Liza Dadone

Liza Dadone

Aug 01, 2019

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We treated Mashama the giraffe with stem cells WITHOUT anesthesia!!

Mashama the giraffe was trained to get stem cell therapy by voluntary IV injection. He did great!

Once a stem cell line has been grown, the next big challenge is how to administer the treatment. Giraffe anesthesia has many challenges and risks, so the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo team decided to build on trained blood-draw behaviors to see if we could give stem cells to one of our arthritic giraffe and avoid anesthesia. For the past couple months, we have been working with Mashama to make sure he would voluntarily stand in place when given cold IV fluids by jugular injection. He has a fantastic training and vet team, and was soon solid on this training. Two weeks ago we did Mashama's first treatment with stem cells, giving about 40 ml (almost 400 million stem cells) by jugular injection to help with his arthritis and healing after a bad sprain. We're hoping his clinical case will help us learn more about the potential applications and benefits of stem cell therapy in giraffe. Thanks for helping us develop these new therapies for giraffe!

For more details, please see http://www.cmzoo.org/index.php/about-the-zoo/press-box/waterhole/article1-july2019/

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About This Project

Arthritis is common in geriatric giraffe. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is uniquely suited to help find better arthritis treatments, as we have a large herd of 16 giraffe that are trained for voluntary blood draws. Funding this project would allow us to grow stem cells from giraffe blood samples and then use stem cell therapy for a geriatric giraffe. The giraffe will be monitored with bloodwork and thermal imaging to determine if stem cells can help decrease inflammation.

Blast off!

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