naturally infected patients again?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, absolutely. [00:15:00] So once we get everything to a point where we think it is safe to, to start treating some cats with feline infectious peritonitis, then we'll definitely be opening a new clinical trial for that.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I am also hoping to do another trial where now we have been treating patients for 12 weeks of therapy, but we actually are seeing huge improvements by week 8 and we've had multiple patients where we had to remove some of the fluid they accumulate in their chest because of their respiratory distress or they struggle to breathe.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So we have removed fluid after just a couple of days of starting the therapy and we actually cannot find the virus anywhere anymore after just about three to four days of the antiviral therapy. So I actually don't think that we need to really treat these cats for 12 weeks. So my next, I think, step is going to be trying to see if we can shorten the therapy maybe to eight weeks because most of them in eight weeks have no laboratory abnormality.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So their blood work [00:16:00] is normal. They don't show any clinical signs, but I just need all these first study patients to finish so we can all analyze the data. My boss always says I'm like two steps ahead. And I love thinking ahead because now it breaks my heart that I have to say no to patients instead of enrolling them in the study, but unfortunately, sometimes it is what it is because we also don't have unlimited funds,
Dr. Sugerman: Right.
Dr. Petra Cerna: For these studies. So that's another challenging part.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, you had mentioned the funds real quick. So how, how do you get funding for this research?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, that's very great question. So in, I wish sometimes I was doing human medicine, but only when it comes to grant applications, because in human medicine, you can get hundreds to millions of dollars for studies.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We are usually looking at 35-50 thousand dollars if we are lucky when we are applying for grants from agencies. So that's why we are quite limited in how many patients we can treat.
Dr. Sugerman: And is that [00:17:00] the study, like the whole thing from embryos to where we are now?
Dr. Petra Cerna: No, this would be just, usually the cost of the studies are much, much higher, of course.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So you get some private donations, but especially this clinical trial actually has been funded by the EveryCat Foundation, which is a very, very wonderful foundation that supports mainly or only feline research actually. And particularly they have a special fund for feline infectious peritonitis.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh, that's amazing.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I'm not sure if I can say this here, but if anybody wants to donate to the FIP fund that they have I think it would be much appreciated because they really do amazing job and support a lot of therapies.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah. I, I hope people do. Cause especially like you said, this went from a hundred percent mortality to 80 percent at least being saved. I think that's so amazing.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. And actually one of the first studies with the GS antiviral have been funded by EveryCat Foundation as well. So I don't [00:18:00] think we would have the treatment we have these days if it wasn't for them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Do you..
Dr. Petra Cerna: I do not work for them.
Dr. Sugerman: Do you have other research that you're doing as well besides this?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yes absolutely. I definitely love focusing on other cat topics as well. So I'm actually now researching a newly, new kind of newly discovered disease called, and now everybody keeps breaking their tongues when I'm saying this. And they tried to repeat it, but it's called Feline Gastrointestinal Eosinophilic Sclerosing Fibroplasia.
Dr. Petra Cerna: See, even I struggled.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We definitely need to think about renaming it.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, or at least shorten it to like, you know, a couple letters or something.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Exactly. But it is actually a disease that occurs a lot in younger or middle aged cats and often in pedigree cats, actually, especially Ragdolls. And it occurs as like a gastrointestinal mass, or it can affect the [00:19:00] lymph nodes as well.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And most of these cats are misdiagnosed as having cancer.
Dr. Sugerman: I was going to say, that sounds like lymphoma to me. That's what would have been my first guess.
Dr. Petra Cerna: But your prognosis is a large cell lymphoma is much worse than with my Feline Eosinophilic Sclerosing Fibroplasia.
Dr. Sugerman: Probably.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And the problem is that a lot of these cats do really well.
Dr. Petra Cerna: They can live for years with this disease and usually die of some other disease when they get very old. But some of these actually have much shorter survival. So we are actually doing a study that we are collecting retrospectively. So from patients that have already been diagnosed, we are getting those histopathology kind of blocks and trying to see if we can find differences between the cats with the same disease.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And also look into possible infectious agents like parasites, bacteria, and so on that we could [00:20:00] see as an underlying trigger.
Dr. Sugerman: Wow. Yeah. I didn't, didn't even know this was a thing. That's pretty amazing that I've learned this today.
Dr. Petra Cerna: It is. It is quite underdiagnosed disease in cats, but I've just published a paper on 60 cats with this disease, which I would say is a big paper.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And I'm very proud of that. It was a lot of work and a lot of searching and of cases and collaboration because I, on this study, I've been collaborating with colleagues from UK, colleagues from Australia, colleagues from Japan actually, and United States. So we have patients from all over the world. And this new study actually is a even bigger collaboration.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I just try to be very passionate about what I do and bring so many people together to share samples, because this is definitely a less common disease. And if I just, you know, did this study on the cat's I diagnose, which is probably less than 10 to this point. My study would be much smaller and [00:21:00] we probably are gonna get about over a hundred samples for this new study.
