Oklahoma State University: Aurora Pharmaceutical Gift Funds Equine Research

Press release from Oklahoma State University:

2022-03-09

House officer residency programs have a required research component and acquiring
funding for small research projects can be challenging.

“This donation will have a positive impact on our equine house officer training programs
and Oklahoma State’s research mission,” Dr. Mike Schoonover said.

Previous donations helped support Dr. Kelsey Jurek’s research, ‘Effect of perfusate volume on amikacin concentrations after saphenous intravenous
regional limb perfusion in standing, sedated horses,’ which was recently published.

Jurek is an equine surgery resident mentored by Schoonover.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Media Contact:
Kaylie Wehr | College of Veterinary Medicine | 405-744-6740 | kaylie.wehr@okstate.edu

For more than 20 years, Dr. Pratul Agarwal has been conducting research at the intersection
of biology, chemistry and computing.

A professor in the Department of Physiological Sciences at Oklahoma State University’s
College of Veterinary Medicine, Agarwal also serves as assistant vice president of
research for cyber-infrastructure and high-performance computing.  

“The combination of biology and chemistry with computing is relevant for research
in multiple ways,” Agarwal said. “We work with enzymes, which are in products we use
every single day. Enzymes are added to our food to improve the flavor and make food
easier to digest. Enzymes are present in our laundry detergents allowing the detergent
to clean effectively in lower temperatures. Enzymes are also very important for medicine
and health benefits.

“Medical doctors, colleagues of mine, experience immediate joy when they operate on
a patient and that patient feels much better the next day. In our case as scientists,
satisfaction can take much longer — five years, maybe 10 years. But when we hear that
our fundamental research has improved somebody’s life by making better medication
or better consumer products, that really gives us joy to know that our research led
to some new products.

“I like working on enzymes. Enzymes are not simple molecules. These molecules have
been optimized over millions of years of evolution. They are amazingly efficient biophysical
machines which perform the catalysis at a rate far greater than any chemical molecules
that humans can design. What we do in our lab leads to outcomes such as better medicines
and the fundamental understanding of enzymes, which is important to understand how
things function inside our bodies.

This press release was produced by Oklahoma State University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.