treating pets for cancer can revolutionize care for humans

new methods to tackle an insidious disease

cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide,  killing 230 canadians each day . traditionally, when a researcher develops a cancer therapy, it is first tested in lab-grown cancer cells to determine whether the treatment will have any effects against the tumour.

we are becoming acutely aware that this approach is flawed. a staggering  94 per cent of cancer therapies developed using mice fail to show any clinical benefit in people . this failure means that sick people aren’t getting the effective treatments that they desperately need. people remain sick, and are dying, because we cannot treat them successfully.

companion animals

the ontario veterinary college at the university of guelph is home to a very busy  animal cancer centre  that treats more than 5,000 companion animals for cancer annually. in contrast to the rodent models that we develop in the lab, companion animals like dogs and cats develop cancer spontaneously, just like humans. additionally, our pet dogs and cats live in the same environment that we do and are faced with the same environmental pressures, which may be why they experience a similar incidence of some types of cancer.

genetic testing of tumours from companion animals has shown there is genetic diversity, like what is seen in humans,  in contrast to the genetic homogeneity seen in mice . our pet dogs and cats represent almost perfect models to investigate the effectiveness of new disease treatments.

we have an extremely talented team of cancer scientists, veterinary surgical oncologists and medical oncologists with tremendous experience conducting companion animal cancer clinical trials. in these trials, we treat pets with conventional cancer therapies, but we also use novel, cutting-edge therapies developed by our team. these include  anti-cancer viruses ,  therapies to restrict blood flow to tumours  and treatments to activate the immune system.

identifying therapies

we have recently undertaken an aggressive initiative where we are  partnering with cancer clinicians that treat people with cancer . with these partnerships, we can take a therapy from testing in cancer cells and mice to companion animal cancer trials, and ultimately to humans. this is known as translational research.

approaching a cure

there are several other medical conditions that show a similarity of causes between humans and companion animals, such as  osteoarthritis of the knee and hip  and some psychiatric conditions such as  obsessive-compulsive disorder .