Dr. Sugerman: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, that's even more than your FIP one. You said FIP was, 80, right? 81?
Dr. Petra Cerna: 61. But it's actually a prospective clinical trial. This is like a retrospective study. When we are getting things that have already been done, it's so much easier than actually doing everything from now to the future.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Prospective studies are definitely a lot of hard work. So we see those patients at the visit, what we call zero. So the initial visit, and then we rechecked every one of them every four weeks, because we, of course, very closely monitor how they're responding to therapy, but this is a new drug. So we are very, very closely also watching for any possible side effects from these medications as well.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And, monitoring their blood work, like white blood cells parameters, the liver enzymes and everything. So it is a lot of work. Imagine we see 60 patients on a monthly basis. So Yeah, definitely. [00:22:00] We've been busy.
Dr. Sugerman: And have you seen any side effects from it yet?
Dr. Petra Cerna: We have seen a couple initially when the patient started therapy, some of them develop hypersalivation or nausea.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So we've been treating that with some anti nausea medications. We've had very, very few cats that developed increase in liver enzymes. Usually it's very mild and it seems to not cause any clinical signs at all. And it usually goes away when the patient stopped the therapy. So we didn't have to stop it in so far a single patient for side effects.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So that's wonderful.
Dr. Sugerman: Good. Fantastic. It seems like this study is going so well so far.
Dr. Petra Cerna: You know, I don't want to jinx it.
Dr. Sugerman: I know. Right. I mean, I Did a little bit of research in undergrad and mine didn't go nearly as well. And mine was on flies. So
Dr. Petra Cerna: I've really been preparing for this study for three and a half years. So I would like to say that I did my very best so [00:23:00] everything would go well, but it's of course a clinical trial, so things might not always go great and we definitely lost some patients even trying everything. So it's still not a hundred percent, but I hope, I will not stop with my research until we get to a hundred percent survival.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Exactly. Real quick. I forgot to ask, is this for dry and wet FIP or just wet FIP?
Dr. Petra Cerna: So the part that has been funded by EveryCat Foundation is for effusive only, but we have opened it to other cats with a dry form as well. So about 30, a little bit over 30 cats are effusive and other 30 are dry neurological, and we actually have a lot of cats with ocular involvement surprisingly. I have never seen so many ocular FIP patients until now.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah,
Dr. Petra Cerna: I would say probably at least. 10 to 15 have ocular signs of the patient. So it's, it's a lot of them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, that is a [00:24:00] lot of them. I think I've only diagnosed one ever. So that is, that is quite a lot. Yeah,
Dr. Petra Cerna: I was, I was very surprised.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I don't know if we are seeing like a new strain of the virus or something new that affects the eyes a little bit more, or, we've, we've just, it's just a random thing, but we've definitely have seen. Quite a lot.
Dr. Sugerman: That's amazing. Also, is there anything that people can do to be more involved in the research you had mentioned about donating?
Dr. Sugerman: Is there anything else?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, absolutely. I think donations are really, really wonderful. Either, directly to us, but also like I mentioned, like EveryCat Foundation, they have amazing scientific board and people from, all the, all over the world can actually submit grants to them once or twice a year when they have this, what we call 'call for grants'.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So scientists or veterinarians from all over the world can submit their proposals and then these proposals go through a scientific review and then they assign who gets money at the end. So I [00:25:00] think this is one really, really great way. Other ways I think is also just, for some research like this, this is a clinical trial.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So if you actually do not have the patient that has the disease, you, of course, it's hard for you to participate, there are a lot of clinical trials where people need also like healthy control animals. So for example, when we are doing like research on patients with like cognitive dysfunctions, sometimes we need like older patients who are healthy and do not show any clinical signs.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So for example then, your dogs or your cats could be getting some, free annual blood work, free exam, and all of these things. I think clinical trials are definitely very helpful. Plus, on top of everything, you are definitely helping to advance medicine and helping to help other pets, of course.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And there are also a lot of places where they accept donations in, for [00:26:00] example, in once the patient's passes away for research as well for tissue collections and donations. So that's also very important. So I think there are a lot of ways people actually could get involved in research depending on, what and how much they feel comfortable with or what they would like to do.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And how, how can they look for these things or figure out how to get involved with them?
