Dr. Gordon: My partner always used to say, you know, we're compassionate and caring oncologists. But that's hard for us to compete on because everybody says they're a compassionate and caring oncologist. But what really makes us different than everybody else in this area is we are trying our best for the future and betterment of oncology and oncology care for our patients. So let's make that what makes us different.
Dr. Venable: Welcome to the Veterinary Cancer Pioneers Podcast, the show where we delve into the groundbreaking work of veterinary professionals who are dedicated to advancing the field of veterinary oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Rachel Venable, and I'm thrilled to embark on this journey with you. This episode is produced and brought to you by ImpriMed, pioneers in an AI-driven precision medicine for veterinary oncology. ImpriMed’s Personalized Prediction Profile helps you make confident treatment decisions for canine lymphoma and leukemia patients by predicting how your patient will respond to multiple chemotherapy protocol options. Learn more at imprimedicine.com. That is imprimedicine.com.
Dr. Venable: Well, hello and welcome to the Veterinary Cancer Pioneers Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rachel Venable. And today I have Dr. Ira Gordon who has done so many things and has a really interesting career in his dive into many different facets of veterinary medicine. And so to just briefly go over his bio because there's so many things to cover, he is actually the founder of The Oncology Service, and he's held executive roles with Ethos Veterinary Health and the Vetcelerator. He's also the co-founder of VetPrep, which I think is super cool because I lived off that back as a vet student. He was clinically trained at UC Davis and the National Cancer Institute, and he is a board certified veterinary radiation oncologist, and he is also the co-founder of the Veterinary Angel Network for Entrepreneurs, or called Vane, which is an angel investing network that supports early stage innovation in animal health through funding, mentorship and strategic guidance.
Dr. Venable: So, so many cool things. And also not to forget. He is also the president elect of the Veterinary Cancer Society. So Dr. Gordon, we have so many things to talk about. I'm so excited you're on the show today.
Dr. Gordon: Thank you very much. And it's great to be here.
Dr. Venable: So I always like to start with what got you into either veterinary medicine or radiation oncology is quite a unique niche. So what got you into all this?
Dr. Gordon: I didn't always know that I was headed towards radiation oncology for sure, but things began when I was in high school and we had our family, German Shepherd Viper, who one day after school I came home and was playing with and I noticed that he had the lump in his neck. I didn't know what they were. You probably do, but yeah, ended up having that problem worked up and he was diagnosed with lymphoma.
Dr. Gordon: At the time there weren't really many specialists, but there was one person in our area who we ended up taking Viper to. I was just really struck by the great care that he got there. I really liked his doctor and ended up volunteering to work there on the weekends during high school, and was just sort of always interested in both the science and the clinical aspects of oncology from around that time.
Dr. Venable: Right. It is interesting how our experiences can really shape us, and I'm sorry to hear that your childhood dog ended up having lymphoma, but it certainly sounds like it was quite an experience. And, you know, it's also impressive. You guys were able to find somebody that was doing treatment.
Dr. Gordon: We were really lucky in that respect. There was a veterinarian that actually came to town next to ours one day a week to treat patients and had a primary practice that was about an hour away. And we were really lucky to find her. Yeah.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, that is really interesting. And thinking about the just, you know, your own dog and also just oncology and you know in animals how it's changing. What then made you pivot into radiation oncology.
Dr. Gordon: It wasn't until the later part of veterinary school got more introduced to the radiation side of oncology, and I was just really attracted by how different radiation side is from everything else that we've done and learned in veterinary school, with respect to the physics of radiation and the sophisticated equipment in radiation therapy, and especially the computer software. I was a big video game player growing up, and the really neat tools that we had to develop our radiation plans just really sort of caught my interest.
Dr. Gordon: And I actually wasn't certain, even when I was applying for residencies, whether I might do medical oncology or radiation or both. Club radiation therapy ended up starting there and ended up falling in love with.
Dr. Venable: That's really cool. And you're thinking about your love of video games and computers. Is that kind of what got you into VetPrep? Because I think every vet student, or a lot of them, have all used vet prep with studying for boards and even some vet students that I've seen recently. You know, when they were working up for their big NAVLE exam, they had VetPrep.And so is that kind of what your computer interests? Because I wouldn't even know where to start to come up with a computer program.
