Falling in love with the heart: Veterinary student wins Young Investigator Award

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Alessandra Franchini’s thoughts are turning to matters of the heart.

The Italian-born Ph.D. candidate in small animal cardiology isn’t focusing on Cupid or candy though. Her attention is squarely fixed on a gigantic spreadsheet that details six years’ worth of cardiac-related health information on over 6,000 dogs with mitral valve disease.

“For me, the heart was love at first sight,” Franchini explained with a laugh. “When I was a veterinary student in [the University of] Parma, one day I was sitting in the usual, boring first-year lecture on how the heart works. I couldn’t believe I’d never thought about how much stuff the heart provides for us to live and how much it can do in a single minute. After that day, I never looked back.”

Over time, Franchini became particularly fascinated with mitral valve disease (MVD), a condition that occurs when the heart’s left valve does not close properly, leading to a backflow of blood. The disease is widespread in both people and dogs. It affects older dogs primarily, and in certain breeds like Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, the condition can develop earlier, with the most severe cases leading to congestive heart failure and untimely death.

Franchini’s dedication to understanding MVD paid off when the Journal of Veterinary Cardiology awarded her the 2021 Young Investigator Award for the best original study published in the journal over the past two years. The journal’s editorial board seeks nominations every other year in several categories: original research and clinical studies and case reports/case series and cardiovascular images, with the winners chosen by the editorial board.

Franchini’s study was made possible because of her time working in the Comparative Cardiovascular Laboratory at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, led by Michele Borgarelli, professor of cardiology.

For more than six years, the lab has been gathering information for the Longitudinal Outcomes of K-9 MVD (LOOK-Mitral) project. This work aims to assess whether factors such as breed, age, and diet may predict outcomes, and how medical interventions may affect the prognosis for affected dogs. While disease registries like LOOK-Mitral have proven effective in other veterinary and human diseases, this is the first time these techniques have been applied to canine MVD.

“This project has been many years in the making,” Borgarelli explained. “It began with a farsighted donation from [global animal health company] Ceva Santé Animale, who have goals that align well with my lab. We are all interested in understanding diseases that affect both humans and dogs.”

Bringing the idea of an enormous database of dogs with MVD to fruition could only happen thanks to another critical partnership, an ongoing collaboration with clinicians at Cardiac Care for Pets (CVCA), a nationwide group of cardiac specialty practices.

Franchini worked on her study with the support of Borgarelli and other faculty from the lab. Other collaborators included veterinarians from the University of Parma and the Swedish University of Agricultural Science in Uppsala, Sweden.

The cooperation between several veterinary colleges and universities from multiple countries and support from commercial organizations illustrates the importance of this work and the collaborative approach and partnerships needed to conduct quality research.

Once Franchini came on board as a Ph.D. student, she was able to start mining the data that had been entered over the years by Virginia Tech undergraduate research assistants. Franchini credits the students, who handle the data entry and make hundreds of phone calls each year to fill in incomplete medical histories, as essential to the project’s success. The data entry and analysis can get tedious, but Franchini and the students she works with don’t mind: “We just keep reminding ourselves how important it is to understand MVD better and improve outcomes for these dogs.”

This summer, Franchini will finish her Ph.D. studies and transition into a cardiology residency. Franchini is excited about her new chapter, which will allow her to take a more hands-on role with a similar patient population to the dogs whose data she’s been analyzing for the past three years.

And her love affair with the heart? It won’t skip a beat.