Dr. Petra Cerna: I would probably say best place would be depending on the state they live in would be to reaching out to the university because private practices can do sometimes research, but they are, of course, quite limited.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Usually, it's academic institutions, like universities that are the main places for research. So I would probably advise them to reach out to the university in their, in their state and see if they accept donations or if they are running currently some clinical trials they would like to be part of as well.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. I think I easily was able to Google your trial just looked up. I think it was like FIP trial, Colorado. And I was like easily found all [00:27:00] the information on how, on how to apply for being in the trial.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. And that was actually the great team at our, CSU, because I don't think I would have been ever able to put it on the website so people would find it.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We have a team that, they're not scientists, but they do this really important work as well, like making the website for the clinical trial and making sure when you Google FIP, this comes up because I'm pretty sure if I did it, I, it, you probably would have never found it.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. I would say I'm really good at being a doctor, but I'm not very good at making websites.
Dr. Sugerman: All right. Do you have anything else that you wanted to share with with our pet parents?
Dr. Petra Cerna: I don't know. I, I'd probably like to just maybe tell them that When it comes to FIP, if their cat ever gets diagnosed, I think, these days with the clinical trials, but there are other options as well for treatments.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I would definitely [00:28:00] try treating these kitties because I think, we can really get about 80 percent success. So I would just make sure they are aware that they are treatment options these days for their cats. And they don't just decide to euthanize them or, because we really have amazing success rates with these new antiviral medications for these cats.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And a lot of the times also people ask me and they panic a lot when one of their cats gets FIP, for example what do I do with the other cats? So most of the cases, FIP is actually not contagious between cat to cat, unlike the coronavirus, because, we all know the enteric coronavirus, every cat has it.
Dr. Petra Cerna: It's very contagious. It spreads very easily. And with this disease, the transmission from a cat to cat is rare saying that I, with cats, I have learned now at this point, and I'm not at all to just know that never say never.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
Dr. Petra Cerna: The one time you say it never [00:29:00] transmits like this, it will.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We actually have a big FIP outbreak in an island called Cyprus.
Dr. Sugerman: I talked about this. Yes. I was going to ask you about it too.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, which is in Mediterranean, and I actually have been there a couple of times. It's one of the most beautiful islands in the world.
Dr. Sugerman: They're called like Cat Island, essentially, right?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Exactly. They worship cats there. So it's my perfect, so I'm going to retire on that.
Dr. Sugerman: I know, I was like, you don't live there now? Why?
Dr. Petra Cerna: No, I know, once they get this outbreak under control, because now I don't want to move there with my cats. But once this gets under control, and I'm part of research group that is helping because actually my ex boss and mentor, Professor Gunn-Moore from University of Edinburgh is one of the main leaders on the team.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I've been helping in the background a little bit when I can. So there is a big outbreak and we actually think there is a new strain or new recombinant virus that potentially can cause transmission from a cat to a cat. Yeah, we are yet [00:30:00] to discover this in the United States. I actually had two suspicions for my cat to get transmission during my clinical trial.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So we actually had sequenced the virus and send it to Cornell University for sequencing because we collaborate with them a lot on that. And it is not the same virus. So we are at the moment still safe in the United States. But it seems to be that there might be cases outside of Cyprus also in Europe, so I think we need to be very careful about this, and I'm working very hard now setting up a new PCR, which is like a molecular diagnostics for this new strain of the recombinant virus here at CSU, so I'm hoping we will be able to test for it by the end of the year.
Dr. Sugerman: Very nice. Yeah, because that would just, I had talked about how that's just going to make the numbers skyrocket from, that, that very minimal five to 10 percent to who knows?
Dr. Petra Cerna: I know there's thousands of cases in a small island. So I don't even want to imagine what [00:31:00] impact it would have on a, on a big country.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Yeah. I was going to ask you what your favorite animal is. I'm assuming, I'm assuming it's cats. Am I right?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Exactly. I have no dogs. I always have to tell people I do not hate dogs. I like dogs. I am just such a crazy cat lady. And for me, it's just, it's, it's cats. I, at my age, still single and just have those cats.
Dr. Sugerman: Just have all the cats. Yeah. My, my kids are crazy cat people as well. We have three dogs and they do not like any of them. They very much if they're, if we walk into a house with a cat, they're immediately just on top of the cat.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Oh yeah. Yeah. I've always loved cats so much. And yeah, I think it's, Yeah, definitely hard finding a husband with the six cats. And me working all the time, but..
Dr. Sugerman: Right. According to my wife, so we have the three dogs, three cats, chickens, a leopard gecko. And she's always she already, she figured out the secret was just to marry a veterinarian. She's a nurse.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, [00:32:00] see.. I don't think that.. I tried that. And then I ended up always having arguments at home about my work.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, understandable. Yeah. Maybe somebody who doesn't deal with cats, like maybe like a horse person or something.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. Maybe, maybe. I'm not sure. I tried that too, actually. That didn't go very well. Yeah. No, just, yeah. Someone who very much loves cats. Yeah. Hopefully through that someday also me.
