University of Florida Vets Use Placenta-Derived Treatment for Animals With Severe Bone Loss

A human placenta-derived compound developed by a University of Florida faculty member in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering is being used with promising results by veterinarians at UF’s College of Veterinary Medicine to treat animals with severe bone loss.

Without the compound, the animals — which included a giraffe at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens and two pet dogs — would have almost certainly faced amputation of the affected areas, the veterinarians said.

The product’s developer, Peter McFetridge, Ph.D., the Integra Lifesciences Term Professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, studies the engineering of viable “living” tissues and organs for the repair and regeneration of diseased tissues. Stan Kim, BVSc., an associate professor of small-animal surgery at UF, learned of McFetridge’s work and was intrigued about the placental compound he had been testing in rodent models with some success.

McFetridge and two of his biomedical engineering department colleagues, Jon Dobson, Ph.D., the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Professor, and Blanka Sharma, Ph.D., an associate professor and the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Term Fellow, have co-founded a company in Gainesville, UF Innovate | The Hub resident 42Bio, to commercialize the product for veterinary applications.

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