4. What is the purpose of your grant program and what does it fund?
Paws To People feels very strongly about the potential benefits that translational research will bring in healing pets and humans of catastrophic diseases To that end, the purpose of our grant program is to generate awareness and funds to support Translational Study research.
The similarities and resemblances of many diseases that occur in both animals and humans are so numerous that the diseases are virtually identical. With the advent of modern technology like MRIs and the complete mapping of both the human and canine genome, it is apparent that the disease processes are also the same. In other words, for example, cancer is cancer – not human cancer or dog cancer or ferret cancer – cancer is simply, cancer.
Translational research uses this starting point and proceeds to compassionately study naturally occurring diseases in veterinary and human medicine with a goal of sharing data and building from discoveries, cooperatively forming a bridge to finding the causes, preventions, and cures for catastrophic diseases like:
Cancer; Dementia/Alzheimer’s; Diabetes; Crohn’s Disease; Hyper Thyroidism; Arthritis; Heart Disease; Psychological Disorders (PTSD, depression, anxiety, overeating).
Looking at domestic pets in particular offers tremendous insight in translational studies because these animals completely share the human environment and lifestyle. They live in our houses, walk on our fertilized lawns, drive in our cars, eat our leftovers, suffer our stresses – they are models of the human experience that, because of their shorter life spans, run in fast forward.
Translational studies research uses that natural link to explore the real world impact on how disease is generated, grows, and how it can be eradicated – for both humans and pets. These are the projects Paws To People will fund for research.