Dr. Klein: You feel sort of driven to contribute to the profession that has given you so much. And I think by participating in these clinical trials, we do that a little bit. By training people, we do that a little bit. I mean, end of the day, the first and foremost objective was the quality of life of the patients we were taking care of. And all those things together were just lit a fire in me. It was just exactly what I wanted to do.
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.
I'm your host, Dr. Rachel Venable, and today I am so excited to welcome our guest, Dr. Mary Kay Klein. Dr. Klein has been in veterinary oncology for quite a while now. And one of the pioneers, I would say with all she's done in research and clinical practice. So she's based actually in Southern Arizona in Tucson. She's an owner of Southern Arizona Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center. She got her degree, University of Arizona, raised in Tucson, went to Colorado where she went to veterinary school, graduated with honors, came back to Arizona, and has been practicing but also got board-certified in radiation oncology. Had going back and forth between Arizona and Colorado for her medical oncology and radiation oncology.
She's been the president of the Veterinary Cancer Society, author of numerous articles, textbooks, you know has been involved with multiple clinical trials. and different products. So it'd be interesting to see all the different things that you've seen from the beginning to commercial or things that haven't made it. And also, as I mentioned, she is a practice owner of not just oncology, but a specialty center. So that's also something we're not seeing a lot about. And I think it'd be great to learn more from Dr. Klein. So Dr. Klein, again, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show today.
Dr. Klein: Oh, thank you, Rachel. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And I'm, I'm looking forward to sharing some of my experiences and my insights during this long career that I've had.
Dr. Venable: It's a very impressive word. Like I said, all the stuff you've been involved with all the different products and studies. And, you know, Dr. Henry, when she was on the podcast, she had mentioned you and working with you on different things and just since I'm talking about studies and different products what's the most memorable one that you can think of either the clinical trial or what the final product was?
Dr. Klein: We were just finishing up the clinical trial for Maropitant before it went into production and at that same time we were doing the clinical trial for Toceranib that's now called Palladia and they chose our site for an FDA audit. We did just fine with the guys who were sponsoring the studies came and kind of held our hand through all of it. That was another learning experience and probably the most memorable one from those studies.
Dr. Venable: Right the FDA, that's just kind of intimidating, you know, when you hear those initials I feel like even if you're doing everything right it just makes you a little nervous. Did you have to do a lot of paperwork? What's involved with an FDA trial?
Dr. Klein: So the FDA trial has certain standards that are a little bit more rigorous than some of the others and you have to basically everything you say you're going to do you have to do and you have to be able to prove it and there has to be a paper trail for everything. We just had to put everything together and then they go through it with the fine tooth comb and any questions that they have they bring to our attention, but yeah it's a little nerve-wracking because you're pretty sure you've done it all right.
You've been trying to follow all the rules and so you're hoping we haven't had an infraction anywhere that you weren't aware of. It was like a three-day visit. They literally go through everything line by line, as they should. It was great. You know, the Marobitant was pretty straightforward and they said, "Well, as long as we're here, we're going to look at the Toceranib data as well." And we were like, "Okay." So it was fine.
Dr. Venable: Glad it all worked out because 'Cause like I said, I can imagine that was intimidating. And those are two huge products, you know, Cerenia, palladia, you know, certainly as an oncologist, we use them all the time. So that is exciting. How do you get involved? You know, as a private practice, I think sometimes we don't really know, you know, we always think of it as universities. And I know when I've been in practice, sometimes it was hard to know like, how do I even get involved with trials? Also, how did you become such an important site for all these different drugs?
Dr. Klein: Well, a couple of things. You know, there weren't a lot of us in the beginning and there weren't a lot of us that were really interested in participating in the clinical trials. You had to make sure that people knew that you were interested. And then you needed to do a good job to get asked to do the next one.
And ACI, the group in Washington has been a wonderful leader in this. They really make sure there's... the protocols are appropriate and that they're easy to follow and they hand hold and provide all the support that you need. It's very important if you're going to participate in them, you have to have a staff member who is committed to making sure that all of the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted. I mean, it's just, a lot of times it's just a signature, sometimes it's a query I need to address, but they make sure that all of those are addressed. in a timely fashion.