Dr. Gordon: Don't know how much my video game experience helped me with that prep, but I do think that being tech savvy that we're able to program the things that we needed were extremely helpful in sort of the origin of building VetPrep as it is an online tool to help students study for their board exams. And so having the connections and ability to get something built was probably a step over what would otherwise have been a major barrier.
Dr. Venable: Yeah. And what do you think got you guys to think about VetPrep. Like how did that come about?
Dr. Gordon: As the story goes, we were studying for boards the old fashioned way, which meant that it was the weekend. We didn't have clinical responsibilities during the day, and then a couple of my classmates would get together at a coffee shop, open up this, you know, 2000 plus page Merck Veterinary Manual, quiz each other, basically relearn everything that we've forgotten over the previous three years of at school.
Dr. Gordon: And after a long day of doing that, we went back to one of my classmates to his apartment, and he was dating a med student at the time, and we got home and she was just sitting at her computer, taking practice questions and preparing for boarding Sams. We all just kind of looked at each other and thought, why?
Dr. Gordon: Why are we doing this in such an antiquated, old fashioned way? And how come, like, people have built these cool things for the med students, but nobody cares about us? Then the next day when I went to study, it was all we could think about was, maybe we should be building this thing to help people like us, as opposed to doing this the way that we're doing. And, and we just kind of kept going from there.
Dr. Venable: So you guys did this while you were in vet school and then must have continued it while you were in residency as well. How did you balance and do all that?
Dr. Gordon: Yeah. Well, the plan was that we were going to try to get this done during the last six months of school and then be done with it and put it out there for people and move on to the next stages of our career, because none of us plan to be, you know, software company founders. And we were all planning to go to internships, but we weren't anywhere close to being done.
Dr. Gordon: By the end of veterinary school, we had sort of come too far to stop. We had nothing resembling a complete course for people studying for their board exams, and so we continued to sort of plug away at it during our internships. Some of the colleagues that I keep in touch with will sometimes remind me of how they thought it was so silly that I wouldn't come out and hang out with them because I was working on this little project that, you know, nobody really understood at the time.
Dr. Gordon: We all finished our internships, and we were probably 95% of the way to like, really feeling like this is something that people could use. And we had a couple of weeks before the two of us were moving on to something else, and we just all got together for those two weeks at my mom's house and kind of worked around the clock to kind of try to finish everything up before residencies and get a course launched in the middle of 2006.
Dr. Venable: That's amazing. And it probably was hard having people tell you that, you know, what? What are you doing? This is kind of crazy, and I'm sure you were already feeling a lot of pressure. I know in my internship it was hard. That's a hard thing to go through. So that's really impressive that you guys stuck it out and got it together. It certainly made something incredible that, you know, like you said, I mean people are still using I still hear vet students talk about it today.
Dr. Gordon: It's super rewarding. We always believed in it. And because I was doing it with a couple of my really good friends and classmates, it never really felt like work. I was having those fun nights working with my other friends, so it wasn't so bad.
Dr. Venable: Well, good. Well, it's super cool. Definitely really glad that you made that. It certainly helped me a lot with getting through the NAVLE and just trying to organize all that information, because there was so much going on. And so, you know, to kind of go back to the radiation oncology to kind of switch gears back. So where do you see radiation being the most impactful? You know, it is such a unique treatment that we have. You do have to have special equipment. So where do you see both ends. Where do you see it being the most helpful? And then where do you see it maybe being not utilized where it should be.?
Dr. Gordon: Probably the most impactful or helpful places that we can use radiation therapy is when it comes to treatments that would otherwise be untreatable because they're not amenable to surgery, maybe don't respond well to medical therapies or chemotherapy. And so the examples that come to mind would be things like nasal tumors and brain tumors and dogs. That radiation works really well for. And oftentimes those other options either won't work very well or no viable options. And so I think that's where it's most impactful in terms of where it may be a bit more underutilized. I think that radiation therapy, in addition to its more definitive or sort of, you know, more effective uses can oftentimes be a very, very helpful palliative addition to care of pets with cancer.