Dr. Sugerman: You also have another side business. Is that right?
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, I actually, I, I don't think I can call it a business. I don't really make money with it yet.
Dr. Sugerman: Same here. It's okay.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. I actually started this about last year, it's a company called Crazy Cat Vet. So I am just also very passionate about feline medicine education.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So I lecture a lot at conferences and for students. And I just would like to, spread the knowledge I have about cats and share it with other people so we can [00:33:00] improve feline medicine all over the world. Yes, so I started that. I'm looking into kind of focusing more on lectures, but also doing some potentially consultancy on complicated or difficult cat cases for other veterinarians as well in the future.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And we actually organized our first cat breeder conference last year. It was a success. So I think we're going to do one this year again.
Dr. Sugerman: Nice.
Dr. Petra Cerna: A lot of work. So
Dr. Sugerman: That's in Colorado, is that where you did it?
Dr. Petra Cerna: It was actually online.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We had breeders from United States, Europe, and all over kind of the world.
Dr. Petra Cerna: So it was very exciting and we had amazing speakers. It was all about, it was two days all about cats and yeah,
Dr. Sugerman: You must have been in heaven.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I was. I was. I was. Because I think, education of breeders, but also cat owners is very, very, very important. Because cats are very [00:34:00] special creatures and you really need to get to know them and understand their needs because, if you imagine how they were in the past, just running wild, catching mice all day, and now we expect them to be very happy indoor only cats.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Where they get dry food twice a day, and it's, it's not how cats were made. And so I think understanding cats as animals, where they came from and, just how hard sometimes it is for them to adapt to living inside our homes. It's very, very important.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And then we deal with, a lot of cats get relinquished or euthanized because they pee outside of their litter boxes.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And the cats usually do that because they're not happy with something. And we need to understand what is it that they are not happy about to try to, make them happier to live with us. Because I actually have six cats in my house, but I work very, very hard so my [00:35:00] cats can have a good life and a lot of space.
Dr. Petra Cerna: We have catios because we live by main street and, multiple litter boxes and my walls are full of scratching posts. I think it's really important to understand their nature and their behavior so we can prevent a lot of diseases.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And there's so many people who do dog training and just not a lot that do the cat behavioral things.
Dr. Sugerman: So I think that's pretty amazing, especially to bring a whole bunch of people together to be able to talk about those things as well.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And I think, you cannot train cats. My cats have trained me.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly.
Dr. Petra Cerna: There's no way you will train a cat but, it always comes with the respect and I have to say in.
Dr. Petra Cerna: I've been a vet student for six years and now vet for almost six and I have to say I've never, ever been bitten by a cat.
Dr. Sugerman: Wow. That's amazing.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And I know, I know. And I have been, even before I was a vet student, I was actually a cat judge and I'm a cat judge as well, international cat judge. So I'm [00:36:00] like the ultimate level.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, you are.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And I have to say I've been bitten once by a cat on a cat show and there was probably about, I would say almost 20 years ago, very long time. I was very young and never ever since. And it's because I really respect the cats and I never, made them do things they don't want to do.
Dr. Petra Cerna: And even our clinical trials patients now, you know, I've spent so much money, big part of the budget went for these different treats for the cats.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh, nice. .
Dr. Petra Cerna: So they can, so they can really be comfortable when they come to see us.
Dr. Sugerman: Good. That's amazing.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah. And I think you should cut me off because I could be here until tomorrow.
Dr. Sugerman: I know right!
Dr. Sugerman: All right.
Dr. Sugerman: Thank you, Dr. Cerna. I appreciate this so much for you coming on and just explaining all these things to us. You know. This is just such a different world from my emergency world, doing research and just all the work that you're doing to help save all these cats.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Thank you so much for [00:37:00] having me. I hope you're not regretting.
Dr. Sugerman: No, no, not at all. I'm so excited. I think we'll definitely have you on for more. I'm really excited to hear especially about all your crazy cat vet stuff.
Dr. Petra Cerna: Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me on. This has been a pleasure and I'm always happy to talk about cats. Thank you.
Dr. Sugerman: Thank you everybody.
Dr. Sugerman: As always make sure to keep your pet happy, healthy, and safe. Thanks guys.
Dr. Sugerman: I just wanted to give a special thanks to Dr. Cerna and her team for everything that they do for our cats.
Dr. Sugerman: Also to Tori and Renée for allowing us to follow Moaning Myrtle through her journey, to Shawn Hyberg for doing all the editing and for Kelly Dwyer for doing podcast production. Thank you guys. We'll see you next week.