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The answer to a cure lies on the cutting edge. Put yourself there!
Explore...
Gene Therapy
(One of many new developments)
This article was reprinted from the Akron Beacon Journal, Akron Ohio
Sat, Jan. 04, 2003. Articles like this are encouraging.
Gene Therapy Down Canine Road
No cure for lymphoma but researchers looking at ways to extend life with
medical treatment...
Lymphoma in dogs is a nightmare I hadn't entertained until I began writing
this column, when so many of you began to educate me, chronicling your dogs'
battles with the deadly disease. It's a fight the dog can't win, but researchers
are making inroads that will ultimately improve treatment options and extend the
lives of our trusty companions.
The future could hold a magic, cancer-killing bullet known as gene
therapy.
That's the hope of the American Medical Center Cancer Research Center in
Denver, Colo., a not-for-profit research institute dedicated to the prevention
and control of cancer and other chronic diseases in humans. One of the center's
researchers, veterinarian-scientist Jaime Modiano recently completed a grant to
take a closer look at the significance of tumor-suppressor genes in the canine
cancer lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph glands, a disease that accounts for 20
percent of all canine tumors and 80 percent of cancers arising from blood cells.
(For those who would like to delve more deeply into the topic, Modiano's work is
detailed at length online at www.amc.org.)
How tumors begin
There is no cure. Lymphoma kills most dogs within a month of diagnosis.
Treatment, however, may prolong life by a year.
A biology 101 refresher: Cancer is the result of uncontrolled cell growth
resulting from mutations, or errors in the DNA code, in genes that control cell
division. The error rate is small and usually poses no problems in the cell's
functioning. When it does, it disables tumor-suppressor genes that regulate cell
division and survival. With the cells now multiplying unchecked, a tumor takes
shape.
Were the faulty genes inherited? If they were, what you have is a genetic
disease. Scientists are looking for genetic markers that define cancer risk for
dogs and their offspring, vital information to breeders about which dogs might
develop lymphoma.
"The project has helped to broaden the understanding of why tumors
happen, so that the abnormalities can be targeted and better therapies
devised,'' said Erica Verne, grants administrator of the AKC Canine Health
Foundation in Aurora. "Researchers developed and tested gene therapy for
melanoma, or skin tumors. In a clinical trial involving five dogs with facial or
oral melanoma, they found that gene therapy... was both free of adverse effects
and effective.''
Research promising
The research bodes well for humans, because cancers in dogs and humans bear
many similarities, and their courses appear to run on parallel paths. This work
with tumor-suppressor genes also provides the basis for future research that may
ultimately lead to scientists being able to assess an individual's risks for
acquiring cancer or for cancer forming among his progeny. Likewise, scientists
will be able to identify good candidates for certain types of therapy.
That would include gene therapy, where scientists program a gene to carry a
message, shall we say, to kill cancer cells, and introduce it into a harmless
virus. It is then transferred to a diseased cell in a dog, where it multiplies.
This cutting-edge technique is not the stuff of everyday medicine yet, but it is
a likely foretelling of our medical tomorrows.
Matthew Breen, associate professor of genomonics, Molecular Biomedical
Sciences at North Carolina State University, is a colleague of Modiano's and
co-principal with him in a new grant to study the abnormalities in genes in
canine lymphoma and osteosarcoma, or bone cancer.
"We know that dogs form cancer as much as humans, maybe more,'' said
Breen. "The cancer in dogs is similar to that in humans -- bone, brain and
lymphoma. That's the reason I got involved. My work looks at chromosome damage
and their involvement in cancer. We know from our research that human cancers
are associated with chromosome damage. The canine and human genomes are very
similar. The hypothesis is if we see chromosome aberrations associated with
human cancers, we should also see them in dog cancers. Our early calculations
validate this hypothesis.''
Large breeds are at risk for developing bone cancer. ``Think about the really
big dogs,'' says Breen. ``Within 9 to 12 months, they are enormous. Bear in mind
how much growth is occurring in the bone plates. The cells have to divide many
times to grow the long bones.'' The more they divide, the greater chance of an
error.
The median survival of a dog with bone cancer is three to four months, says
Breen. Surgery followed by chemotherapy could increase the dog's survival to
over a year. Surgery may mean removal of the cancerous bone and most certainly
means removal of the cancer, followed by chemotherapy.
``There are no really robust predictors of response,'' said Breen. ``The
survival of a dog with osteosarcoma treated with standard care can range from
weeks to years.''
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