Dr. Gordon: And that can include things like painful bone tumors or oral tumors and a wide variety of large tumors that we have really run out of other effective options for. And even radiation therapy may not be incredibly effective at treating these entirely, but can oftentimes really buy some quality at time for those pets and their families and can be a great benefit even if it's not your years of tumor response.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, I think radiation can really help a lot with palliative like you were mentioning. And sometimes even for me, I have to remember some of the different protocols out there. Like it's not always that daily treatment for a month, you know, like the really intense protocols. But there are some once weekly or different palliative ones out there.
Dr. Venable: What do you think about just how technology has changed? I mean, I think that's probably changed a lot since you went through your residency to now because we have some pretty cool machines. How have you seen just how you practice change over time?
Dr. Gordon: That's probably been the most fun part of being in radiation is that when I started still using, for the most part, older equipment that wasn't as capable of doing these highly, what we call conformal treatments, we could still do some pretty cool things. I'm really proud that I learned how to do all these things back in the day, to try to put radiation dose for where we really want it, and keep it from hitting the things nearby that we'd like to avoid.
Dr. Gordon: But that's gotten so much better and so much easier. Since, we've been able to adopt better software, better equipment, better imaging on our equipment so that when we set, we actually know with greater precision where the targets that we want to treat are and all the like. And so that's been really a game changer as I see it with respect to the care that we could provide.
Dr. Gordon: Some of my original mentors, when they found out I was going into radiation therapy, were not the happiest, because they sort of had this sort of mindset that was associated with how radiation had been in the 10 to 20 years prior to that time, when there were a lot more side effects that pets tended to get from radiation therapy didn't do a much better job of reducing those now, which is great.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, I think you mentioned nasal tumors. You know, the side effects from that have changed dramatically that I've seen. And the other big one. It seems like bladder tumors. We're not seeing, you know, before I remember it being kind of like you don't radiate bladder tumors. And now really seeing that they can have the disease can have a great response, but the animals can tolerate it pretty well.
Dr. Venable: Is that what you're seeing in practice too?
Dr. Gordon: I think so I was certainly trained and taught that bladder tumors are not radiation candidates for the most part. Like we just can't do it because we can't deliver enough dose to the tumor without toxicity to the surrounding tissues, the intestines and the like. And so just don't do it with the possible exception of giving a sort of modest dose benefit.
Dr. Gordon: And now we have a variety of better options. We also have some wonderful studies that have been done looking at more aggressive courses of highly conformal therapy, and suggests that we can meaningfully improve the long term outcomes of dogs with that terrible disease with the addition of radiation.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, I agree, it's really been fascinating to see. And some other areas that seem like they're kind of on the horizon. And I always like to ask the radiation oncologist kind of what you guys think. What are you guys seeing as far as liver tumors or, you know, other parts of the body that we used to say, you know, no, it's not safe to do.
Dr. Venable: Is that still the case? Is there something on the horizon that it's looking like? Maybe we could treat some of those like liver or intestinal. What do you think?
Dr. Gordon: Liver? Probably, yes. A lot of liver tumors that I see in practice these days tend to head down the surgical road or in some cases, I work with a surgeon that does a lot of chemo embolization of liver tumors. But for ones that aren't good candidates for that can be helpful. Other sorts of less common tumors that we're starting to do radiation for include certainly adrenal tumors, tumors of the heart and heart of previous use. To think the heart moves, it's really hard to target and treat with radiation therapy. It turns out it does move and it is hard to target with radiation. But we can do it and we can actually do it pretty well. Something that I haven't really done, but have started to hear about is radiation therapy for some pancreatic tumors.
Dr. Gordon: It used to be that they were really hard to image and even know what the right treatment is, but that's getting better too. So I think we are certainly finding that some of those things are becoming options when they weren't before, intestinal tumors still pretty tough. And I know that that's going to be changing in the near term.
Dr. Gordon: But who knows. Hopefully.
Dr. Venable: I hadn't heard about the pancreatic. That's interesting. I hadn't really heard about using radiation for those. So yeah, that's really exciting. And the chemo embolization, that's a whole nother topic. But that's really interesting too, about just some of the different options that are out there. And I guess another one that's become kind of a big talk here. Really over the last year, some different papers have come out. What are your thoughts on radiation for lymphoma? And if you don't even want to get into the weeds with it, that's okay. And we can go and talk about something else.
