Archive for the ‘Dog Osteosarcoma’ Category

Penn researchers enlist dogs in battle against human cancers

Comments Off
Posted 14 Jul 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma, listeria bacteria, vaccine
Posted: Sat, Jul. 14, 2012, 3:01 AM

By Faye Flam

Inquirer Staff Writer

Penn veterinarian Nicola Mason, left, with Sasha and the dog

TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer
Penn veterinarian Nicola Mason, left, with Sasha and the dog’s owners, Carlos and Liliana Ruano. Sasha lost a foreleg to bone cancer and is now receiving experimental treatment.
HEALTH
 

 Sasha is still spunky at 12 – a white dog with a smattering of black, floppy ears and a sweet face. Even after she lost her right foreleg to bone cancer, her owners said, she could jump and catch a Frisbee. Unfortunately, in nearly all cases like Sasha’s, the surgery offers just a short respite before the cancer comes roaring back. Her only hope now lies with an experimental treatment being developed at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tuesday, doctors at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine pumped a modified listeria bacteria into her bloodstream, hoping to push her immune system to kill remaining cancer cells. If the treatment works, it is likely to be tested next on humans with this type of bone cancer, called osteosarcoma.

Veterinary scientists say such cross-species research is on the rise. While animal research has long played an important role in human medicine, an increasing number of clinical trials for dogs are being designed to help both species.

Right now, the vast majority of cancer treatments that work in mice fail in people, said immunologist Carl June, director of translational research at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center. By testing the treatments in dogs, he said, veterinarians are helping sort out the potential winners.

Osteosarcoma is also easier to study in dogs because it’s relatively common, especially in larger breeds. In humans, it’s an orphan disease, but it takes a vicious toll. It strikes young people, most of them between the ages of 13 and 25. Often their only hope for survival is a radical amputation.

Liliana Ruano said she and her husband, Carlos, wanted a dog that could accompany the North Carolina couple on hiking and camping adventures, and Sasha turned out to be just perfect. They often visit Carlos’ family in Pennsylvania and hike with Sasha in French Creek State Park.

The first sign of trouble came earlier this year, when Sasha started limping. The local veterinarian thought it was an injury; it seemed to get better for awhile, but then it got much worse.

An X-ray revealed bone cancer, and the doctor offered grim choices. They could do nothing and their faithful hiking buddy would die in agony, or they could amputate the leg, which would give her a few months of pain-free life before the cancer returned, usually as a fatal chest tumor. Mild chemotherapy would extend her life slightly.

They opted for the surgery and chemotherapy, and Sasha came through very well. She’s running around and playing Frisbee – for now, anyway.

Concerned that Sasha’s cancer would come back, Liliana found information about the Penn trial on a Facebook page about dogs and cancer. She called to find out more and connected with Nicola Mason, who explained the treatment, its risks and benefits. Mason told them the tumor would have to be of a certain type for Sasha to qualify – expressing a marker called her2/neu. Sasha’s tumor tested positive.

Mason, who has both a veterinary degree and a doctorate in immunology, said osteosarcoma tumors that strike dogs are very similar to those that strike humans. Dog and human lymphomas are also similar, and she is also involved in a trial to treat dog lymphoma.

Treatment with listeria bacteria might sound scary because it’s associated with food poisoning, but it is disabled, Mason said. “It’s modified so it does not cause disease and is rapidly cleared.” But it should still prompt an immune response in Sasha.

Modified listeria has been tested in mice and used in some trials connected with human cervical cancer, she said. For this treatment, the listeria was also genetically modified – a gene was added to allow the bacteria to make a protein called her2/neu – the same one they tested for and was expressed in Sasha’s tumor.

The idea is to train the patient’s immune system with the her2/neu protein the way you might train a bloodhound with a piece of someone’s clothing. The immune cells are geared to attack listeria, but they will also be trained to recognize and attack cancer cells that express the her2/neu. This protein is one of the few marks that distinguishes the cancer cells from healthy ones, so the immune system should go after the cancer.

