Join us for our monthly virtual presentation facilitated by experts in their field.

April 16, 2026

4:00 - 5:00 pm (Eastern)

TOPIC: Molecular markers of treatment response in dogs with IMHA and IMPA
Presenters: Dr. James Swann

This program has been approved, for one (1) hour of continuing education credit in jurisdictions that recognize RACE approval.

Immune-mediated polyarthritis (IMPA) and immune-mediated hemolytic anemia (IMHA) are important autoimmune diseases of dogs, which each cause severe morbidity. Both diseases are typically treated with glucocorticoids, but these drugs cause serious adverse effects, creating a need to try to individualize treatment for affected dogs. Here, we conducted extensive clinical and immunophenotyping of dogs with IMHA and IMPA, searching for markers that can be used to predict response to treatment and severity of glucocorticoid-related adverse effects. Our results reveal several novel molecular markers, including members of the NF-kB family in dogs with IMPA, that associate strongly with disease onset, and which might represent new markers of disease severity and/or potential therapeutic targets. In this seminar, I will outline our methodological approaches to identify and validate these markers, as well as discussing their potential importance in the clinic.

Dr. James Swann qualified as a veterinarian from the University of Cambridge in 2010 before completing his residency in small animal internal medicine at the Royal Veterinary College in London to become board-certified in 2016.  He then completed his doctoral studies at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford, investigating the impact of chronic inflammatory arthritis on hematopoiesis, and received his DPhil in 2020.  He is a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation fellow in the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative.  Dr. Swann is interested in whether pre-cancerous stem cells change their gene expression in response to inflammation, which might allow them to outcompete normal cells in the bone marrow. He is utilizing cutting-edge techniques such as CRISPR editing of blood stem cells to investigate the molecular pathways responsible for these biological changes. This project has the potential to identify molecular pathways activated by inflammation that might promote AML development, offering new targets for therapeutic interventions. 

Our monthly presentations are one hour long and cover a variety of topics we believe you will find interesting and educational. Also, all sessions are recorded and made available in our Resource Library for viewing on-demand by our members at a later time.