Dr. Gordon: I love to talk about it. I think there are a few different ways to use radiation therapy in the treatment of lymphoma. Of course, there's the old way, which is when lymphoma localized radiation can work great. So for example, cats with nasal lymphoma, very, very common radiation indication radiations, almost certainly the treatment of choice for that disease. But for multicentric lymphoma like we see most commonly in dogs the use of radiation therapy either I suppose this is really fairly novel and limited, but as part of a bone marrow transplant sort of procedure and is something a couple of people are doing because it is widely available, the use of what we call half body radiation therapy, which in order to spare the bone marrow, we treat the body in segments and give that that area, the bone marrow, enough time to recover, seem to have a very, very large impact on a subset of dogs.
Dr. Gordon: And I think the thing that we're finally figuring out, and the reason it's taken longer for this to trickle into veterinary medicine, is we're better at figuring out who those dogs might be now, because there is also a large subset of dogs that probably don't have a lot of benefit to have body radiation therapy. There is additional cost, additional toxicity of doing it, and it's a lot to go through if it's unlikely to be a benefit.
Dr. Gordon: But for dogs that have especially B-cell informa certainly into remission after an initial cycle of chemotherapy, we think we can significantly increase the proportion of those dogs that are living three, four and five years from their half body radiation therapy. And then there's the cats, the cats with intestinal lymphoma that we used to think radiation is not really a choice for that.
Dr. Gordon: There's been some papers that have come out recently, actually recently treated a cat with intestinal lymphoma, with abdominal radiation therapy that, you know, has been really pleased with the response. And it seems like that's emerging as an additional option for them as well.
Dr. Venable: It is really interesting just how I remember. Yeah, we don't do radiation now. Now we do. And then yeah, it just kind of seems like it comes back and forth, like I've seen it cycle around, but I, I am excited with the better technology that we have now to be able to do some of this. The other thing, and you kind of mentioned this with dogs, and I'm also just curious because I'm trying to figure out when is the best time to give radiation like that half body.
Dr. Venable: I've heard some people say at the end of treatment, I think you kind of mentioned after that first cycle, I've heard some people say after 1 or 2 cycles, do you guys have a certain way that you like to do it?
Dr. Gordon: Typically I am in the camp of after 1 to 2 cycles of chemotherapy is the best time to fit half body into their treatment protocol. We certainly want them to be in clinical remission at the time of half body radiation therapy. That seems to be a key prognostic factor to their likelihood of having these longer term responses.
Dr. Gordon: And so if they aren't going into remission after a cycle or two, honestly, they are not the best candidate for the half body radiation therapy, at least not at that time. And so that's where we tend to utilize it. In the past, I've tried it as more of a rescue therapy for dogs that have failed chemotherapy and come out of remission a couple of times, and I've had a couple of exceptional cases of things that have gone great, but it is much more the exception than the rule that that's what happens to everyone.
Dr. Gordon: And, you know, we're just treating them too late in the course of their disease and don't have enough impact.
Dr. Venable: Well, that's really interesting. So thanks for sharing that. As far as what kind of what you've seen and when you guys are doing it, because I do think that's what everyone's trying to figure out, is when to really best utilize this and have looked at some different protocols. And now to kind of switch gears again, because we've been very clinical, which I think is great.
Dr. Venable: I think a lot of our audience is interested in that, but I'm also interested in just all the entrepreneurial aspects that you have done. And you built The Oncology Service. And I'd like to hear more just about that process, because I think sometimes we get a little bit pigeonholed into we can only do clinics, and we don't really think outside the box of maybe starting our own clinic or what that process would even look like.
Dr. Gordon: It is a lot for veterinary faculty, right? They don't really teach us a lot about this in school. Almost all of us, myself included, went into this because we wanted to take care of animals and the families that love them, and not because we thought we wanted to start businesses. And so it is a bit of a leap. I was both fortunate and found a wonderful partner to do this with and unfortunate and sort of finding myself in an area that just didn't have the the clinic I wanted to have to work in, that had the type of radiation equipment that I wanted to work on, and was practicing the type of medicine that I wanted to practice. And so those two factors led us to have these discussions and move down the road of saying, well, let's build our own place if there's not someplace else doing what we aspire to do in this area already. So that's really what drove that to happen.
Dr. Venable: So what all can you talk a little bit about The Oncology Service? Does that service you guys provide? How did you kind of build that out? Or what did you imagine?
