As too many dog owners know, cancer afflicts canines as often as it afflicts us. For some cancers, dogs are actually more likely to get the disease than people. Consider the bone cancer osteosarcoma: Exceedingly rare in humans — only 700 to 800 Americans get diagnosed every year — osteosarcoma is shockingly common in dogs, affecting more than 10,000 every year.
The low number of human cases has made it very difficult to develop new, more effective therapies, with no improvements in outcome in three decades. The same lack of progress applies to canines, with over 90 percent of affected dogs dying of disease within two years.
To help address the lack of progress, my colleagues and I at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine are working with oncologists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Institute to apply what we learn in canines to help people with sarcoma.
[See: Is it Healthy to Sleep With Your Pets?]
Saving Canine Companions
Dogs are living longer lives, and with greater age comes the increased risk of disease. Some breeds, like greyhounds, are particularly susceptible to sarcoma as they age, and the cancer is the most common cause of death for our canine companions.
Unlike many other cancers — which function quite differently from species to species — osteosarcoma looks and acts almost exactly the same in dogs as it does in us, and the way the cancer behaves is complex. Sarcomas show a great deal of genetic diversity and range from tumors that are curable with surgery to highly metastatic tumors that are resistant to radiation and chemotherapy. And yet, in humans and dogs, the genetic changes, and the ways the cancer cells function, are quite similar.
Oncologists have known of those similarities for more than two decades, and novel techniques have transitioned from veterinary medicine to human medicine such as limb-sparing surgery. However, some of the challenges have remained particularly troubling, such as the most deadly impact from osteosarcoma: the metastasis of tumor cells into the lungs. That is usually what leads to many patients — both canine and human — losing their battle with osteosarcoma.
How that metastasis happens, and if it can be stopped, are the targets of two studies our team is tackling in veterinary patients right now. If successful, the trials will move to humans.
[See: 7 Ways Pets Can Make You Healthier.]
Getting Answers, Quickly
For most human cancer trials, researchers can spend five years finding and vetting patients, then another five years carefully accumulating results as patients are treated and monitored. And that’s before the treatment, if it works, can be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At the earliest stages of study, research involves testing drugs in cell cultures, then mice. Such studies are fast and can quickly reveal promising treatments, but the conditions are so dissimilar from those in the human body that most of the preclinical successes don’t work in people.
Our veterinary studies of dogs with sarcoma fuse the benefits of great speed with outcomes that are much more likely to help humans, all while helping a family’s pet fight a deadly disease. Combined with the wealth of cancer information available here at Ohio State, including a large repository of osteosarcoma specimens, results can be powerfully quick.
We run studies in the same manner they are run on the human side. Owners come in with their pets, they hear about a study, they may decide to enter that study, they sign a consent form and we have a team of individuals that works with owners through our Clinical Trials Office. What’s particularly unique about Ohio State is that we are the only Clinical Trials Office in the country that’s officially linked to a U.S. National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. That partnership means results are known to human oncologists almost as quickly as we know them while treating the pets.
[See: 7 Innovations in Cancer Therapy.]
Jumpstarting the Sarcoma Fight
Several of our trials have produced key data for investigational drug applications that we submitted to the FDA, resulting in successfully placing those drugs in human Phase 1 studies — and more will come.
The landscape for this work has changed: It’s now clear that the NCI and FDA recognize dogs with cancer as a valid model for human disease, bringing veterinary treatment into the process for developing human treatments.
The approach can ultimately apply beyond sarcoma, as other cancers in our pets do translate, in varying degrees, to human biology. Our team is looking at studies that address lymphoma/ leukemia, DNA repair, lung cancer and brain tumors, many of which also incorporate novel imaging and surgical techniques.
The lessons are clear: Helping pets can also help their owners. For thousands of years, dogs have served and protected people. They act as sentinels for the military and police, guide dogs for the blind and have been companions for us all. Now, they are serving us in medicine, guiding treatments that will ultimately save human lives.
Dr. Cheryl London, DVM, PhD is an animal oncology researcher at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and College of Veterinary Medicine.
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How Treating Cancer in Canines Is Advancing Human Medicine originally appeared on usnews.com