Anymore, we're usually filling out the records in real time. We're filling them out as we see the patient, and it's done virtually with cloud -based systems, which is a lot easier than, you know, in the old days when we did them all on paper and got them shuttled back and forth. But yeah, you really need one person whose job it is to make sure that all of the parameters of the clinical trial are being addressed in a timely fashion.
Dr. Venable: And who would you recommend that person be? Is it usually a technician, manager, receptionist? Who's usually that in charge of the trials?
Dr. Klein: For me, it's a technician. Her medical knowledge is solid. She knows what we're trying to do. Yeah, and sometimes she's involved in the study and sometimes she's just overseeing it. For at least at our side, our technician has been the key person. And that really helped. Once it wasn't my job anymore. anymore, once I had somebody to help follow me around and make sure I was getting it all done in a timely fashion, that made a difference.
Dr. Venable: Oh, I’m sure. And that makes a lot of sense, you know, having a point person for all this. Because like you said, there can be extra paperwork, extra things that you don't necessarily do as part of your regular medical records. And why would you say that you are so interested in being involved with trials? Because, you know, you're already busy, you run a practice, you're seeing cases. so what got you into being involved with trials too?
Dr. Klein: Steve Withrow was really an inspiration for me.I mean, he made oncology so much fun when I was in school and they had all those research trials they were, you know, involved in and the enthusiasm was just infectious and certainly it brought to the forefront how we never stop learning, I mean, ever. And so there's always an new question to ask there's so many new and exciting products that are being looked at and And Steve really brought all that out and you feel sort of driven to contribute to the profession that has given you so much and I think by participating in these clinical trials we do that a little bit by training people we do that a little bit there just but his passion and his drive for oncology was really infectious, and he did it always in a very compassionate setting. I mean, end of the day, the first and foremost objective was the quality of life of the patients we were taking care of and all those things together were just lit a fire in me. It was just exactly what I wanted to do. And I think that's one of the things I've enjoyed most about oncology, is I feel like I learn something new every day. Sometimes it's a big league, sometimes it's just a different a case that presented in a slightly different way that I hadn't seen before. But and it inspires you to keep up on the journals because you need to be current and you've got to be able to. And it's happening so fast that you've got to always be learning, always be adding to your knowledge base, always, hopefully adding to your arm and materium. But it's just a never-ending project. It's I've loved every minute. of it and I've been doing it for 40 years now.
Dr. Venable: That's great. And it sounds like a good recipe to how to keep going, right? I like that you said, you know, keep learning, find that passion. Otherwise, I think it's, it's easy to fall into a regular pattern, but that doesn't necessarily give you as much joy at the end of the day or keeping that lasting career, you know, when you're doing that. So, So that's excellent, learning new things, keeping up with journals and it is hard to keep up. I feel like in oncology we've had so new products, you know, between testing and treatments that have come out in the last few years. So what else do you do other than reading journals to try to keep up with everything?
Dr. Klein: So the journals are a lot of it. Of course, you know, I find the sites that I think I find the most useful information from going to the meetings and just staying in contact with my peers. The folks that I know that are similarly interested in research are always just a font of information for me and it is a matter of just always looking and always paying attention and always learning and then something that I need to learn more about because they're doing something I don't learn very much about. I've got to take it upon myself to do that because you know 35 years ago we didn't have a CT scanner in the veterinary teaching hospital. I have one in my office now, you know, and genomic testing unheard of.
I mean, there's just so many things that I have had to teach myself or go to conferences to get caught up on. But if you… that lifelong learning, I think is what is so rewarding about our profession. And we now that I'm teaching veterinary students. I try to instill in them, again, that part of their career is lifelong learning. If you stop learning when you graduate from veterinary school, you will not be a good veterinarian, you will not fulfill the needs of your clients. You have to, I think that's what makes it wonderful. So hopefully, I can convince them that's the case.