Though Sasha looks healthy now, amputations almost always leave behind a few malignant cells, which is why dogs often bounce back after an amputation but almost always get a fatal recurrence.

“They are sitting on time bombs,” Mason said. In virtually all cases, stray malignant cells eventually spread to the lungs and kill the dog. “What we’re doing with the immunotherapy is mopping up the cancer cells we can’t see,” she said. So far, they’ve signed up six dogs, and they aim to recruit 9 to 18.

Why can’t the immune system kill the cancer cells without all this help?

Our immune systems do best when fighting foreign cells, said the University of Minnesota’s Jaime Modiano, who is, like Mason, a veterinarian with a doctorate in immunology. Cancer cells are so similar to our own cells that it can be hard for the immune system to recognize them as invaders.

In a given patient, canine or human, cancer cells undergo their own version of natural selection. The ones that evade the immune system survive and proliferate, he said. Cancer cells can evolve a host of evasive maneuvers. The challenge with immunotherapy is getting around all those tricks.

Modiano says clinical trials elsewhere are testing new therapies for brain cancer and other malignancies that strike both canines and humans. Working with dogs gives them information they couldn’t get studying mice or people, he said. There is no shortage of dogs with spontaneous cases, he said, since cancer strikes about one in three dogs.

Studying dogs also allows researchers to learn at an accelerated pace – literally in dog years. If a treatment keeps a terminally ill dog alive for two years, that’s like keeping a human alive for 10 or 15 years.

Penn’s Carl June sees clinical trials with dogs as a way to take advantage of an explosion of untested but promising new approaches to fighting cancer and to accelerate the process of sorting the winners from the losers.

Immune therapies are a good case in point, he said. “This is exactly the sort of thing that should be done on a dog,” he said.

No other large animals routinely get cancer the way dogs and humans do. Monkeys rarely get cancer spontaneously, and many people have ethical concerns about giving cancer to fellow primates. Scientists see some striking similarities in the genetics and biology of dog and human cancers. Cats, too, are starting to be entered in clinical trials, but Mason said dog research is further ahead.

Sasha had her first treatment at Penn on Tuesday. She will stay several days for observation before her owners take her back to North Carolina.

Liliana Ruano says she understands the risks and potential benefits. “Dr. Mason spent a lot of time with us to make sure we were comfortable,” she said. Ultimately, she decided to go ahead because of the chance to extend Sasha’s life. “I’m not ready to let her go yet.”

 

Celebrex-derived drug targets common childhood bone tumor

Comments Off
Posted 02 Jul 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma, Human osteosarcoma research, Molecular Osteosarcoma Studies, Osteosarcoma, STAT3

June 21st, 2012

Jiayuh Lin, PhD, and colleagues at Nationwide Children’s Hospital have developed a drug to target the most common cancerous bone tumor in children, osteosarcoma, using a version of the FDA-approved drug, Celebrex. The team will soon begin testing the drug using human and canine tumor cell lines thanks to a two-year, $200,000 grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer.

Osteosarcoma is an aggressive bone tumor that usually develops during the period of rapid growth that occurs in adolescence. A signaling pathway known as the STAT3 pathway is common in osteosarcoma and is crucial to tumor formation and cancer progression. Blocking STAT3 signaling is considered a potential approach for treating osteosarcoma; however, few drugs are available that can inhibit STAT3 and be clinically relevant.

“One of the main barriers to developing a clinical drug to inhibit STAT3 is finding lead compounds that exhibit desirable drug properties,” says Dr. Lin, who is a principal investigator in the Center for Childhood Cancer at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Lin and associate professor at The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, Chenglong Li, PhD, have found that developing STAT3-selective inhibitors can be accelerated by pairing a novel STAT3 drug discovery method with drug repositioning techniques to create inhibitors with desirable drug properties. Using this method, Dr. Lin’s team has developed a STAT3-selective inhibitor, 8A, using the FDA-approved drug, celecoxib (brand name: Celebrex®, Pfizer, New York ). Celecoxib is typically prescribed to relieve pain, tenderness, swelling and symptoms of inflammatory conditions like osteoarthritis. 8A is more potent and selective than celecoxib against STAT3 signaling in osteosarcoma cells.

