A Legacy Of Discovery, A Future Of Innovation

From early disease detection to genome engineering, VMBS researchers have spent more than a century solving the evolving challenges of animal and human health. 

More than a century ago, veterinary research at Texas A&M was driven by necessity — scientists worked closely with producers to respond to immediate threats that could devastate herds and livelihoods. 

In the early 1900s, as the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) was beginning to take shape, livestock health depended on observation and experience, and scientific tools were limited to what could be seen in the field or under a microscope. These challenges would shape the future of research at the VMBS. 

Today, that work looks very different — both in magnitude and in approach. 

VMBS researchers now use genome sequencing, gene editing, and advanced computational tools to solve problems at a scale and level of precision early scientists could not have imagined. Diseases are no longer studied in isolation but as part of complex systems that include hosts, pathogens, and environments. 

But while the tools have evolved, the mission has not; VMBS research remains grounded in service — advancing science to protect animal and human health. 

Yet over the college’s 110 years, while the evolution of technology has allowed VMBS researchers to make great strides in infectious disease research, genetics and genomics, reproductive biotechnology, and toxicology, challenges facing animals and people have only grown more complex. 

Infectious Diseases: A Constant Battle 

Beginning with the groundbreaking fight against Texas cattle fever by the VMBS’ first dean, Dr. Mark Francis, infectious disease research has long been both foundational to the college’s mission and shaped by the realities of a world where diseases move freely across borders, species, and environments. 

In the early days of veterinary research, efforts focused on identifying and controlling outbreaks — brucellosis, tick-borne diseases, and other threats that still impact both animal and human health. Progress was often slow, requiring years of collaboration between researchers, veterinarians, and government agencies to develop diagnostics, control strategies, treatments, and vaccines. 

For researchers like Dr. Garry Adams, that knowledge has driven decades of work at the VMBS, where scientists have studied how diseases emerge, spread, and persist across animal and human populations. 

It also reflects a broader truth that has shaped infectious disease research at the college: disease knows no geographic species or boundaries. Instead, its spread is influenced by a complex interplay of environmental, biological, and human factors that allow pathogens to mutate, adapt, and, sometimes, become more deadly. 

“Those interactions are constantly shifting, influenced by environmental conditions, host responses, and the ability of pathogens to adapt,” Adams said. “There’s no end; the microbes will win in the end — they’re too adaptable.” 

At the same time, that work laid the foundation for a more comprehensive understanding of disease that has become central to how infectious disease is studied today. 

Rather than viewing disease as a single cause-and-effect problem, researchers — recognizing the complexities of infectious disease spread — take advantage of advanced technology to shift their studies right along with the pathogens and even work to anticipate how diseases may spread, asking why outbreaks occur and what conditions allow them to spread. 

“That dynamic is constant, fluid, and flexible,” Adams said. 

And as that understanding evolved, so did the focus of research. 

This shift marked a turning point, expanding infectious disease research from reactive response to long-term, systems-based strategy, one that is evident in the work being conducted across the VMBS today. 

Research teams like the one at the VMBS’ Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach campus in Canyon, Texas, led by Dr. Paul Morley, are now examining how antimicrobial resistance develops and spreads, including studies that explore how factors such as diet, environment, and medical practices influence patterns in both animals and humans. 

Others, like Dr. Sarah Hamer and Dr. Meriam Saleh, are investigating vector-borne diseases, mapping vector populations, and studying how environmental conditions shape disease risk. 

In this context, human activity plays an important role in shaping disease outcomes. 

“Sometimes things we do as human beings unbalance the relationship between hosts and pathogens,” Adams said. 

Advances in technology are also transforming how researchers approach these challenges — tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and genetic sequencing are enabling scientists to analyze complex datasets, identify patterns, and anticipate emerging threats with greater accuracy than ever before. 

“With modern technology, there is the possibility that we might be able to make predictions much better than we used to,” Adams said. 

Even with these advances, infectious disease remains an evolving challenge. 

“We’ll never understand it all, but we can try,” Adams said. 

That pursuit — understanding the constantly shifting relationship between hosts, pathogens, and environments — continues to drive infectious disease research forward. 

Genetics & Genomics: From Foundations To Big Data 

Genetics and genomics research have played a central role in advancing how scientists understand health, disease, and biological systems, evolving from foundational genetic mapping efforts to data-driven gene analysis at a global scale. 

At the VMBS, that evolution is closely tied to the work of the late Dr. Jim Womack, who helped expand genomics into a major research discipline within the college, including helping bridge research across both companion animals and agricultural species. 