Dr. Gordon: We imagined is not what it turned into over time. But I had imagined building just a state of the art cancer center at, at this wonderful location that we identified that would do radiation therapy and medical oncology sets to surgeons and surgical oncology and all the other assorted specialists that that we oftentimes need. And that is what we did. But because of a variety of things, things that happened along the way, it also turned into a group of several practices around the Washington, D.C., and Virginia regions with wonderful teams doing wonderful work at several sites. And we ran that for ten plus years.
Dr. Venable: So it sounds like if you're interested in doing different things, kind of getting outside of the box, it seems like a common theme with you is to have a partner like it really helps to do it with a team, and then also being able to kind of adjust and pivot when you need to because it sounds like, you know, like you said, it wasn't exactly what you imagined, but it still turned into this great thing.
Dr. Gordon: Great insights, Rachel. And exactly sort of what I've found has worked for me is to have partner or partners, that one you love working with all the time, working with them and their complement you so that the areas where you might not be as strong, they can pick up the slack and and really just serve to, to motivate each other and, and make progress where otherwise it can be really challenging on your own.
Dr. Gordon: There're some people that don't need that partner that can do all these things themselves and be self motivated. But I found that, the things I really love are oftentimes a little bit more like in the weeds of figuring out the detailed solutions to how fun and the little problems. And oftentimes that means me partnering with somebody that's a little bit more at kind of like the higher visionary type level, to make sure that we're always progress towards a grander vision and that we share that vision has really worked well for me, and I've been extremely lucky and fortunate to have partners that other people, wonderful partners and geniuses in their own right.
Dr. Venable: Well, that is great. I think it also goes back to even just mentorship or just having a good community around you, you know, even in your career that you can work with. And so that's really cool that you were able to do all that. And the other thing I was wondering about. So being part of Ethos and the Vet Accelerator, you guys have done a lot of really cool clinical studies and research. And I think sometimes people when they get into private practice, they feel like they can't do research anymore. But they would like to, what is your recommendation or just your experience of trying to do research and more of a private practice setting.
Dr. Gordon: Actually was one of the other driving factors behind this. Wanting to have RL practice in this area was our interest in really working towards the future of oncology at that time, and and trying to create new options for our clients and patients with cancer and clinical trials being a big part of that, something that really my my partner brought to the practice a number of key connections and relationships and people that were interested in working with practices to do clinical trials that we could implement.
Dr. Gordon: And you're right, it is hard, right? Doing clinical trials oftentimes takes a lot more time. There's a lot of backend, you know, paperwork and steps. And there are oftentimes needs to have pets that are getting, you know, samples taken over time or things like that that are a little bit outside of the typical workflow of a practice. And so being committed to wanting to do that and setting up the practice so that we'd be able to do that was a priority for us. And I think it's gotten easier because they're now, you know, groups that are trying to support some of that infrastructure for practices to do clinical trials, because oncology is emerging, as, you know, a space where there is innovation happening in now, which is great.
Dr. Gordon: You know, there's still very, very few approved veterinary drugs, but that is starting to change. And I certainly think that over the next, I don't know, ten years or so, we probably will have 15 to 20 veterinary approved oncology drugs where we previously had almost none. And so that's kind of led to the need and the existence of some of this clinical trial infrastructure.
Dr. Venable: The trials. It can be tough for just getting all the pieces together. And what did you guys find that was helpful? Did you find like maybe even hiring staff that would be interested in it? Or do you think it's just more of a clinic culture itself that needs to be interested in something like that.
Dr. Gordon: For sure. You can't effectively run the clinical trial program without having a culture that supports that at a staff that's interested in that, we really viewed that as something that differentiated practice to find and recruit and retain the right staff. That was aligned with the vision that we had. My partner always used to say, you know, we're compassionate and caring oncologists, but that's hard for us to compete on because everybody says they're compassionate and caring oncologists. But what really makes us different than everybody else in this area is we are trying our best towards the future and betterment of oncology and oncology care for our patients. So let's make that what makes us different. And we felt that that helped us to people that were the right people for our practice.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, that is really cool. And I think it is a good way to kind of set your clinic apart, your practice apart from other groups. And, what about the Vetcelerator? Can you tell me a little bit more about that and what that program is?