The new funding will allow Dr. Lin’s team to develop two additional 8A analogs that would further increase STAT3 binding, while retaining the drug properties of celecoxib. The team will then test all three versions in human and canine osteosarcoma cell lines and in a mouse tumor model. Future research will include collaboration with Cheryl London, DVM, PhD, at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine to initiate clinical trials of a lead 8A analog in dogs with spontaneous osteosarcoma. Osteosarcoma in dogs is very similar to osteosarcoma in humans. Trials will provide valuable data for human trials as well as help determine the feasibility of using lead 8A analog to treat these tumors in canines.

“This is a unique approach in osteosarcoma targeted therapy,” says Dr. Lin. “We feel confident that our findings will advance the field of childhood osteosarcoma treatments.”

Provided by Nationwide Children’s Hospita

Parthenolide and ionizing radiation synergistically induce cell death in LM7 osteosarcoma cells

Comments Off
Posted 07 Jun 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma, feverfew (parthenolide), Osteosarcoma, Radiation, radiation

Keywords:

  • OSTEOSARCOMA;
  • RADIATION;
  • CANCER STEM CELLS;
  • PARTHENOLIDE;
  • NF-κB;
  • ROS

Abstract

Osteosarcoma is a devastating tumor of bone, primarily affecting adolescents. Osteosarcoma tumors are notoriously radioresistant. Radioresistant cancers, including osteosarcoma, typically exhibit a considerable potential for relapse and development of metastases following treatment. Relapse and metastatic potential can, in part, be due to a specific radioresistant subpopulation of cells with stem-like characteristics, cancer stem cells, which maintain the capacity to regenerate entire tumors. In the current study, we have investigated whether in vitro treatments with parthenolide, a naturally occurring small molecule that interferes with NF-κB signaling and has various other effects, will re-sensitize cancer stem cells and the entire cell population to radiotherapy in osteosarcoma. Our results indicate that parthenolide and ionizing radiation synergistically induce cell death in LM7 osteosarcoma cells. Importantly, the combination treatment results in a significant reduction in the viability of both the overall population of osteosarcoma cells and the cancer stem cell subpopulation. This effect is dependent on the ability of parthenolide to induce oxidative stress. Therefore, as a supplement to current multimodal therapy, parthenolide may sensitize osteosarcoma tumors to radiation and greatly reduce the prevalence of relapse and metastatic progression. J. Cell. Biochem. 113: 1282–1291, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Prognostic factors in canine appendicular osteosarcoma – a meta-analysis

Comments Off
Posted 17 May 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma

Appendicular osteosarcoma is the most common malignant primary canine bone tumor. When treated by amputation or tumor removal alone, median survival times (MST) do not exceed 5 months, with the majority of dogs suffering from metastatic disease.

This period can be extended with adequate local intervention and adjuvant chemotherapy, which has become common practice. Several prognostic factors have been reported in many different studies, e.g.

age, breed, weight, sex, neuter status, location of tumor, serum alkaline phosphatase (SALP), bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP), infection, percentage of bone length affected, histological grade or histological subtype of tumor. Most of these factors are, however, only reported as confounding factors in larger studies.

Insight in truly significant prognostic factors at time of diagnosis may contribute to tailoring adjuvant therapy for individual dogs suffering from osteosarcoma.The objective of this study was to systematically review the prognostic factors that are described for canine appendicular osteosarcoma and validate their scientific importance.

Results: A literature review was performed on selected studies and eligible data were extracted. Meta-analyses were done for two of the three selected possible prognostic factors (SALP and location), looking at both survival time (ST) and disease free interval (DFI).

The third factor (age) was studied in a qualitative manner. Both elevated SALP level and the (proximal) humerus as location of the primary tumor are significant negative prognostic factors for both ST and DFI in dogs with appendicular osteosarcoma.

Increasing age was associated with shorter ST and DFI, however, was not statistically significant because information of this factor was available in only a limited number of papers.

