Skip to main content

COOL - Who We Are

Our Story

The Comparative Oral Oncology Laboratory was founded by Dr. Santiago Peralta and Dr. William Katt in the spring of 2022. The goal was simple – bring together the incredible power of the faculty at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine to advance the biological understanding of oral cancer, and to develop new treatment approaches of benefit to both humans and companion animals. Since then, we’ve grown! The COOL now includes over a half dozen faculty, dozens of trainees, and an incredible support network of staff, administrators, and incredibly generous donors. We are publishing multiple studies every year, running clinical trials, and shrinking tumors. It’s been an incredible story, and we hope to keep writing it for many years to come.

Peralta Santiago

Santiago Peralta, DVM, AVDC

Associate Professor & Diplomate – American Veterinary Dental College
Department of Clinical Sciences

Expertise:
Dr. Santiago Peralta is a board-certified veterinary dentist and oral and maxillofacial surgeon. His clinical and research interests focus on the diagnosis and treatment of oral diseases in companion animals, including oral tumors, oral and maxillofacial surgery, oral pathology, and comparative oncology. His work combines clinical care, translational research, and multidisciplinary collaboration to advance the understanding and treatment of oral cancers in companion animals.

Current Research Interests:

  • Comparative oncology approaches to naturally occurring cancers in dogs and cats
  • Biomarker discovery and precision medicine strategies for oral cancer
  • Translational studies investigating targeted therapeutics for oral malignancies
  • Clinical trials evaluating novel treatment approaches for oral tumors
  • Oral pathology and mechanisms of tumor progression in veterinary patients
  • Molecular characterization of oral tumors in companion animals

My Web Presence:

My Bibliography:

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pD2Aj64AAAAJ&hl=en

William Katt

William P. Katt

Senior Research Associate
Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences

Expertise:

  • Biochemistry 
  • Medicinal Chemistry
  • Drug Discovery
  • Cancer

Current Research Interests:
Canine & Feline Oral Tumors, Cancer Metabolism/Glutaminase, Glioblastoma Extracellular Vesicles

My Web Presence:
ORCID
Research Gate
LinkedIn

My Bibliography:
NCBI

Headshot of Praveen Sethupathy

Praveen Sethupathy, PhD

Professor of Physiological Genomics
Department Chair of Biomedical and Translational Sciences

Expertise:

Current Research Interests:

  • Comparative intestinal physiology and disease
  • Fibrolamellar carcinoma
  • Gene regulation
  • MicroRNAs
  • Functional genomics

My Web Presence:
PubMed
Research Gate

My Bibliography:

 

Charles Danko Headshot

Charles Danko, PhD

Associate Professor
Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences
Baker Institute for Animal Health

Expertise:
Genomics and gene regulation, using computational (statistical modeling, machine learning) and molecular approaches (GRO-seq, RNA-seq) to study how gene expression is encoded in DNA.

Current Research Interests:

  • How gene enhancers and transcriptional regulatory elements shape evolution, development, and disease, including how cancer cells like glioblastoma rewire gene expression.

My Web Presence:

My Bibliography:

Publications: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/charles.danko.1/bibliography/public/

Gerald Duhamel Headshot

Gerald Duhamel, DVM, PhD, DACVP

Professor of Anatomic Pathology
Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences
Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences

Expertise:

Dr. Duhamel is a board-certified Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists and a Professor of Anatomic Veterinary Pathology. His professional activities include providing diagnostic pathology service at the New York State Animal
Health Diagnostic Center while mentoring anatomic pathology residents and senior veterinary students. His translational research interests focus on the development and assessment of animal models of cancer and intestinal diseases. Ongoing collaborations with a large team of basic scientists and clinical colleagues at Cornell have led to major advancements in uncovering critical biological mechanisms
and implementing targeted therapies for canine oral cancer. Other collaborative research informs the anatomical and pathophysiological consequences of intestinal lymphatic alterations in spontaneous diseases of dogs and engineered laboratory mice.

Current Research Interests:
 

My Web Presence:

My Bibliography:
NCBI

Jacquelyn Evans with dog, Captain

Jacquelyn Evans, PhD

Assistant Professor
Baker Institute for Animal Health

Expertise:

  • Canine genetics
  • Genomics
  • Transcriptomics

Current Research Interests:

  • Identifying the genetic basis of diseases in dogs and cats; canine & feline oral tumors

My Web Presence:
Lab website: https://caninegeneticslab.vet.cornell.edu/

Bibliography:
PubMed bibliography: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1bmqTBriPzcQY/bibliography/public/