Heal

The Vital Role of Dogs in the Search for Cancer Cures

Arlene Weintraub

• Publisher: ECW Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781770412705
• eBook ISBN: 9781770908000
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Diseases & Allergies

How man's best friend could help cure man's greatest scourge: " An Emperor of All Maladies for dog lovers" (Dr. Sarah Boston, author of Lucky Dog: How Being a Veterinarian Saved My Life).
 
Drawn from extensive research, on-the-ground reporting, and personal experience, this book explores the fascinating role dogs (and cats) are playing in the search of cures for cancer. Learn how veterinarians and oncologists are working together to discover new treatments—cutting-edge therapies designed to help both animals and people suffering from cancer.
 
Heal introduces readers to the field of comparative oncology by describing several research projects aimed at finding new therapies for cancers that are similar in dogs and people, including lymphoma, osteosarcoma, breast cancer, melanoma, and gastric cancer. The author, who lost her sister to gastric cancer, also writes about the emerging science behind the remarkable ability of dogs to sniff out early stage cancer and the efforts underway to translate that talent into diagnostic devices for early detection of the disease.
 
In the course of bringing these dogs and their human companions to life, Arlene Weintraub takes her own personal journey from grief to healing, as she shows how man's best friend might be the key to unlocking the mysteries of cancer.
 
"Readers will share Weintraub's growing appreciation for the canine and feline subjects (and their owners) who are helping to advance cancer research." — Publishers Weekly

Chapter 1

“We Believe in Science”

From the moment Alan and Kathy Wilber brought home their new golden retriever, Basil, in October 2000, they knew the dog would fit right in to the menagerie of pets they had been assembling since their three daughters had grown up and moved away. Basil became fast friends with the Wilbers’ other two dogs, a petite shepherd mix named Friday and an aging chocolate lab, Chauni, whom Basil doted over like a protective dad.

Basil spent his days romping with Chauni and Friday in the yard of the Wilbers’ home in Los Banos, California, and trotting from room to room carrying his favorite toy, a life-sized stuffed duck. Basil stood twenty-nine inches from paws to forehead — six inches taller than the average golden — but he regarded his size as neither an obstacle nor an advantage. Often when Alan sat in his recliner, the dog would join him, hauling his huge body onto the chair, oblivious to the fact that he was far too big to be a lapdog.

Just after New Year’s in 2001, the Wilbers noticed a bump on Basil’s right hind leg, below his knee. Their vet told them it was probably nothing more than a bruise, but they were worried. Their previous golden retriever, Teddy, had died of cancer, and they couldn’t bear the thought of losing another dog to the disease. By that spring the bump had grown, so Kathy brought Basil back to the vet for a biopsy. A few days later, their fears were realized. The two-year-old dog had cancer.

The Wilbers, both schoolteachers, didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend on Basil’s medical care, but they wanted to give him the best chance of survival. So they set out on a 140-mile drive to the University of California at Davis, home to one of the most advanced veterinary cancer centers in the country. Veterinarians there discovered that the lump was a sarcoma wrapped around the tibia bone. They amputated the leg, and the Wilbers took Basil back to Davis four times over the next six months for infusions of doxorubicin, a standard chemotherapy drug.

Basil quickly adapted to his new life as an amputee. To compensate for the lost leg, he curled his tail around his body as an anchor. He learned to walk effortlessly, centering his left hind leg beneath his body to distribute his seventy-­five pounds comfortably across his slender frame. The Wilbers bought a Roadtrek camper, because Basil could jump into it without having to climb any stairs. They carried a small rug with them wherever they went, so the dog could always sit comfortably.

In November 2001, the Wilbers went back to UC Davis for what they believed would be a routine checkup. When they pulled up in front of Davis’s veterinary complex, Basil hopped out of the camper and bounded toward the door. His tail wagging, he greeted everyone with an exuberance that belied the seriousness of his disease. He sat calmly through blood tests and CT scans.

After the tests, veterinarian Gillian Dank called the Wilbers into an exam room and delivered the sobering news: Basil’s cancer had spread to his lungs. The Wilbers knew that many dog owners in this situation would opt for euthanasia.

Then Dank told them that her colleague, a young veterinary oncologist named Cheryl London, was looking for pet dogs to take part in an innovative study of a powerful experimental drug — a medicine that would come to be called Palladia. Dog owners who enrolled in the study, Dank said, would get the drug at no charge, as well as complimentary veterinary care throughout.

What’s more, Basil’s cancer — spindle cell sarcoma — was similar to a tumor type found in humans. The research, the Wilbers learned, might benefit people, even if the drug didn’t help Basil.

The Wilbers signed Basil up for London’s study that day.

12

It was early morning when I set out for Los Banos to visit the Wilbers. As I drove, I thought about the personal tragedy that had sent me on a quest to find hope in the story of Basil. It had been just over two years since I’d lost my sister, Beth, to gastric cancer. She was forty-seven when she died, after a painful and fruitless year of chemotherapy and surgery. Beth left behind a husband, four children, our parents and older brother — and me, the little sister who had idolized her for as long as I could remember.

My shock and sorrow had barely diminished. One day, Beth was an energetic mom, juggling four children’s busy schedules while starting her own home-based business, pausing occasionally to sweep the ever-present crumbs and dog hair off the kitchen floor. The next, she was checking in to the hospital with extreme stomach pain, facing a diagnosis that was as baffling as it was tragic. I still could not grasp how my vibrant sister could be struck down so swiftly by a cancer that had never appeared in our family before, and that was exceedingly rare in someone so young.

