CCTS Staff Sessions
Meet Holly Borghese, DVM!
Q: What is your role at CCTS?
A: I oversee the Veterinary Biospecimen Repository, a component of the Comparative and Translational Medicine Program of the CCTS.
Q: How do you think the CCTS is impacting medicine?
A: It is coordinating a vast number of resources to speed the benchtop to bedside pipeline to new diagnostics and therapies. In my area, as researchers continue to learn the value of spontaneous disease models in pets, there is more collaboration between veterinary and human medicine. We know this can save time and money in the pre-clinical phase of development.
Q: What is one thing you want everyone to know about the CCTS?
It is a valuable source of information you don’t find elsewhere (may not even know where to look!).
Q: What is your favorite thing about the CCTS?
A: The emphasis on making sure our research has a felt impact on the communities around us.
Q: What do you do in your pass-time?
A: Run, walk, or just hang out with my dogs. Gardening. I am working on converting my front yard to a native plant/pollinator garden.
Q: What was your dream job when you were a kid?
A: Veterinarian
Q: What's your typical day like?
A: My days can vary quite a bit. Some days I am racking up 15,000 steps, running up down the stairs collecting tumors from surgery and processing the samples in my lab. Other days can be spent at my desk do data entry or searches, emails, meetings, and working out details on requested materials. Some days seem like they are all problem solving.
Q: If you could have a meal with 3 famous people (dead or alive), who would they be and why?
A: John Adams, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Michelle Obama
These are three people I respect and admire, and I would love to listen to the conversation they would have amongst themselves.
Q: Favorite band/song?
A: Right now? Any song from the Disney movie Encanto. So much insight in a movie supposedly made for kids.
In my whole life? Almost anything by Simon and Garfunkle. Yep, I’m that old.
Favorite line, though? It runs through my head quite often.
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
Bob Dylan