The veterinary student hunting invisible enemies
Charlotte Nyblade remembers the exact moment she knew she belonged in the world between what we can see and what we cannot.
She was 5 years old, crouched over a microscope in her mother's home office, watching goat parasites swim in perfect clarity under magnification. The invisible had become visible, and she was hooked.
"Wow, I like this," she recalled of her reaction to that first glimpse into another world. "Maybe not necessarily knowing what specifically that was, but I liked looking through the microscope."
Today, as a second-year student in the DVM/Ph.D. program at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Nyblade hunts different invisible enemies — viruses that can devastate both animal and human populations.
While most of her classmates prepare for careers treating the pets and livestock they can touch, Nyblade is training for a different kind of veterinary battle, one fought with immunofluorescence staining and the type of detective work that happens at the cellular level.
When veterinary medicine looks different
Most people picture veterinarians with stethoscopes around their necks and worried pet owners in their waiting rooms.
Nyblade's world is different. Breakthrough moments happen not when an animal walks out healthy, but when a virus glows bright green under specialized light.
"If you give me a pipette, oh, I'm fabulous, I feel like I'm in my element," she said.
Her path represents a facet of veterinary medicine that sometimes surprises those outside of it: Not all veterinarians will work with cats and dogs or horses or cows. Some fight diseases before they reach examination tables, working in research laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and public health agencies, where their unique training in both animal and human health makes them invaluable.
The long game
Nyblade made a meaningful observation during an undergraduate summer research program in plant virology at the Utah State University.
"I realized, I like being outside the lab too,” Nyblade said. “I like going out, talking to people, and trying to figure out, what's going on here?" But plants didn't spark her curiosity the way animal diseases did.
That realization led her to Virginia Tech and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine where she could pursue both a Ph.D. in infectious disease and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM degree — not sequentially, but as an integrated program that recognizes the interconnected nature of animal and human health. Only one or two students attempt this challenging combination each year.
For three years, Nyblade worked with specialized animal models to study rotavirus and Clostridioides difficile, pathogens that cause severe disease in both humans and animals. She published four first-authored papers during her Ph.D., including groundbreaking work on viral replication in salivary glands, while working in the Yuan Laboratory.
"That was the one that I was really proud of," she said of her rotavirus research. "That was mine. That was something that I got to help with from the very initial beginning."
Fighting tomorrow's battles today
Nyblade knew she'd found her calling during her first experience with immunofluorescence, a technique that utilizes antibodies tagged with fluorescent dyes to render specific proteins visible under a microscope.
"The first time I got to do that on my own in undergrad, in one of the labs I was in, that just blew my mind,” Nyblade said. “I thought, 'This is cool.' I want to be here. I want to be doing this for a long time."
Nyblade's research addresses real threats to both animal and human populations.
Clostridioides difficile is the leading cause of antibiotic-associated enteric disease in humans, as well as affecting household pets and food-producing animals.
The overlap in bacterial strains between species underscores what researchers call the "One Health" approach — the recognition that human, animal, and environmental health are interconnected.
Similarly, her work on rotavirus contributes to understanding a pathogen that remains a leading cause of severe gastroenteritis in children globally, particularly in regions with limited access to medical care.
After graduation, Nyblade plans to join the veterinary pharmaceutical industry, where she'll help develop new therapeutics.
It's work that combines her research skills with her veterinary training — testing drugs, understanding immune responses, and developing treatments that will ultimately benefit animals and humans alike.
Her career choice reflects a growing recognition within veterinary medicine that the profession's impact extends far beyond clinical practice.
Veterinarians work for companies like Zoetis and Merck, developing the vaccines and treatments that prevent diseases before they require treatment. They work in government agencies, monitoring disease outbreaks and protecting food safety. They work in research institutions, unraveling the mysteries of pathogens that pose a threat to global health.
The five-year-old's wisdom
When asked what advice she'd give to that 5-year-old looking through the microscope, Nyblade's answer is immediate: "Stick with your gut, right? Stick with what you're interested in."
The 5-year-old who fell in love with what she saw through a microscope has grown into someone proving that the most powerful tool in medicine might be our ability to make the invisible visible.
