The mission of the VCIC is to promote and advance veterinary medicine, by coordinating and efficiently implementing high quality clinical studies designed to identify novel approaches to disease diagnosis, management, and prevention.
Who We Are
The VCIC staff is comprised of clinical research operations professionals, veterinarians and clinical research nurses. The operations staff assists with contracts, proposals and business related matters. Veterinarians with advanced training in epidemiology, biostatistics and clinical trial design assist clinicians and principal investigators with protocol development and study design. The veterinary clinical research nurses in the center provide clinician support and project management while also providing high quality patient care.
What We Do
About Translational Research: In translational research, laboratory science and clinical medicine collaborate to develop novel therapeutics to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease.
The Role of the Penn Vet VCIC: The Penn Vet Veterinary Clinical Investigations Center (VCIC) bridges the gap between bench-to-bedside by conducting clinical trials on client-owned animals where diseases occur organically rather than the laboratory model where diseases are introduced artificially. Not only does translational medicine in the veterinary setting benefit the pets we aim to treat, but it brings us one step closer to treating humans with comparable disease processes.
Our Hospitals
Our Sponsors
VCIC-managed clinical trials are sponsored by external foundations and industry, including pharmaceutical and pet food companies, as well as internal funding provided by Penn Vet’s Department of Clinical Sciences & Advanced Medicine. Our trials include FDA- and USDA-regulated studies. All studies are conducted to the level of GCP / VICH GL9 regardless of whether data will be submitted to a regulatory agency.
Our Partners & Collaborators
The VCIC collaborates with institutions including:
Penn Vet is also part of the Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium, an active network of twenty academic comparative oncology centers centrally managed by the NIH-NCI Center for Cancer Research's Comparative Oncology Program.