About Us
Our mission
Providing the highest quality veterinary medical diagnostic services for laboratory animal health surveillance, veterinary patient care and research support.
Our history
The development of a lab animal diagnostic laboratory at UC Davis began in the late 80's as part of the Animal Resources Service (ARS) under Dale Brooks. Its main objective was to provide health monitoring for rodent research colonies and diagnostic support for all animals used in research at UC Davis. Dave Knudson, then Rick Ermel followed by Stephen Griffey directed these activities.
In 1998, Stephen Griffey proposed to develop the laboratory animal diagnostic program with a specific emphasis on mouse diagnostics and anatomic phenotyping to serve the needs of not only the School of Veterinary Medicine and UC Davis, but also the other UC laboratory animal programs. There were several other programs developed at UC Davis at this time that also supported the development of the CPL. These included the formation of the Center for Comparative Medicine, the Mouse Biology Program (an NIH Mutant Mouse Regional Resource and Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Center), a UC Davis partnership with The Jackson Laboratory, as well as the needs of the other UC lab animal programs. The Comparative Pathology Laboratory was formalized as a self-supporting service unit in the School of Veterinary Medicine in July 2000.
In July 2018, Denise Imai-Leonard became director of CPL. Her new initiatives have included the restructure of residency/fellowship programs, the development and implementation of zebrafish and xenopus health surveillance programs and the expansion of research pathology services. She has strengthened collaborative ties to the California National Primate Research Center and University of Washington and expanded national and international recognition for the lab animal pathology training program through a web-based platform for pathology rounds.