Dr. Venable: Yes, I think that's, you bring up a lot of good points. you know about learning more and that's how yeah you can't just stay doing the same thing whether you're an oncologist or you know dermatologist, family vet you have to keep learning. I use something I think I don't think I mentioned it when I was doing your introduction but you're teaching now at the University of Arizona so they have the new vet school there and are you full-time faculty there what what is your appointment?
Dr. Klein: I'm quarter time there. because I have these other jobs that I have to do as well. But basically in each of their systems classes you know we teach the oncology part and then we do an oncology selective for them. Dr. Carolyn Wood is in my office as well and the two of us each have a quarter-time commitment so that they basically have access to us all the time and yeah we do a whole oncology selective for them in the summertime that Dr. Wood taken the lead on which is awesome. A lot of their advanced clinical cases will do oncology cases that can incorporate a lot of different systems into them and I try to always base them on cases I've actually seen like hey guys this is a case that's come in the clinic because we teach them differently than how when I went to veterinary school it's all application based. So they actually have to do a lot of purpose. prep work and then when they come in for our sessions, we're applying that knowledge in a case-based format and which I think helps them retain it more accurately and gets them more comfortable with how do we approach this case, how to think, not what to think, how to think, what's a logical approach to treating this patient appropriately, what are the things I need to know, what are the things I don't know yet that I need to find out before I can give the owner the best options for treating this patient? So I've really enjoyed the teaching a lot.
I love watching the light comes on and the student's eyes where they're like, oh, that makes perfect sense, you know? I like watching them teach each other. They do it in a team-based format, and sometimes one person learns it a little bit differently. People learn in different ways, and so they help each other with that. One may have understood it a little bit better. I love watching them teach each other. I love watching them get it and apply it appropriately, and it gives me great confidence that they're going to be good veterinarians of the future.
Dr. Venable: That's awesome. And I loved how you said it's important how to think. Right. And I think in our day and age where there's so much knowledge and technology really just at your fingertips, you know, you can find a lot of things. Our pet owners, find a lot of things. You know, they come to us sometimes with great questions. And so I like what you said about it's how to think is that really is the really important part anymore. It's not the challenge of finding the information, it's knowing how to apply it. You know, what do you do next? What you know, thinking of that sequence. So it's to me, it seems like that next level of learning.
Dr. Klein: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Venable: I'm speaking of students, what got you into oncology? Was that when you were a vet student, or were you interested in that before?
Dr. Klein: Actually, my oncology rotations in veterinary school with Steve Wither are what really piqued my interest. Yeah, that was that was where it all started. I remember it being a very busy service. I mean, we had lots of patients, but I learned so much and and I loved it. It was and I still do.
Dr. Venable: Oh, that's great. You got to do your residency there with Withrowe at Colorado. So you got a lot of exposure with him and he is a very charismatic person. He was only on, I caught him at the tail end. Yeah, he's very memorable, great guy for sure.
Dr. Klein: He'll inspire you.
Dr. Venable: Yes. Yes for sure. And talking about the the clinics and kind of shifting gears a little bit because I want to talk some about how you're an owner, you know, I don't know too many oncologists that own their own practice, but I think that's great. And also, you know, just seems like more and more clinics are being ran by corporates or bought by corporates, you know, lots of different things happening in the profession. And, and you don't just run oncology, you own a specialty. Are you a co-owner full owner? What does that look like?
Dr. Klein: I have a partner. We co-own the internal medicine service and the emergency clinic and then we leased to privately owned, well actually not anymore, they've all got bought out by corporate except for one, but at the end of the day I feel like veterinarians we're very careful people and we care a lot and at the end of the day it's our license and at the end of the day we don't want somebody who's not a veterinarian making a lot of decisions for us. I mean I kind of stumbled into being a practice owner. You know, it was very early in the whole world of oncology that weren't many of us around. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make a living just doing oncology. Gladly, I discovered that I could. We built the first veterinary specialty hospital in Arizona, myself and Dr. Ruben Mair, who is an ophthalmologist for partners in that venture. And I remember we had a party before we opened it up and we're like, you know, is this a good idea? We don't really know yet. It's a good idea. This can be creative. If not, we're going to eat a lot of hot dogs and beans for a long time, but it all worked out.