Conclusions: Elevated SALP and proximal humeral location are significant negative prognosticators for canine osteosarcoma.

Author: Ilse BoermanGayathri T SelvarajahMirjam NielenJolle Kirpensteijn
Credits/Source: BMC Veterinary Research 2012, 8:56

House Votes to Scrap Medicare Payment Board

Comments Off
Posted 23 Mar 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma, Finance and Politics of cancer research and treatment

 

 

By Emily P. Walker, Washington Correspondent, MedPage TodayPublished: March 22, 2012

 

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives has voted 223-181 to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) for Medicare, and to restrict medical malpractice lawsuits.

The measure is known as H.R. 5, the Protecting Access to Healthcare Act, and is sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey, MD (R-Ga.). It would eliminate the IPAB, the 15-member independent panel created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Starting in 2015, the IPAB would be tasked with making binding recommendations on how to reduce Medicare spending. If Congress doesn’t agree with the recommended cuts, it would be required to pass its own cuts of the same size.

But Republicans, along with some Democrats, oppose the concept, saying it would lead to rationing of medical care. The Obama Administration has noted that under the law, the IPAB is prohibited from recommending changes to Medicare that ration health care, restrict benefits, modify eligibility, increase cost-sharing, or raise premiums or revenues.

Several prominent Democrats voiced support for the IPAB repeal earlier in the month, including Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania, who also authored legislation to repeal the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for physician reimbursement under Medicare. However, after House Republicans added a provision to the IPAB bill that limited the amounts of damages awarded in medical malpractice lawsuits to $250,000, Democratic support appeared to disappear.

Historically, Democrats (including President Obama) oppose caps on medical malpractice lawsuits. Republicans said the malpractice cap would discourage frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals.

The American Medical Association (AMA), which supports the ACA as a whole but opposes the IPAB, praised the House vote.

“We applaud the House for voting to eliminate the IPAB, a panel which would have too little accountability and the power to make indiscriminate cuts that adversely affect access to health care for patients,” said Jeremy Lazarus, MD, president-elect of the AMA. “This new, arbitrary system is not what we need when patients and physicians are already struggling with a looming cut of nearly 30 percent from the broken Medicare physician payment formula.”

The group also spoke in favor of the medical malpractice provision of the bill.

However, the bill is likely dead on arrival in the Senate, and the White House threatened to veto the bill if it does pass the Senate. Obama has called the IPAB a crucial component for restraining the growing cost of Medicare.

Dogs Get Cancer Like People, and Hold Clues to Cures

Comments Off
Posted 12 Feb 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma

Researchers hoping to develop a promising new approach to treating cancer in people are trying it in another group: pet dogs.

The aim of personalized medicine is to design an optimum cancer therapy after analyzing genes in a patient’s tumor. Dogs, which have strong genetic similarities with humans, get many of the same types of cancers as people and have similar responses to cancer-fighting drugs. When diagnosed, dogs often have a shorter survival time than humans, allowing researchers to see if a drug is making a difference in a shorter period.

In people, it can take three to five years from the time they are diagnosed until the disease reaches an advanced stage. But in dogs, trials testing whether novel drug therapies extend survival can be finished in six to 18 months, says Melissa Paoloni, director of the Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium at the National Cancer Institute.

 Canine patients also are easier to enroll in clinical trials. When cancer researchers last year wanted to do a genetic study of cocker spaniels, a breed at relatively high risk of getting melanoma, and Great Pyrenees, who are at risk for osteosarcoma, a bone cancer, they contacted PetSmart Inc., the Phoenix-based national chain of pet stores. Making use of its big database, PetSmart sent out 117,000 emails to cocker spaniel and Great Pyrenees owners who had entered contact information after bringing in their pets for grooming. The request: Has your dog been diagnosed with cancer and would you be willing to have your dog’s genetic information analyzed?

Within a week, nearly 300 pet owners responded with an offer to send saliva samples to be analyzed. That kind of large and speedy response in a human study is very difficult to achieve, says Jeffrey Trent, who organized the pet study. Dr. Trent is president and research director at Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, which is participating in a privately funded effort to develop personalized treatments for people with certain types of melanoma. If the personalized medicine approach “makes a difference in treating the canines,” Dr. Trent says, “it can readily be moved into trial in humans.”