Dr. Gordon: So Vetcelerator was a company that I joined. They had a model where they were doing a lot of things to support practices, and I joined them to come up with a way to see if we could help veterinary practice owners that didn't want to do as much of the things that were really not good at all. The things I used to hate being a practice owner, like managing, you know, inventory and finances and marketing and websites, all the phones and technology, all those things we had to do as part of the business.
Dr. Gordon: And I hated doing it. And so I ended up joining this company that was all they did was all the things I used to hate doing. And I did it because I thought, there's really a need for especially independent practice owners to help with all these things. And, it was a great experience to be a part of that and try to bring that sort of help to practice owners.
Dr. Venable: Yeah. Because that is a hard part. You know, as you mentioned, we go to vet school because we want to help animals and help their families, and maybe you might have a little business interests. We don't really, at least back in the day, we didn't get a lot of education on that. But you really don't when it comes to like HR, you know, accounting, all of that stuff. So yes, I think any help groups can get with that. I'm sure if I wanted to open my own practice, I would need a lot of help, especially accounting. Like, you know, there's so many moving parts. I'd be like, oh my gosh, I don't know, taxes, taxes scare me. The IRS makes me nervous.
Dr. Gordon: For good reason. And fortunately, there are people out there that know this much better and are happy to help.
Dr. Venable: Nice. Good. Well, I'm good to know. Good to know for me for sure. And then the other one is VANE. So that's a really different type of program where you guys help investing with different startups and things. Can you tell us more about that? Because we really don't have much of that. And veterinary medicine, I haven't really been exposed to that much.
Dr. Gordon: Yes, I will tell you kind of the story first, which is, as I shared before, for our first company VetPrep, when I was what I would affectionately referred to as a dumb vet student. I didn't know anything and it was hard. There were all these things that we didn't know and we had to figure out, and we got lucky that we found some of the right people and had some of the right mentors and got the support needed to get this product off the ground. And now we can look back and say, this has helped, like over 100,000 veterinarians and other professionals to get over this hump and suffer less when it comes to preparing for board exams and the like. And so just imagine like, you know, there's all these other people with ideas that just need more help to be able to have this kind of impact. And the field of animal health has been so great to me. And so with that success, having the opportunity to now go and try to help other entrepreneurs and people with great ideas and interesting products, to try to get them off the ground and, you know, into the places where they can actually help pets and people is such an exciting thing to do.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, that is really exciting. And so how do you find these different groups?
Dr. Gordon: We have a bit of a process now. It didn't always work this way, but now that we've been around for a few years, we have a number of companies that will find us either through our network or through our website. And then we have a fairly simple process that allows them, you know, share the information that us and our members will need to look and decide. Is this something that we think we can help with that's of interest to us? And do we want this group to come actually present to our network about their idea, their business and what they need and to see if we might be the right fit to help them and and to sort of work through with our members who are mostly veterinarians that, much like you and me, would probably say, I don't know that much about investing. Like, how do I decide? It's the other thing that VANE does is we help to provide a team and education and discussion and collaboration that can help novice investors start to feel better, that we're not, just guessing that we're actually sort of going about making these decisions about which companies have reasonable chances and are good bets and, and then we work together to try to help them.
Dr. Venable: Oh, that's really interesting. All I can imagine is Shark Tank. It is probably not like Shark Tank, but that's all I can imagine in my head is more like a Shark tank setup.
Dr. Gordon: I'd like to think we're a little bit nicer than the sharks on Shark Tank. I know that we are, because, as you know, just about everybody in the veterinary profession is a wonderful person. But, but in some ways it's a little bit similar in terms of, yes, you know, founders and companies come in and they're pitching their ideas to us, right, and asking for help and investment. And it's not quite as dramatic, I guess I would say, but in some ways similar.
Dr. Venable: Well, yeah, I can only imagine. You just need the music, right? The music and lighting, and then you can really make them feel like they're on Shark Tank. You know.
Dr. Gordon: The great idea we should definitely implement there is probably copyright.
Dr. Venable: Probably. So you know, what is some exciting stuff that you're seeing coming down the line. And it doesn't necessarily have to have been through VANE, but just in general with animal Health. What is some stuff that you're really excited about?