From the moment Beth was diagnosed, I tried my best to give her hope. It was an unsettling role reversal. After all, she was my big sister, five years my senior. She was the one who had dried my tears at summer camp when I got homesick, entertained my friends at my birthday parties, and offered me advice, whether I asked for it or not. Now I was expected to be the cheerleader. I did not like this new role, but I had to embrace it. So whenever we spoke on the phone or I visited Beth during her treatments, I tried to convince her that she could beat this disease because she was young and strong.

I knew the odds were not in her favor. So did she. And then she was gone.

For me, that last year of Beth’s life was a blur of depressing hospital visits, support group meetings, and awkward phone calls from friends who struggled to make sense of this unspeakable tragedy. I diligently showed up to my job as a magazine science reporter but quickly lost all my passion for the latest medical research. Science, after all, had failed my sister. Writing about it had become little more than a sad obligation.

Then two veterinarians from Texas A&M University came to my office to publicize their new, state-of-the-art cancer center, which was designed to find new cures, not just for animals, but for people too. I was surprised to learn that dogs get many of the same cancers we do, including lymphoma, melanoma, breast cancer, bone cancer, and gastric cancer. Texas A&M, they explained, was part of a rapidly expanding network of academic veterinary centers that recruit pets with cancer for “translational” research — studies that have the potential to speed up the search for a cure for humans.

I became enthralled by the idea that research with pet dogs might spare other families from suffering a tragedy like ours. This felt natural. After all, Beth and I were born into a family of dog fanatics. I loved all of them, from Spot, the fox terrier mix who never minded when my sister and I tugged on her tail or tried to dress her in doll clothes, to my treat-loving terrier mix, Molly, whom I nicknamed my midlife crisis dog when I adopted her just after I turned forty. I even bonded with Honey, the lanky, standoffish mutt Beth’s family rescued from a shelter when their eldest son turned thirteen.

The veterinarians leading this branch of cancer research work in an emerging field called comparative oncology. The premise of comparative oncology is simple but powerful: Dogs make ideal models for studying human cancer because, like us, they develop cancer naturally. That makes them much more realistic models for human cancers than the rodents that are most commonly used in the discovery and development of new therapies.

Mice and rats rarely develop cancer, so they have to be manipulated in some way to mirror the human cancer experience. Some have tumors implanted under their skin, while others are genetically engineered to be prone to certain types of cancer. Research rodents are often genetic clones whose immune systems are no longer intact. What’s more, their diets are tightly controlled, and they live in “clean rooms” that are scrubbed of all the pathogens that we encounter every day.

That may explain why an estimated nine out of ten experimental drugs that cure lab rodents of their cancers fail miserably in human trials.[ 1 ] As Richard Klausner, former director of the National Cancer Institute, told the Los Angeles Times in 1998, “We have cured mice of cancer for decades — and it simply didn’t work in humans.”[ 2 ]

Our closest animal cousins, non-human primates, are rarely useful in cancer research either. Even though we share more than 90 percent of our genes with them, we are far more susceptible to cancer than they are. Cancers of the breast, prostate, and lung, for example, cause more than 20 percent of human deaths, but occur in less than 2 percent of great apes.[ 3 ]

Because of growing international concerns about the ethics of keeping wild animals in captivity purely for medical research, the scientific world has been moving away from primate studies. In June 2013, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would retire most of its laboratory chimpanzees to wildlife sanctuaries.[ 4 ] All told, less than 1 percent of all animals used in medical experiments today are primates.[ 5 ]

Pet dogs who are stricken with cancer can help fill this void in medical research. About six million dogs are diagnosed with cancer every year in the United States alone.[ 6 ] Many of them have forms of the disease that are so similar to ours that even the most eagle-eyed cancer specialists would struggle to tell them apart. As Texas A&M veterinarian Theresa Fossum put it that day she came to my office, “We have access to companion animals with diseases that are genetically identical to their human counterparts.”

In comparative oncology, researchers at biotechnology companies team up with veterinary oncologists and with physicians who treat people at cancer centers around the world. They work together to translate discoveries they make in dogs with cancer — perhaps about cancer-causing mutations and how they might be corrected, or new surgical methods for removing tricky tumors — into treatments for people. As they test new drugs or devices or techniques in both dogs and people, they trade insights, with the aim of improving promising treatments and moving them as quickly as possible to the market.

This isn’t animal experimentation. Comparative oncology isn’t about breeding colonies of cancer-ridden dogs in the lab, and then giving them unproven medications to see how they’ll re...

Table of contents

• Heal: The Vital Role of Dogs in the Search for Cancer Cures
• Prologue: 206 Dogs
• Chapter 1: "We Believe in Science"
• Chapter 2: Dogs Point the Way to Personalized Medicine
• Chapter 3: "Do Dogs Get Melanoma"
• Chapter 4: Burying Bone Cancer
• Chapter 5: A Golden Opportunity to Cure Lymphoma
• Chapter 6: Cali's Total Mastectomy
• Chapter 7: From iPods to Cowpox: Offbeat Attacks against Solid Tumors
• Chapter 8: The Feline Connection
• Chapter 9: A Nose for Detecting Cancer
• Chapter 10: Countless Canines, One Health
• Chapter 11: Banking on a Cure for Gastric Cancer
• Epilogue: I Believe in Science
• Acknowledgments
• How You Can Help
• Learn More
• Notes
• About the Author
• Copyright