And I think the big advantage to being privately owned, at least for us in oncology, is if we want to participate in a clinical trial, we're very nimble. We participate in the clinical trial. We don't need anybody's permission. I think that makes us a lot easier to work with in many ways. And at the end of the day, it's veterinarians making decisions, not a distant office figure. That's probably I think it's biggest advantage. We can make adjustments quickly. If something needs to change, we change it. It doesn't have to go any permission, you know, chain of events type of thing. So I've enjoyed owning my own practice. It adds to the workload because now you're managing employees, everything's, you know, you gotta balance the book. You're very cognizant of the financial part as well as the oncology part. But when you're doing your oncology part well, the financial part pretty much falls into place as long as you're watching.
It sounds really frightening, I think, to a lot of people to own their own practice. I just didn't have any other choice. I mean, if I wanted to do an oncology, that was me, you know, and it's really not that bad. It's just, it is a different hat. You get better at looking at P&L statements and budgets and that's all good information to have. That tells you in good stead in your personal life as well. I mean, knowing how to balance a budget and knowing how to to look at a statement, knowing how to control your costs, those are things we do in everyday life anyway. And here we're just applying it to a business.
Dr. Venable: No, I think that's great how you took the leap, because that was quite the leap of faith. It sounds like between just knowing, will this even work in the area? And like you said, you didn't really have a lot of choice. But I mean, I'm sure you did. I think it was great that you still did this and it's been successful. You guys have been around for how many years now?
Dr. Klein: We opened up the specialty hospital in 1994. So… long time. We'll be what, 30 years next year.
Dr. Venable: Yeah, you guys will have to celebrate for sure. Your 30th.
Dr. Klein: We did celebrate our 25th. That was a good milestone. So yes.
Dr. Venable: That's fantastic. And what would you recommend for anybody that wants to know? maybe thinking about opening their own practice or, you know, partnering with somebody, any tips as far as, like you said, it does seem pretty overwhelming when you just say it like, oh, I'm going to own this, it just, it feels like a lot.
Dr. Klein: So you probably should establish some groundwork research that you need to fulfill. You know, at the end of the day, the money always adds up to 100%. And there are certain percentages of it. that have to, you know, you need to know how much my budget is going to go towards payroll, how much of it's going to go towards hospital supplies, how much of it can I afford to go to rent, how much money do I want to have left over, how big of an EBITDA do I want to have? Having a good grasp of that, I probably could have done that a lot better. I know a lot more now than I did then.
The problem back then was the graphics that they had, the templates that were in place for veterinary practice were not necessarily applicable to specialty practice. 'Cause specialty practice was just, especially practice in private practice was just starting to be a thing at that point in time. So the numbers are a little bit different depending on which specialty you're going to enter into but that data is now pretty readily available out there. So you do need a little bit of, it's really just common sense. you know, there's only so many dollars, it never adds up to 110%, it only adds up to a hundred percent of your revenue, and having a good grasp of those kinds of benchmarks for your practice will eliminate a lot of the angst, you know what I mean? You're like, my numbers are online, this is gonna work out. I had run a restaurant for my mom before I went and did my veterinary school career, so I had a little bit of acumen as far as payroll and taxes and those kinds of things, but I probably would have benefited from knowing a little bit more, but at that point in time, the numbers weren't even out there. We didn't know. There weren't very many, I think one or two private oncology practices out there, but most of what was still being done in academia. And Tucson's not a very big town. That was the other thing I worried about, but Tucson's been wonderful. And it's home for me. It's, you know, my mom was born here. We're six generation deep. My nieces and nephews and siblings and everybody are here. And, and so at the end of the day, I do think it's important that you practice where you want to. And I would say for me, there's no place like home. And this is home.
Dr. Venable: So it sounds like you've got deep roots there, six generations in Arizona. I don't think I've ever heard that. So that that's impressive, for sure.
Dr. Klein: My grandparents came out here. here in 1925 and we still all get together at Christmas. It's awesome.