All cancers are believed to have genetic features, though what particular mutation or other aberration is involved with each type of tumor often isn’t known. When this information is discovered, through genetic sequencing, for example, tests can be done to see if the tumor responds to any of various drugs or combinations of drugs.

Although the cost of sequencing a genome has plummeted, it is still expensive and therefore not readily available to the vast majority of patients. And, in line with accepted standards of care, new agents are traditionally tried only in people who have advanced disease or have failed to respond to traditional therapies. With dogs, drugs and different drug combinations can be tried in newly diagnosed animals.

The use of so-called targeted therapies to treat some cancers is considered an early form of personalized medicine. For example, women with a certain kind of breast cancer in which testing shows the Her2 gene is over-expressed are given the drug Herceptin. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug to treat patients whose melanoma tumors express a BRAF gene mutation.

One question researchers face is whether a patient’s tumor can be analyzed, and a treatment recommendation formulated, quickly enough to allow doctors to make clinical decisions. Working with dogs, Dr. Paoloni and colleagues conducted a pilot study last year to see if they could accomplish this in less than a week. The researchers enrolled 31 dogs with different types of cancer, including lymphoma and melanoma. The result: A genetic analysis of each dog’s cancer and a report listing which chemotherapy agents might best treat it, was generated for each dog in under five days, a “feasible” time frame for treatment, says Dr. Paoloni.

Researchers, including those at the National Cancer Institute, plan to launch three clinical trials later this year in dogs with osteosarcoma, a bone cancer, angiosarcoma, a blood-vessel cancer, and melanoma, the deadly skin cancer. The trials will test combinations of medicines based on the genetics of the dogs’ tumors. They also will try to analyze whether drug regimens based on personalized tumor data can prevent cancer from spreading to other organs and lead to longer survival.

The researchers say they believe that trying to understand how to stop metastasis in dogs’ cancer will offer insights into the process in human cancers as well.

Stephen Gately heads a group at Translational Genomics that is setting up clinical trials on personalized medicine for people. Dr. Gately wanted his dog, Bob, to benefit from the approach after the pet got cancer last year. Working with colleagues, he had a biopsy from the dog’s cancer in one of his lymph nodes analyzed for genetic information.

It took a while for Dr. Gately to realize that Bob, a Bernese Mountain Dog, was sick. “Dogs with cancer are very good at covering up when they are not feeling well,” the Scottsdale, Ariz., resident says. But one day, Bob came in from outdoors coughing and seemed to have difficulty breathing. The vet found enlarged lymph nodes in Bob’s neck and a biopsy revealed he had lymphosarcoma, an aggressive form of lymphoma that is prevalent in dogs.

Bob was treated with the same drugs humans get for lymphoma. The pet’s disease progressed so rapidly, however, that after a family celebration at Christmas time, they decided to put the dog to sleep. He was never enrolled in a formal personalized medicine trial.

“I know we can do better than the old drugs,” says Dr. Gately. Bob’s data are being studied at the institute and will be used to help develop future personalized-medicine trials, Dr. Gately says.

Write to Amy Dockser Marcus at amy.marcus@wsj.com

Canine Cancer Studies Yield Human Insights

Comments Off
Posted 12 Feb 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma

By (@JaneEAllenABC) and LANA ZAK, ABC News Medical Unit
Feb. 8 2012

Some of the most promising insights into cancer are coming from pet dogs thanks to emerging studies exploring remarkable biological similarities between man and his best friend.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs. Every year, millions of dogs develop lymphomas and malignancies of the bones, blood vessels, skin and breast. An increasing group of researchers recognize cancer-stricken canines as a natural study population, especially given owners’ storied devotion to their canine companions’ well-being.

Because dogs age many times more rapidly than humans and their cancers progress more quickly, canine cancer studies produce quicker results. Veterinary oncologists talk in terms of “one- to two-year survival times” for their pet patients, compared to survival times of five to 10 years that oncologists discuss for their human patients, said Dr. Melissa Paoloni, a veterinary oncologist with the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research in Bethesda, Md.