Dr. Gordon: Things I personally get most excited about.
Dr. Gordon: Are innovations that help provide more options for treatment for a disease that was previously almost untreatable. Least we talked about why radiation spoke to me with respect to that sort of phenomenon. And as part of the reason why I went into oncology. But I think there are, you know, a lot of new things that are happening in the animal health space, including, I mean, some of the biggest drugs have been some of the new allergy drugs for pets that previously weren't around as such a, you know, debilitating disease. But there's new things, new progress being made on things like heart disease, kidney disease, arthritis, like, you know, really bad common diseases that we need better options for and we're starting to see them. So those things get me really excited. Outside of therapeutics, I really love the idea of new tools and products that can make it easier for vets to spend more time on helping owners make difficult decisions.
Dr. Gordon: Like, I think that's the thing I think is our greatest value to people. And all too often it seems like it's the thing that we spend our time doing relative to all the things that we do. And so when there are things that can make all those other things easier, I get excited about it.
Dr. Venable: All right. And so what do you think about AI? Do you see that as a way to try to help make all this easier? Or. I know everybody's talking about AI, but it's because it's a big thing. I've certainly started using it and it found it helpful with some of the different reports and things. And so just curious what your thoughts are.
Dr. Gordon: I use AI, I like AI, there are some things I find to be very helpful for other things. I find it to be a little bit helpful for, and some things I just can't see it ever helping me, and the things that I find it to be most helpful for is something that we both do a lot as oncologists, which is sorting through hundreds and hundreds of medical records from the vets that are referring cases to us. We still have to look through it, but AI actually can do a remarkable job going through a lot to pull out the important information, the background information needed, and I think has really helped us a lot of time in kind of that part of the assessment of the pets that I'm going to be seeing. There's a lot of companies and a lot of products that are now in what people refer to as the AI scribe space.
Dr. Gordon: So actually sort of listening to what we say during our consultations and helping to summarize those notes into, records and documentation for our clients, I think I would say that's more in the a little bit helpful. I've sort of a category for me. I feel like it's more fun to have a draft that I get to edit, as opposed to having to sit down and write a record from scratch. But they're never quite when I want them to be. And although I feel like it saves me time when I actually measure how much time it takes me to write a record from scratch versus editing one that somebody started for me was not as big a difference as I would otherwise have bought it to be. On that, to be a little bit interesting, and I'm sure they'll get better and they are getting better.
Dr. Gordon: And then the things I said before, like the things that I think are valuable and difficult things that we do of, you know, working with families and trying to help them feel good about the decisions that are best for their pet. I think it's going to be a long time before, you know, the robots are going to take out part of my job, and that's okay.
Dr. Venable: You know, the other area I found that AI's been helpful for me, and I'd be curious what your thoughts are sometimes just even going through literature, like when I'm trying to double check, like, is there anything new on this kind of treatment? Or I found searching sometimes through ChatGPT it finds more articles than I could find on my own with things like PubMed or Google Scholar things. So I think that for me so far has been a little bit helpful. What, have you used it that way or do you see it that way at all?
Dr. Gordon: I have used it a little bit, but I would say less for finding the literature. I think I am pretty good at thinking about all the different ways to search for things, and generally find what I what I need, although I'm oftentimes searching for a small number of papers because there's not a lot of radiation papers that are out there, but on the aspects of that that I do find really interesting and helpful is sometimes actually uploading the papers that I do think are the best papers on a subject into a tool, and whether that's a ChatGPT or another tool that I've started to really like is something called Notebook LM, which is a tool, and you can put papers in there, you can ask it to summarize those papers. You can sort of ask clinically relevant questions. And my new favorite thing to do is to ask it to create infographics from papers. And then to share those with people. It is pretty remarkable how it can simplify information, which is oftentimes really great for helping me to think about how to communicate information to somebody that doesn't have the background.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, that's a good idea. I hadn't thought about that, but that would be another good way. Just like using it as a teaching tool. Like, okay, how can I best, not dumb it down but explain it, you know, like especially graphic because I'm a very visual learner, so I can really lean into that. And one thing I was thinking as far as how I said I use it to search for papers. The other thing I found is if I type in things, what would be? Because sometimes I'm wondering also what owners are typing. And so just, you know, what would be the survival or what are the treatments. I'll find that there's quite a bit of errors because it will pull up papers that aren't even the same cancer. Like maybe it has a similar word, but it's not the same cancer. So that's something that I haven't had too many owners, because I don't think most of them know how to dive that deep with some of this, you know, like the stuff that I'm looking at. But that has been a red flag that I've noticed. Also more of just wanting to make sure other vets know it, you know, like because I don't know a ton about neurology. And so I could get misinformation, you know, if I was trying to search that way. So that's one thing that I have noticed that hopefully over time it will be able to tweak it better, but I have seen it pull from incorrect studies.
