Cancer in dogs is, unfortunately, very common — one in four will get it at some point — but the development of immunotherapies to treat man’s best friend has significantly lagged behind the development of ones to treat man.
“There have been very few new canine cancer treatments developed in decades — it’s a field that is begging for improvement,” said Mark Mamula, an immunologist at Yale.
In 2016, Mamula’s team launched the first clinical trial of the vaccine in canines, and since then, it’s been administered to more than 300 dogs with three types of cancer (osteosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, and transitional cell carcinoma).
According to the research team, the vaccine increases the 12-month survival rates of dogs with certain cancers from about 35% to 60%. For many of the dogs, the treatment also shrinks tumors.
While exploring the vaccine's effectiveness in humans through clinical trials is a potential future step, the current focus for Mamula is obtaining USDA approval for the vaccine's use in dogs and its broader distribution.
Source: Freethink