“Dr. Womack established genomics research at Texas A&M,” Dr. William Murphy said. “His work in cattle helped position the university as a leader in comparative genomics and strongly influenced the broader direction of genomics research in agriculture. 

“Dr. Womack’s leadership expanded the field of mammalian comparative genomics and made Texas A&M VMBS a national leader in this field, a position it continues to hold to this day,” Murphy said. 

During the early years of comparative genomics, research looked very different than it does today. 

“In the early days of comparative genomics, there were no genome sequences for cattle, dogs, or cats, just gene maps for humans and mice,” Murphy said. “This made the work to make maps for new species both labor-intensive and time-consuming; researchers spent years connecting those emerging maps across species, creating frameworks that could eventually be used to identify genes associated with disease and important traits.” 

Technological advancements, however, have dramatically transformed the field, fundamentally changing the scale and pace of genomics research. 

“The advent of next-generation sequencing has massively reduced the cost of sequencing and genome assembly,” Murphy said. “Hand in hand with that was the rapid development of computational tools for analyzing genomes.” 

Now, instead of spending years generating a single genome, researchers can sequence, assemble, and compare genomes across multiple species within months. 

“This empowers the imagination and innovation of individual investigators rather than restricting the field to large consortia of scientists,” Murphy said. 

Historically, VMBS researchers have played important roles in many early genome sequencing efforts. Building on Womack’s foundational work in cattle genomics, faculty members including Drs. Bhanu Chowdhary, Terje Raudsepp, James Derr, Paul Samollow, Loren Skow, and Murphy, himself, helped expand comparative genomics research across numerous species, contributing to major genome projects involving horses, alpacas, bison, opossums, cats, and others. These efforts also helped establish Texas A&M as a leader in comparative genomics. 

Building on those efforts and taking advantage of faster, cheaper, gene-sequencing tools, today, VMBS researchers like Murphy now use comparative genomics to better understand how species evolve, adapt, and develop disease. As a result, comparative genomics has become one of the field’s most powerful tools for studying health, evolution, and biological function across species. 

“Comparisons between distantly related species allow one to identify how mutations have shaped the history of individual genes and whole chromosomes,” Murphy said. 

These comparisons help researchers understand why certain species develop particular traits, resist diseases, or adapt to different environments — insights that can also improve understanding of human health and genetics. 

As sequencing technologies continue to improve, genomics research is also expanding into previously inaccessible areas. 

“The ability to study genomes of ‘weird’ species will be increasingly important for making big leaps in our understanding of basic biology and insights important for human and animal health,” Murphy said. 

Even with these advances, unanswered questions remain. 

“The more we discover about complete genomes today, the more questions they raise than answers they provide,” Murphy said. 

Reproductive Biotechnologies & Genome Engineering: Redefining Possibility 

Few areas better illustrate the rapid advancement of science than cloning and genome engineering. 

At the VMBS, this work has helped redefine what is possible in both animal and human health, building on decades of research aimed at understanding how cells can be manipulated, replicated, and, ultimately, improved. 

When Dr. Charles Long began his career, cloning research was still in its early stages, with scientists working to understand how embryonic cells could be used to produce identical offspring. 

“We were taking apart 32-cell embryos and using those blastomeres to make a new embryo,” Long said. 

By separating cells from early-stage embryos and using them to create genetically identical offspring, researchers were beginning to explore whether animal cells could be replicated and reprogrammed. 

That work demonstrated that multiple identical animals could be produced from a single embryo, marking an important step forward in the field. 

At the time, however, scientists believed that only early embryonic cells could return to a developmental state capable of producing an entirely new animal. As research progressed, that assumption began to shift. 

“We all had a feeling it could happen — that we’d eventually be able to take a fully developed cell and use it to create an entirely new animal,” Long said. 

The eventual success of cloning from adult somatic cells — most notably with Dolly the sheep — confirmed that those cells retained the genetic information needed to create an entirely new organism. That breakthrough fundamentally changed how researchers understood cell biology and opened new directions for research. 

At Texas A&M, scientists quickly built on that momentum, applying cloning techniques to a range of species and research questions. These efforts led to major milestones — VMBS teams led by the late Dr. Mark Westhusin and Dr. Duane Kraemer were the first to successfully clone a cat, CC, and a white-tailed deer, Dewey (named after Kraemer), demonstrating both the potential and complexity of cloning techniques. 

“We had a lot of fun figuring out how to do it,” Long said. “You can really fall in love with knowledge, learning, and innovation.” 

As the field matured, cloning became a foundation for more advanced approaches, including genome editing tools that allowed researchers to move beyond replication and begin making precise changes to DNA. 