Dr. Venable: Big Christmas parties, I'm sure. Yeah, no, that's awesome. And, you know, with running your own practice and things and what are some of the main changes or challenges you've seen in the last, you know, over your career because... 'cause I'm sure you've seen it go up and down in all kinds of ways. So what would you say, you know, oncology and then even like just practice ownership in general, what have you seen change over the years?
Dr. Klein: Oh gosh, it's kind of become a big business, which is why the corporations have become interested in it. It's attractive to them 'cause it's a, you know, a cash-based business for the most part. I think insurance will change things again a little bit for us. Those are kind of some of the things I see changing in the future. I think the amazing thing about having done it for 40 years is we can offer so much more now than we could in the past.
The downside of that is it's considerably more expensive and so in many ways having a pet and doing everything that there is to do is a luxury for a lot of people. I like to tell my clients there's never a right or wrong decision. We just have to figure out what's the best decision for you. That means lots of education for the clients as well, so that they're very comfortable with their decisions. I think those challenges will always be out there, but that's, you know, that's a big hit. It's getting to be quite expensive to aggressively treat your cherished members of your family. And insurance kind of carried that burden on the human realm. I think more and more of it will come into the pet realm, but interim, it's a challenge some days, trying to figure out what's best for everybody past.
Dr. Venable: Cos is. It is interesting. And it seems like, you know, I'm hearing more conversations about spectrum of care and kind of what they're talking about with some of those lectures is, you know, like here's the Cadillac, here's the, you know, I don't know why I did a car reference, I'm so terrible at cars, I don't know. And whatever the next, the compact car here, you know, the other things down. Because I agree with you, I think it is so important to tell people, you know, there's no right or wrong answer, especially in oncology, because there's so much involved, you know, there's finances, there's emotions, there's everything.
But I think in veterinary in general, that is something, you know, I think it helps to release some of that guilt from people, if you say like, there's no right or wrong, so they don't feel that they have to try to afford everything when they can't because I'm sure you heard tons of stories. I've heard stories over the years where people take on massive credit card debt or they actually take out a mortgage on their house and do things like that. It's scary. It's not wise. I don't like hearing people take big risky medical choices in the sense that I've also met clients who went medically bankrupt on themselves you know for their own health care. So I'm sure you've seen all kinds of things in the past. And just even with your experience in both radiation and medical oncology, how do you think from your years of experience plus doing both specialties, how do you think that forms how you practice now? I know we kind of talked about that spectrum of care a bit. Do you think, are there any other elements that you noticed that maybe you do differently now than you did early on in your career?
Dr. Klein: Well, early on a lot of it wasn't available. It has always encouraged me to be very comprehensive in how I think about approaching my cases because I have been lucky enough to have both the medical and the radiation you know facilities pretty readily available. And I have been spoiled I think by that I can't imagine doing without either one of those.
I always want to make sure I have those available for my clients when I can. It gives you some more options that I wouldn't have. For example, the palliative radiation therapies that we do that are really, really aimed towards relief of pain. That is part of that comprehensive spectrum that you talked about. So I think I've been spoiled by doing both and having both of them readily available. And it has allowed me to be much more comprehensive in my treatment approaches. And it's allowed me to participate in more research projects because I do have both available. So it's been good. Before I went and did my residency, I worked with the Animal Cancer Therapy Study at the University of Arizona when Mark Dewhirst was here before he went to Duke and that was all radiation based. And then when I got to Colorado, it was all medical oncology based with just a glimmer of exposure to the radiation part. That was, I realized by that point in time, having both is good. Having both readily available gives you a lot more options. And that's probably one of the things that inspired me to, despite the fact that I was a single parent having to make a living, to study and take another set of boards for radiation oncology a few years later when they became, they weren't available. That was especially that came in the mid-90s. It just allows me to have so many more options if I have both.
Dr. Venable: Having options is certainly nice for people. And I think even clinical... trials sometimes that's probably been a good way that you can help people because sometimes they subsidize things you don't make it a little less expensive or it's just having that new option that wasn't available before so it does sound like you like to have all the different options available and utilize them which I think is great. I think often we get kind of scared or nervous and just keep doing the same thing so I really admire how you expand and try new things. I can't imagine taking boards with a child. So that's sort of, you know, studying really more than the taking, but that is awesome. And what would you say is probably the most rewarding thing of working in oncology?
