Jon P. Mochel and the newly hired faculty of the Precision One Health Initiative are ready to improve the health of both animals and humans. As the new director of this initiative in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Mochel will connect on-campus resources and partnerships to bridge the gap between human and veterinary medical research as part of a larger goal of “one health” integrating research across human, animal, and environmental health.
“The One Health paradigm is trying to, as we say, improve the health of man and man’s best friend at the same time,” Mochel says. That goal requires more than just looking at diseases that travel between species, such as influenza. It includes finding a cure for diseases that occur in multiple species. An example, Mochel says, is benazepril, a drug for congestive heart failure. While this drug was first developed for humans, it has now been used to treat similar disease in dogs. This crossover is one strength of looking across species, he says.
AI and machine learning can help accomplish this goal.
The human brain is not able to think of all the possible underlying pathways and all the ways you can actually interpret data in the first place. You need something that can take in a large amount of information and guide you toward, ‘This means something.’” — Jon P. Mochel, professor of systems pharmacology, College of Veterinary Medicine Research Cooperative
Medical research creates a lot of data, but there are limitations to how much traditional methods—and human minds—can process.
“The human brain is not able to think of all the possible underlying pathways and all the ways you can actually interpret data in the first place,” Mochel says. “You need something that can take in a large amount of information and guide you toward, ‘This means something.’”
Oftentimes, animal clinical trials utilize relatively small study populations, and that information informs decisions for larger populations. Through AI, however, the wealth of existing information is examined to answer specific questions across a variety of groups. It allows researchers to take a hypothesis, examine large amounts of data, and answer specific questions.
“One Health provides an opportunity to leverage data from a superior animal model to fix the challenges we face in human clinical drug development programs, while AI tools such as machine learning allow us to make the best use of the data we generate,” Mochel says.
Precision One Health is still in the early stages at UGA. But faculty are laying important foundations for future discoveries, and Mochel says the campus is full of collaborative opportunities to improve health.
“UGA has a significant capacity to tackle these questions because the university has invested a considerable amount of resources and hired several talented individuals over the past two years,” Mochel says. “That manpower and expertise is there, now the next step is making sure we can effectively translate our efforts from the lab to the bedside by closely collaborating with our clinician scientists at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital.”
