CVDL Through the Years

Originally called the Tufts Veterinary Diagnostic Lab (TVDL), the lab opened its doors in 1979, the same year that Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine welcomed its first class of students. (The school was renamed Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in 2005.) Located in Jamaica Plain, the lab originally served 15 local veterinary practices, eventually expanding over the years to provide diagnostic services in microbiology, chemistry, cytology, and hematology to veterinary clinics across New England, in addition to zoos, aquariums, commercial breeders, lab animal facilities, biotech companies, and the veterinary school’s hospitals and clinics.

The lab’s first director was Dr. Andrew Onderdonk, a microbiologist and associate professor of pathology and the school’s second faculty member. Dr. Onderdonk also oversaw a microbiology research lab within TVDL, and students trained in the lab during their fourth year clinical rotations. Upon his retirement, Dr. Onderdonk passed the directorship to Dr. Steve Rowell, a graduate of the school’s founding class.

Knoll came on board in 1990 as a clinical pathologist for TVDL and as a staff veterinarian and faculty member. Two years later, she hired Stockman as the lab’s clinical pathology supervisor. Stockman recalls her early days at TVDL: We were all young mothers, all super tired, working until midnight and getting up at 6:00 a.m. with our kids. There are four of us now plus Dr. Knoll, who are originals from TVDL still working together.”

Knoll was director of TVDL for a short period before IDEXX Corporation bought the rights to name the lab in 1999. TVDL relocated to Building 20 and was called Tufts IDEXX for two years. While the lab continued to service the practices around New England, the veterinary hospitals and clinics on campus needed results more quickly than IDEXX could turn them around.

To meet the specialized diagnostic needs of Tufts Veterinary School’s academic hospitals, a smaller Clinical Pathology Lab was established in 2001, under Knoll’s direction. “Clinicians needed results more urgently, so we developed the capability to do that here.”

The lab moved into a small space on the second floor of Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals (FHSA), and Stockman was rehired as the lab supervisor. Knoll and Stockman recruited a few of the technicians who had previously worked at TVDL. “The hospital was happy to have more immediate access to results,” recalls Stockman.

According to Knoll, the lab’s distinguishing feature is the caliber of CVDL’s clinical pathologists and technicians and their collaboration with Cummings School clinicians. “It’s a great benefit to our patients to have these services in-house. Results are easier to interpret when clinicians are right there telling us what’s going on with the case and what questions they’re trying to answer. That communication back and forth is really important and facilitated by us all here on campus together, just down the hall from each other.”

Today CVDL has four board-certified clinical pathologists, four board-certified anatomic pathologists, five medical technologists/medical lab technicians (and looking for a sixth), a veterinary technician, three histotechnicians, and a post-room technician.

Stockman agrees that the lab’s strong relationship with clinicians is a cornerstone of its success. “We are here because we have patients and owners who need us. We partner with clinicians to provide diagnostic information essential for them to do their job and provide excellent patient care.”

CVDL consists of the Clinical Pathology Lab, Anatomical Pathology Lab and Necropsy Service. The Clinical Pathology Lab supports clinicians with diagnostic testing of blood and other bodily fluids and tissues, and microscopic evaluation of individual cells. The lab conducts hematology tests, clinical chemistry tests, coagulation tests, fluid and cytology analysis, urinalysis, and fecal analysis. The Anatomical Pathology Lab focuses on necropsies (autopsies), biopsies, diagnostic interpretation, and comprehensive pathology reports and consults on outside cases, including animal cruelty cases for law enforcement.

A few years ago, Dean Alastair Cribb reorganized the Clinical Pathology Lab and the Anatomic Pathology Lab under the new title of Cummings School Veterinary Diagnostic Lab (CVDL). Knoll is the section head of the former and Dr. Gisela Martinez-Romero, is section head of the latter. Both have faculty appointments within the Department of Comparative Pathobiology. Dean Cribb appointed Stockman to oversee the day-to-day operations of both labs as the assistant director of CVDL.

“Cheryl’s been with me since the dawn of time; she’s very familiar with how it’s run and does an amazing job, freeing up the faculty for teaching and research,” says Knoll.

CVDL relocated to the current larger space in Hospital for Large Animals (HLA) to accommodate increased staffing and provide space for equipment to enhance diagnostic services. Knoll and Stockman consult with clinicians on new tools and technologies to continually elevate patient care, and Cummings School has been very supportive in funding those endeavors. For example, one of the newest pieces of equipment is a coagulation analyzer to broaden the spectrum of tests and provide more in-depth results in diagnosing bleeding disorders.

“We’re always looking to increase our test menu and find new ways we can bring things in- house to improve patient care,” says Knoll.

The CDVL often works closely with Cummings School’s Comparative Pathology and Genomics Shared Resource on independent biomedical research into new drugs and treatments, including recently published research on the mpox virus (read story here).

The two labs will soon undertake a new collaboration—with the Shared Resource running immunohistochemistry (IHC) for the CVDL. Funded by a $2 million grant from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the Shared Resource acquired cutting-edge equipment to conduct research utilizing animal models to study the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases. Until recently, the equipment was used solely for research. Under this new collaboration, it will now also be used for patient diagnostics. While the CDVL performs most diagnostics in-house, the lab has been outsourcing IHC, a diagnostic assay used to assist pathologists in diagnosing diseases, including tumors.

Co-director of the Shared Resource is Dr. Amanda Martinot (she/her), a board-certified veterinary anatomic pathologist in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology and E.A. Stevens Associate Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health at Cummings School. With the acquisition of new equipment for the automation of IHC, Martinot says the Shared Resource can now offer this service to the CVDL to improve turn-around time and accessibility for diagnosticians in the CVDL.

“The Shared Resource invested time and money to build up the capacity and run these assays to automate immunohistochemistry for research projects. We can assist the Diagnostic Lab by running these protocols on patient samples in addition to research samples,” says Martinot. “This will make the process faster for getting diagnoses back for patients.”

Conveniently, the Shared Resource is right down the road from CVDL in the Amelia Peabody Pavilion.

“This gives more control over the process. Now, we can hand slides over, and the pathologists in the diagnostic lab can look at the staining themselves. There’s more opportunity for back and forth if they need additional tests,” Martinot explains. “The goal is to build up this Shared Resource, not only for veterinary school researchers, but the local community and other biotech and academic institutions. If we can leverage this expertise to improve patient care as well, even better.”

The pace has not slowed down since Knoll and Stockman first started at CVDL the early 1990s —from the breadth of diagnostic services to research studies to the newly restarted residency program in clinical pathology (residency in anatomic pathology will be added in 2025).

“We are reinventing ourselves in a big way; it’s fun to watch,” says Stockman. “It will be interesting to see how far we can go, pushing the limits of what we can do. We’ve had a lot of support, and that has been awesome. We are big dreamers here, and whatever we can offer to the hospitals that will benefit patients, we’d like to try to provide for our clinicians.”