Morris Animal Foundation - Achievement in Science or Technology

Company:Morris Animal Foundation, Denver, CO
Company Description: Morris Animal Foundation bridges science and resources to advance the health of animals and is the largest nonprofit foundation in the world dedicated to funding studies to improve and protect the health of companion animals and wildlife. Since 1948, we have invested $142 million globally in 2,780+ studies affecting the health of more than 22,000 species.
Nomination Category: Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in Science or Technology

Nomination Title: Morris Animal Foundation Advances The Health of Companion Animals and Wildlife

Morris Animal Foundation is one of the world's largest nonprofit organizations focused on improving the health and well-being of companion animals and wildlife. Founded in 1948, the Foundation uses rigorous scientific review processes to approve and fund more than 2,800 studies to date aimed at improving health and welfare and saving lives, including highly endangered species.

The Foundation was established by Dr. Mark Morris Sr. to address the need for research that advanced veterinary medicine. Early studies focused on nutrition and infectious disease in dogs and cats and have expanded to include horses and wildlife.

Researchers who want to advance the health of companion animals and wildlife have had few options for funding, even internationally - Morris Animal Foundation fills that gap. The Foundation has funded research leading to breakthroughs in cancer treatment, new vaccines for devastating illnesses such as parvovirus, advanced diagnostic tools, surgical innovations, and improved rehabilitation. We also fund the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, the first large longitudinal cohort study of dogs in the world which has now been running for 10 years, with the aim of understanding risk factors for cancer and other diseases and is modelled on similar studies of large groups of people.

Following the establishment of a $1MM fund for research on the health of wild animals impacted by the Australian Wildfires in 2019-2020, CSO Janet Patterson-Kane brought researchers together to address questions in a collaborative effort, including several indicators, impacts of antibiotics on long-term health, how to manage reintroductions into devastated ecosystems, and development of best practice guidelines to support the inevitable future fire response. With this support, the Foundation is making significant contributions to the scientific evidence base for provision of optimal triage, rehabilitation and release of marsupials including the iconic koala, that are submitted to veterinary hospitals and rescue organizations. This type of initiative is important as wildfires globally threaten more animals, and in fact, entire species.

The Foundation also launched Data Commons, giving researchers outside the Foundation access to the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study database, increasing opportunities to maximize scientific impact of the Study and accelerate studies using both data and samples to improve the health of all dogs. Janet was instrumental in securing $1MM in funding to genotype all 3,000+ enrolled dogs and deep sequence cancer samples, as a major contribution to an enormous dataset to facilitate finding correlations between epigenetics, genetics, environmental exposures, and other factors impacting long-term health, particularly the occurrence of cancer in dogs.

The Foundation is expanding partnerships nationally and internationally that will use this data, and stored data from the previous 10 years, to advance everything including understanding of age-related disease to the role of the microbiome to genetic risk factors.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials

For the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, we have included links to our 2020 and 2019 Golden Retriever Lifetime Study Reports which offer insights into what has happened in the last 2 years and lists some of the publications, new partnerships and new projects undertaken as a greater part of the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. Also included is a link to the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study web page.

For the Australian Wildlife Fund, we have inlcuded links to press releases along with a video news release giving a deeper understanding of our motivation to act quickly.

Our 2019 and 2020 Annual Reports are also attached as links, highlighting the outcomes of both of these efforts. For the Australian Wildlife Fund, the 2020 Annual Report also highlights the rationale and need for its establishment. As these studies are relatively new, outcomes will be included in our 2021 Annual Report due for release in December 2021.

In Australia and globally, little research has been conducted on best practices to rescue, rehabilitate, and release animals impacted by devastating wildfires. In Australia alone, 3 billion animals were affected or killed in 2019-2020. While many rushed to the immediate rescue, Morris Animal Foundation saw two other critical needs to address: developing best practice care in the medium to long-term for animals stricken with fire-related injuries; and how to reintroduce recovered animals to the wild to ensure the best chance at survival, particularly when so much habitat was destroyed.

Janet ensured the Foundation was able to respond quickly to the tragedy, quickly open a Request for Proposals, organize a scientific review committee and fund researchers focused in these areas.

The Foundation funded five studies through its newly established Australian Wildlife Fund to address antibiotic use, rehabilitation guidelines, optimizing marsupial outcomes, maximizing koala survival, and understanding survival indicators.

For the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, expanding the scope of the study to include genotyping and genomic sequencing opens a rich resource for data mining not available anywhere else in the field of canine health. As the Study (with a price tag of $32MM) has progressed to the 10-year mark, outside researchers can now access stored biological samples for comparisons or look at when biomarkers appear relative to disease diagnosis, all correlated to the dog's age, home environment, diet, medical history and more. The possibilities are almost endless of what we can learn from this dataset and studies are beginning to be published.