Dr. Gordon: Glad that you pointed that out. I think that does happen and may happen a lot to pet owners, and it's frustrating when it happens to us, but we are likely to sort of recognize that doesn't make sense based on what I know and to clarify it, whereas the average pet owner might not. And so for veterinarians, there are actually some really neat AI tools that are more strictly evidence based that come from the veterinary literature, much less likely to sort of be subject to those hallucinations. I'm an advisor for a company called OpenVet, which has a really, really neat and free tool for veterinary professionals to use to query about, you know, cases or to get information about medications. And those tools are getting pretty big, too. And it's been trying to build a tool that isn't going to be giving us bad information. It's like the last thing we can have is, of course, information out there to get incorrect information is unacceptable.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. We're trying to get the right one. So OpenVet. I've heard about it. But at the same time, I'm not really sure what it is. Is that just an online search platform? What is OpenVet?
Dr. Gordon: OpenVet is a tool that is, that all of its responses are informed by veterinary, evidence by by literature and textbooks. So all of the answers that it's going to pull for you come from evidence and are ranked based on the quality of the evidence. That is very, very different than a traditional large language model that is really just trying to, you know, give you what it thinks is a word based on everything that it can find in the history of the internet. And as you know, there's a lot of things on the internet that are not right.
Dr. Venable: Yes. Very true. Yeah. It's like you need to be selective of the selection. Yeah. Well that's really interesting. And so, you know, I'm, I love all the different things and hearing about some of the new technologies and some of the different groups and things that you're involved with in Open AI. So that's really interesting. The OpenVet. And, you know, the other thing I always like to ask too is, you know, as we're kind of wrapping up, is there any well, I guess there's a lot of different places in a way that people could find you if they if you ever want them to reach out for different services or things that you do, do
Dr. Venable: you have any, any great way or any like anything that you would recommend if people did have questions for you.
Dr. Gordon: If they're coming from the angle of startups or startup investing and the work we do have been the best place to go find us or website is www.vane.dot.
Dr. Venable: This has just been such a really interesting conversation. Like I said, it's sort of funny. I did so much vet prep and so I know I keep coming back to that, but it's like, wow, I'm actually meeting the founder. I can't help myself. I'm sorry, but I just thank you for doing that. And just all the many things you've done, I think are so exciting.
Dr. Venable: And finally, with this, I always like to ask people, who is another guest that you think would be good on the show?
Dr. Gordon: We're making me blush. I always makes me feel super good when people have used VetPrep and appreciated it and have such kind words, so thank you for that. In terms of other good people to speak with, I'll give you a few of my favorites. M.K. Klein in Arizona is a wonderful, wonderful person and probably can't be an even better oncologist, but she is outstanding at both.
Dr. Gordon: Siobhan Haney, Pennsylvania based radiation oncologist and entrepreneur. And then I know a few other people that come to mind if you haven't spoken to them or Michelle Turek, Kim Selting, maybe. Antonella Borgatti, I think you said you spoke to Chand Khanna, a few times. He would probably have been my first choice if I didn't know you'd already spoken to him. So there's a few good people.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, that's an awesome list. Thank you so much. We'll definitely have to reach out to those people. And again, Dr. Gordon, thank you so much. This has been a really interesting, exciting conversation.
Dr. Gordon: Thanks. Rachel. Pleasure talking to you.
Dr. Venable: Well, that's it for this episode of the Veterinary Cancer Pioneers podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and gained valuable insight, we would be so grateful if you could share our podcast with your friends and colleagues. And it would be even more wonderful if you want to give us a five-star rating, positive review, or any kind of feedback on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. The Veterinary Cancer Pioneers Podcast is presented to you by ImpriMed.