Dr. Klein: Oh, there's so many of them. Certainly those one year and two year and three year rechecks, I mean, those are awesome when you have those and you get to celebrate those. We just graduated our first class last year and I already have a student that went on and did an internship and is applying for an oncology residency this year. You know, hopefully I was part of that inspiration.
There's so many rewards that come with it. For us too, it's a financial investment and an emotional investment, you know what I mean? And that's kind of how I break it down for the clients a lot of time, but for the kids that are going to go on and do postgraduate learning, more financial commitment for them that they might have originally planned on, but they've been so many rewards in it. Watching products that we've done in clinical trials come into the main state treatment regimen. You know, that's been very rewarding. Publishing papers and then teaching the students is really rewarding. It's a most fulfilling career, at least as far as I'm concerned. It does come with its challenges. You know, you were talking about educating people as far as the try to always break it down that way. You know, this is a financial investment, which is you can be objective about that. That's something you have to and you have to be objective about. It's a huge emotional investment, which is much harder to quantify. And a lot of times I have to remind them that the one thing I cannot do is make their pet younger. If I could do that, I wouldn't be working anymore. They have to take that into consideration. You know, I will tell them the last thing in the world this pet wants is for you to not have a roof over your head, or for you not to be able to send your kids to college. There's just things that are really hard to quantify that are part of that emotional investment that you have to really make sure they're thinking about when they get ready to make their decision to treat and make sure they're comfortable with their decision. And so educating the clients I think is also part of the rewards that I get from this. They get on the team. We do it together. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we change our definition of winning. Sometimes it doesn't go like we want, but we've done it together. And those things are incredibly rewarding.
Dr. Venable: I agree. I think knowledge is power. You know, even with our clients, I feel like so often once they understand, you know, what they're facing, what their options are, they just calm down. And there is that, you know, a sense of, not relief, but just that they have a better, they're almost a sense of control. in some way, because now they feel like, okay, well, I can choose to do X, Y, Z, and understand what that could look like, you know, and I think that is one of the things that's unique to oncology that we get to do is help people and walk them through a challenging chapter in their life. And I like how you talk about how you do that and how you work through it and comfort, it is such a a big deal I think in oncology too because a lot of times we're not looking at huge amounts of time so how do you balance sometimes with you know some of the different drugs or even clinical trials with side effects or that kind of thing how do you approach that with clients or just for yourself how do you balance or reason out some of those potential side effects.
Dr. Klein: Again it's all about education and I tell them we're always going to look at this from a real risk-benefit ratio. What are my chances of helping with this drug modality procedure, whatever? What are my chances of hurting? And we want those numbers to be heavily in our favor, and if they're not, we're probably not doing the right thing. So I try to actually give them numbers as best I can, and again, it's all about educating them. You know, for example, with some of the chemotherapy drugs, we would say... one out of 20 may have an episode of febrile neutropenia that we have to address. They live through that, but it gets more expensive. But the chances are this amount. And then I go through the mechanism of action and tell them why they're at risk for that. Then they understand why they're coming back to get that recheck CBC seven to ten days later. It's not something that they think I'm doing just for fun. They know it's it's an important part of keeping their pets safe and doing our job as best we can. So education of the client is is paramount in raising their comfort levels and in increasing their compliance in the clinic as well.
Dr. Venable: And it sounds like not just education but you also help to set expectations. You know they understand kind of what this whole process looks like and give them knowledge about why doing that process. So I think that's great. I think that really helps. Sometimes in our society, right, it can be a little bit more litigious and it seems like from a lot of times where people start fighting, it's all communication issues. So I like what you're saying, knowledge and setting expectations, I think that helps things set the ground level and then just building from that. And so if there are issues, then nobody is completely shocked and we know how to work work through it and everybody work as a team. I think that's really the most you can hope for with a lot of those situations when things don't always go like we want.
