Federal Funding Protects California’s Future
Sustained Government Funding Powers FIP Treatment, Alzheimer’s Technology and Water-Efficient Farming
When Tommy Ma and Tiffany Pan adopted a 3-month-old Ragdoll kitten named Lychee in 2022, they expected joy, not heartbreak.
“Lychee was a dream come true,” Pan said. “Growing up, I’d never been allowed to have any large pets. Even cats are considered a large pet in my family.”
Just weeks after coming home, Lychee fell gravely ill. He began showing signs of feline infectious peritonitis, or FIP, a disease that was once fatal for cats.
The disease, caused by a mutation in the common feline coronavirus, triggers a catastrophic immune response. It leads to inflammation, organ damage and, in nearly all cases, a rapid decline. But that’s starting to change. With groundbreaking research, a diagnosis of FIP is no longer a death sentence, and the implications may extend well beyond veterinary medicine.
In their search for answers, Ma and Pan discovered an experimental clinical trial at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. The university was among the few institutions testing a promising antiviral drug for FIP. Lychee was accepted into the trial.
The reaction was almost immediate.
“We saw the progression from him getting better, like he went from totally sleepy, not really wanting to eat at all, to suddenly playing with toys and eating food,” Pan said. “He was full of life again.”
Lychee’s recovery wasn’t just a personal miracle. It became part of a growing body of evidence that FIP can be treated, and that lessons learned in cats might offer insights for human medicine.
“The antiviral drug is proving to be really effective at killing the virus,” said Amir Kol, an associate professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at UC Davis. “It really revolutionized feline medicine — the fact that FIP is no longer a deadly disease and cats can survive that.”