Lorraine Shelton and I were two of many attendees at the Feline Genetics Extravaganza held July 19 and 20 at UC Davis. Lorraine posted her notes and observations on the CFA list (and they are posted below, with my additions included in italics).

Incredible progress has been made in the field of feline genetics in the past two years! And more exciting things are to come.

The meeting began with a small, private session to brainstorm about potential projects to explore genetic susceptibility of cats to FIP. To quote Dr. Pedersen, one of the world's foremost experts in feline virology: "I was researching a feline lentivirus (FeLV) when AIDS hit and suddenly everyone was interested in my work. Now, after years of research in a feline coronavirus, suddenly SARS hits and everyone is interested in THAT research."

I didn't attend this part of the session. However, results presented at the meeting were presented during the seminar. One interesting discussion was that there are fewer cases of the wet form of FIP being seen, and more cases of the dry form of FIP. What does this mean? It seems that the wet form shows in cats with no immunity. The dry form appears in cats with partial immunity. Cats with strong immunity don't have FIP. So the fact that fewer wet forms and more dry indicates that more cats have at least partial immunity to the mutation in feline enteric coronavirus that causes FIP.

There was discussion about the potential genetic markers/alleles that could be targeted for study for susceptibility. Because of SARS, there is more money available for coronavirus studies, so the genetics lab needs your help (and your vets!). When you have a kitten with FIP (verified through testing with blood, abdominal fluid, etc., not just titer), the researchers would like the kitten (alive is possible, but if not, immediately after death - have your vet call for details on delivering the body to the lab), and blood samples, fecal samples, etc. of siblings, parents, etc.

So just when Dr. Pedersen was entertaining thoughts of retiring... something that must NEVER be allowed to happen!... huge amounts of potential funding for FIP research is being made available. The task is finding the best way to exploit that funding for the betterment of our cats!

There are some promising hints of where we can start looking. So I expect some amazing improvements in our understanding of FIP in the next decade.

Dr. Leslie Lyon introduced the Extravaganza with a brief introduction of the motivation for holding the seminar. Her comments included:

Meanwhile, the move of Dr. Lyon's research to UC Davis has resulted in her acquiring an important resource: hard-working, dedicated undergraduate and graduate students searching to answer genetic questions that remain unanswered in the cat fancy. This impressive group of young people has already given us some great tools, with more to follow. Their research, as well as that of other scientists in the field, were presented.

(Leslie, as an assistant professor at UCDavis is required to do teaching, research and publishing. As part of her teaching, she has undergraduates do the research that may be, at first, considered fairly straight forward. These projects usually don't take too long and don't require much funding. She also has students who are working for their masters who are looking for projects that take at least 2 years. These require funding, but may not be funded enough to provide the master's student any kind of living expenses. There are also Ph.D. students with fully funded projects (in the $50,000 range) that can take around 5 years to complete. These are the researchers who presented many of the project descriptions listed below.)

Specifically: (Note: these are not listed in the order in which they appeared in the seminar.)

Dr. Susan Little presented early results from her breed specific reproductive data collection projects. Definitely seeing differences between the breeds on birth weights, congential defects, dystocia rates, etc. The types of information that Dr. Susan is tracking is information that currently is mostly based on Persians and Siamese. The data is also old - it predates vaccines, blood types, etc. so it is possible the data on stillbirths, congenital defects and mortality rates may be skewed by those factors. Here are some of the numbers she presented:

If you have the problem show up, Dr. Susan would like pictures and x-rays [especially x-rays] of the limbs at birth and as they age.

It was great seeing quite a few Fanciershealth List members, including our own Dr. Susan, at this meeting. For the rest of you... you missed a GREAT opportunity for learning more about our cats and letting the research community learn more about us. They are considering making this an annual event. I suggested that Leslie consider holding one at the CFA Annual meeting in Reno, June 2006. Jean Grimm (Regional Director and Annual Coordinator) thinks it is a great idea, as do several other people I mentioned it to. So we can keep our fingers crossed!

For many of these projects, more cats are needed. Bucal swabs are needed of cats of the various colors/patterns discussed above, along with detailed information (and pedigrees, too, if possible) about the cat. If you would like to participate, contact Dr. Lyons at UCDavis (felinegenome@UCDavis.edu).

See YOU next year!!

--Lorraine