“CRISPR changed everything,” Long said. “With these tools, scientists can now directly modify genetic material, expanding the scope of research far beyond what was possible with cloning alone.” 

This shift has enabled researchers to tackle a broader range of challenges, from improving livestock health and productivity to developing large-animal models that more accurately reflect human disease. At the VMBS, researchers including Drs. Long, Dana Gaddy, and Larry Suva have used cloning and genome engineering technologies to develop sheep models for studying conditions such as osteoporosis and bone regeneration, while researchers like Dr. Lindsay Dawson are applying these tools to better understand Down syndrome and age-related bone healing. 

Looking ahead, as the field continues to evolve, the focus continues to move toward application. 

“I’d really like to focus on how we can use genome engineering technologies to make animals stronger and potentially even resistant to exotic animal diseases,” Long said. “If we can do that successfully, it could dramatically change how we manage disease outbreaks in livestock.” 

Toxicology: From Risk Identification To Targeted Solutions 

The field of toxicology has evolved alongside advances in chemistry, biology, and medicine, expanding from identifying harmful substances to understanding how those substances interact with biological systems. 

At the VMBS, this work has helped shape environmental health research and the development of new therapeutic approaches, reflecting a broader shift in how scientists study and apply toxicology. 

Early work in the field focused on identifying hazardous compounds and documenting their effects. Researchers examined how chemicals moved through the environment and the body, laying the groundwork for understanding risk but often stopping short of explaining those effects at a biological level. 

As a result, much of early toxicology identified what was harmful without fully understanding why. 

For Dr. Stephen Safe, a longtime researcher whose work has helped define the field, that shift toward understanding underlying mechanisms marked a turning point in how toxicology is approached. 

“The field moved to examining how compounds interact with biological systems at a molecular level,” Safe said. 

This realization challenged traditional assumptions, demonstrating that the same biological pathways responsible for toxicity could also be used in targeted and beneficial ways, and the field began to intersect more directly with pharmacology and medicine, with researchers working to design compounds that retain beneficial effects while minimizing harmful ones. 

“For example, we could take a really toxic compound and inhibit breast cancer cells,” Safe said. “The idea was to make a compound that inhibits tumor growth but has no toxicity.” 

That broader approach continues to shape research at the VMBS today. In addition to studying environmental contaminants and chemical risk, researchers are also investigating compounds that may positively impact health. Safe’s ongoing work examining compounds found in coffee, for example, explores how naturally occurring chemicals may help protect against diseases associated with aging. 

At Texas A&M, this evolution was reflected not only in the science itself but also in the growth of the toxicology program, which now reflects those broader changes in the field. 

“When I came here, it was all toxic plants and veterinary toxicology, focuses that reflected the priorities of the field at the time,” Safe said. “Now, the scope of the program has grown to include more interdisciplinary and externally funded research efforts.” 

That growth also supported a broader range of applied research efforts across the VMBS. For example, Dr. Timothy Phillips, an early member of the toxicology program, has continued developing clay-based technologies designed to reduce exposure to harmful toxins, work that has improved animal health and, in some cases, human health worldwide. 

These shifts also helped support the development of larger, collaborative research initiatives, including the establishment of the Texas A&M Superfund Research Center, which was originally directed by Safe and continues to play a major role in environmental health research at the VMBS. 

Researchers such as Drs. Ivan Rusyn and Weihsueh Chiu have expanded that work through major federally funded projects focused on environmental toxicology, chemical risk assessment, and computational modeling. Their research includes the use of advanced technologies such as organ-on-a-chip systems, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to better predict how chemicals affect biological systems and human health. 

This work includes ongoing research into PFAS — a group of “forever chemicals” known for persisting in the environment — and other contaminants that can accumulate in ecosystems and living organisms over time. 

A Legacy Of Service And Discovery 

From early efforts to identify and control infectious diseases to advances in genetics and genomics, cloning, and toxicology, generations of VMBS researchers have continued to build on the college’s legacy of research excellence — expanding knowledge, refining tools, and finding new ways to address complex problems. 

As science has progressed, so has the scope of discovery — research at the VMBS now reflects a broader, more integrated approach, bringing together disciplines, technologies, and perspectives to address increasingly complex challenges in animal and human health. 

Even as methods and technologies continue to advance, the foundation of that work remains unchanged — a commitment to service, a focus on improving health and well-being, and a belief that scientific discovery can create meaningful, lasting impact. 

As new challenges emerge, that legacy will continue to guide the college’s research mission — ensuring that discovery remains closely tied to service, impact, and the evolving needs of both animals and people.