Dr. Klein: And I'd like to provide them with as much hard data as I can data rules the world. And so, you know, when we get back to that risk benefit ratio, I can say, so my chances of hurting are 5% my chances of helping are 80% plus that ratio is in our favor. You know, if we're getting a 50/50, then we got to think about this. And it also, the outcomes make a difference. If you get a big win by taking that risk, that's great. If you just find a couple more weeks, that's not so much of a, you know, so yeah, education, hard data, just knowledge. You're exactly right. At the end of the day, knowledge is everything. And that's what allows the clients to make the best. best decision that they can.
Dr. Venable: I love that. I feel like you can coin that phrase. The knowledge and making the best decision that they can. I think that's perfect. And kind of with knowledge, what would you say is some of the more exciting technology that's coming out, just even in veterinary medicine? I feel like there's been a lot of new products in the last five years. What are you the most excited about?
Dr. Klein: So I'll be really glad to see some of the immunotherapy products, the immune checkpoint inhibitors in particular come into the clinic because they have been such a game changer in the human realm. We just have been held back by the fact that they haven't been in production for us. So I think that's huge. And then all of the genomics that's coming out, that's data and huge algorithms that mine the data from that little tiny liquid biopsy that we turned in. But starting to, you know, we're catching up to our human counterparts in that field. but we're getting there. Those two things right now, I think are huge. We'll see what it is. 10 years from now will be something different, but right now those are both two really exciting areas that we're just coming into our own on.
Dr. Venable: I agree, they're definitely hot topics. The immunotherapy, the genomics. I think it's all very exciting, where everything is heading. And yeah, it'll be interesting. Who knows in ten years what the conversation will be. So it is exciting to think about all that. And I really love the show with you. I think we hit so many big topics with clinical trials, owning practice knowledge and communication with people.
And just even as you mentioned, some of the stuff, even as a business owner, for your personal life is important. And I think some of that knowledge and data and expectations in our personal lives could be helpful to the more we learn to just be better communicators and all the exciting products and trials and different things that are going on, and it's just really neat to see. And and I could only imagine how things have looked, you know, like when you started with, Withrow and it was all kind of the Wild West, I think probably back then. And where we are now, it's I'm sure you've seen quite the swing and that's very exciting.
Dr. Klein: It's been exciting to be a part of it. It's it's been rewarding fun, all the things that you could ask out of a career. I've gotten out of this one.
Dr. Venable: So inspiring. And I love how you didn't sit back, you got on your horse and rode with the rest of the cowboys. I think it's great.
Dr. Klein: I didn't know any better.
Dr. Venable: I think it's awesome how you participated and involved so much with this, with our field and really helped to make it what it is today. And as we're wrapping things up, one last question for you. So, do you have anyone else that you would recommend to be on this podcast?
Dr. Klein: You know, I think you would really enjoy talking to Dr. Elizabeth McNiel. She works with me now, which is awesome, but she has worked, you know, in academia, she's worked in private practice, she's worked for pharma. So I think she could bring some pretty unique information on the pros and cons of each one of those things. Since she's done them all, I think she's the only person I can think of who's actually done all of of them.
And if you can ever get Steve on here, you know, Withrow, he'd be great. You know, we're just now getting to where those of us that were in the beginning, all of this are starting to retire. And so I don't want the guys that retire on, I don't want to lose their fountain of knowledge either, you know, they're always going to be, that's just the kind of people we are, we're going to just keep learning. We love puzzles, we love logic, we love learning. And so we just keep going.
But yeah, I think Dr. McNiel would bring some pretty unique... perspectives because she's done all three of the big areas that the oncologist end up in. She's participated in all three and would have some good information on what are the pros and cons of each. Hopefully she'll finish her career here in private practice with us.
Dr. Venable: Good. That's not really interesting. I'm with you. I don't think I know anyone that's done pharma kind of a little bit of everything. So that is really cool. So we're certainly, we'll definitely need to reach out to her. So, and we'll thank you again, Dr. Klein. It's been my pleasure to have you on the show today. And, you know, anyone that's looking for you, you are at University of Arizona and Southwest Veterinary Specialty and Oncology. Is that right?
Dr. Klein: Southwest Veterinary Oncology. And yes, the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dr. Venable: Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for being on our show today.
Dr. Klein: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
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.