Morris Animal Foundation, AAFP, AVMF and WFF Partner to Improve Cat Health
Media Contact:
Tina Martinez: 303.708.3418
tmartinez@morrisanimalfoundation.org
April 5, 2011
Morris Animal Foundation has partnered with the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP), the American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF) and the Winn Feline Foundation (WFF) to create the Cat Health Network to improve feline health and welfare by funding feline health studies.
Thanks to a generous gift from Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Morris Animal Foundation has provided the Cat Health Network with up to 4,000 genotyping arrays (developed by Illumina) that interrogate 70,000 evenly spaced single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the feline genome. The 70,000 SNPs were selected and designed according to criteria developed by the Foundation’s Feline Genomics Advisory Committee. AAFP, AVMF and WFF have provided the Cat Health Network with funds to facilitate researchers’ use of the feline SNP chip arrays.
The Cat Health Network anticipates that approximately $100,000 will be available annually to fund studies. The Cat Health Network is particularly interested in projects that target feline hereditary diseases and genetic risk factors that directly influence feline health, particularly in the areas of feline cancer, chronic renal disease, diabetes mellitus, feline lower urinary tract disease and pain management.
About Morris Animal Foundation.
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