Bruce Smith, director of the Auburn University Research Initiative in Cancer, has been awarded a 2-year, $118,848 grant to fund research for a new treatment for bone cancer in dogs.
The grant was awarded by The American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation and will allow Smith to continue research that started several years ago.
"This is a project that we've actually been working on for a few years now," Smith said. "Bone cancer, osteosarcoma, is a disease that's important for dogs, but that's also important for people."
Smith said the current standard treatment for bone cancer in dogs is a combination of amputation and chemotherapy.
These treatments can be effective, but are not a guaranteed success.
"If you don't do anything to treat the dog it will typically live for about six months after diagnosis," Smith said. "If you amputate the leg only, and don't do chemotherapy it does not change survival."
Smith said the life expectancy of a dog that receives both treatments is 9 months-year.
"We're really not making it a lot better," Smith said.
Smith said what makes bone cancer dangerous in dogs is the spread of the cancer to the dogs' lungs.
"What we wanted to do is find a way to treat the disease that spreads to the lungs," Smith said. "We have an interesting, new approach that we feel could be quite important."
The solution Smith and other researchers came up with involves introducing a re-engineered virus into the sick animal.
The virus being used to fight cancer is a modified version of the vaccine for canine hepatitis.
"It's a virus we have re-engineered to make copies of itself in cancer cells," Smith said. "And that is going to kill those cells by what we call the cytopathic effect."
The virus reproduces itself within a cancer cell until the cancer cell bursts and releases the virus to other cells. Smith equated the process to turning cancer cells into factories that kill more cancer cells.
"I like the irony of it," Smith said.
Smith also hinted at the treatment having cross-species potential.
He said AURIC pursues all of its research with a one medicine mentality, which encourages medical advancement as a whole and not by which species they impact.
"In some of our projects, we can take a drug or a gene therapy, put it in a dog and immediately transfer that to people," Smith said. "That is not the case with this virus, however."
Still, Smith feels any advancement in one species toward treating bone cancer should be seen as progress.
Janet McCoy, communications and marketing specialist for the College of Veterinary Medicine, said she is impressed by the progress.
"It is a new technology both in human treatment of cancer and in animals," McCoy said. "It's an interesting concept."
Smith said he hopes in the future there will be a universal cancer treatment that is effective against all types of cancer. He also said cancer's prevalence fuels his desire.
Everybody has been touched by cancer in some way" Smith said. "It's hard not to take it personally sometimes."
Ultimately, Smith said it's hard to call what he does work.
Smith said he's happy to be doing research to help dogs, such as his labrador Hermione, stay healthy.
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