About The Gluck Center

Many may well wonder what the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center is, and with good reason. Center officials do not shy from publicity, and its good works are numerous--but perhaps its audience has been limited primarily to veterinarians and other equine researchers.

Succinctly put, it is one of this nation's "small gems" in the equine research world.

Created in 1987 by officials of the University of Kentucky's Department of Veterinary Science in Lexington, Kentucky, it is, in fact, only one of three centers in the world dedicated exclusively to researching the diseases and physiological problems of the horse. From the very beginning, Gluck officials were successful in recruiting some of the top equine researchers in the nation, among them virologist E. Roger Doll, parasitologist J. Harold Drudge, and virologist John T. Bryans.

Doll was responsible, along with Gluck researcher Dr. William H. McCollum, in identifying the disease equine viral arteritis (EVA), and the two developed a vaccine to prevent it. Drudge was responsible for research in drug-resistant small strongyles in horses, which resulted in the development of new treatment for equine parasites. And Bryans was instrumental in developing vaccines to prevent strangles, salmonellosis, EVA, and herpes viral abortion. In fact, six of the 10 most commonly used vaccines on the market for horses today were developed at the Gluck Center.

These researchers are but a few of the esteemed scientists working at Gluck and their accomplishments represent a very abbreviated list of studies and achievements arising from the Gluck Center.

More recently, the Office of International des Epizootes (World Animal Health Organization) has recognized Drs. George Allen, Thomas Chambers, and Peter Timoney (the current director of the Gluck Center), as world experts in their fields: herpesvirus (equine rhinopneumonits), equine influenza, and EVA, respectively.

Today, research continues in the areas of epidemiology, immunogenetics, infectious diseases, immunology, musculoskeletal sciences, parasitology, pharmacology and toxicology, and reproductive physiology. Some of the current studies include those involving mapping of the equine genome, equine infectious anemia, leptospirosis and recurrent uveitis (moon blindness), clostridial enterotoxemia in foals, mare reproductive loss syndrome, the effects of aging on the horse's immune response, heritable diseases, fescue toxicosis and other environmental toxicoses, and ELISA test development for drugs of abuse--among many others.

Information garnered from investigations by the researchers at the Gluck Center is shared worldwide with practicing veterinarians, fellow researchers, and with the public.

And scientific findings from the Gluck Center will have benefits for people as a whole as well. Three studies in particular--investigations into arthritis, aging and immune response, and retroviral infections--will have cross-over benefits to the human medical field.

While the Gluck Center is centrally located in Kentucky's idyllic bluegrass region, home of some of the nation's most prosperous Thoroughbred horse farms, work done there is not restricted to breed nor to the affluence of a horse's owner. Work done at Gluck is done for the benefit of horses everywhere.