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Dog cancer researchers seek treatment for several breeds

June 23, 2010

MSU veterinarians are taking part in a study to combat several types of cancers found in dogs, which researchers said could help improve treatments for humans.

The From Bark to Bedside project is a two-year, $5.3 million study focusing on the genetics that cause cancer in breeds of canines.

The project is being led by the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, and will focus on five cancers between five to 10 different dog breeds, said Roe Froman, a senior veterinary research scientist at the Van Andel Institute.

“We hope to have better diagnostics, better treatments and more individualized treatments for dogs,” Froman said.

“If we have five different drugs to pick from to try and treat an animal or person with cancer and we have genetic information about that patient, we can identify one or two drugs that will work in that individual better than the other three.”

The group began lab work in April, and Froman said researchers are making progress and hope the findings will provide advances in human cancer research as well.

“Right now there’s not a great deal to offer as veterinarians to treat (cancers such as) hemangiosarcoma,” she said. “One of our goals is to try and take many of those drugs, screen them in canine clinical trials so they will benefit the dogs, but also lead to future benefit for human patients.”

Vilma Yuzbasiyan-Gurkan, an MSU professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and small animal clinical sciences, is contributing to the project and said the study is focusing on purebred dogs.

“(Purebred dogs) have very large pedigrees (and) there are many dogs in a given generation where most of our human population now has small families,” Yuzbasiyan-Gurkan said. “I think that some of the rare cancers in humans are not being tackled (because of) the fact that there are not enough patients. The dog world offers a great opportunity.”

MSU researchers are studying histiocytic sarcomas — malignant, soft-tissue tumors that arise from cells in the immune system — that are commonly found in the purebred Bernese mountain dog, Yuzbasiyan-Gurkan said.

“They are very frequent in dogs and relatively rare in humans, but all sarcomas present huge treatment challenges,” she said. “Finding a set of genes in these dogs and knowing the genetic cause identifies some potential treatments.”

James Trosko, an MSU professor of pediatrics and human development and expert in cancer research, said studying cancer in dogs is more simple than studying humans, but the research still can be applied to human treatments.

“It’s easier to study genetic factors that may predispose a dog to certain types of cancers,” Trosko said. “We can’t study humans as easily as we can various breeds of dogs. You can control many of the factors that might contribute to cancer in dogs than in humans. You control their diet, environment much more easily than you can a human being’s.”

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