A consortium of 20 veterinary centers created by the NCI and overseen by Paoloni aims to speed the development of better therapies and new strategies for treating and preventing human cancers. At the same time, some institutions, such as the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, are independently teaming up on their own to share human and animal findings.

One beneficiary of that collaboration has been Rowdy, an 8-year-old Great Pyrenees dog diagnosed in August with bone cancer.

Rowdy might have undergone chemotherapy and amputation of his front leg had his owner opted for conventional therapy. But Kate Cordts of San Antonio lost another dog to the same disease and assiduously researched experimental treatments for canine osteosarcoma.

She enrolled Rowdy in a clinical trial at Texas A&M, where veterinary cancer specialists delivered experimental radiation therapy directly into his diseased leg, followed by chemotherapy.

Six months later, Rowdy is living up to his name, thanks to a regimen that not only saved the leg, but also might one day help children diagnosed with the same malignancy.

“I think it’s kind of wonderful,” Cordts, 58, a librarian, told ABCNews.com today. “What more could I ask?”

The specialist who treated Rowdy supports more such studies.

“One of the great advantages of doing clinical trials in dogs is that owners can elect to do experimental therapy instead of conventional from the very beginning,” Dr. Terry Fossum, the Texas A&M veterinarian who administered Rowdy’s limb-sparing, potentially life-saving treatment, told ABC News.

People, in contrast, typically undergo experimental treatments only after conventional treatments have failed.

Paoloni said the Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium has so far conducted 11 clinical trials. Its pilot study of just 31 dogs demonstrated that scientists could conduct sophisticated molecular profiling of tumors and, within five days, use it to create a personalized treatment plan based on an individual dog’s profile, Paoloni told ABCNews.com. The study stands at the cutting edge of personalized medicine, she said.

Investigators currently are designing three early-stage trials of this approach for larger numbers of dogs with melanoma, osteosarcoma and angiosarcoma. She expects those to begin late this year or early in 2013.

Since the identification of the dog genome in 2005, researchers have been identifying genetic changes associated with dog cancers and comparing them to changes “in corresponding human cancers” to figure out where there is overlap, said Dr. Matthew Breen, an associate professor of genomics at NC State University School of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh, N.C., one of the consortium schools. By being able to “tease out the major genes associated with cancers in other species and then assess the role of these genes,” scientists have found changes in canine lymphoma that can predict how well that dog will respond to standard chemotherapy, a finding that could potentially benefit as many as 300,000 dogs diagnosed each year.

By seeing if the same changes in human lymphoma can predict treatment success, “this translation from dog to human” might improve doctors’ ability to predict the responses of “up to 70,000 Americans” diagnosed with lymphoma each year, he said.

Assuring these programs can thrive depends upon making pet owners aware of clinical trials. Texas A&M’s Fossum, who helped establish the Texas Veterinary Cancer Registry, told ABC News she hopes to make the registry a national resource linking more pet owners with clinical trials.

In the meantime, word is slowly getting around that clinical trials can be a win-win for pets and people.

Jack Sevey Jr. created the website MyCancerPet.com in January 2011 after his 5-year-old boxer Bull died from T-cell lymphoma. Sevey wanted to create an online community for fellow owners of cancer-stricken pets and also steer them to helpful resources. Those include lists of clinical trials compiled by several organizations: the AKC Canine Health Foundation, Animal Clinical Investigation, the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research, the Morris Animal Foundation and the Veterinary Cancer Society.

Canine clinical trials have the potential to accelerate progress in the fight against cancer, helping “patients with and without fur,” Paoloni told ABCNews.com Tuesday. “All of our interests are geared to learning something from the dog that’s applied to human patients.”

ABC News’ Serena Marshall contributed to this report.

Toxic levels of chemical found in dog foods

Comments Off
Posted 09 Jan 2012 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma

Toxic amounts of a fluoride have been found in several major brands of dog food, possibly putting pets at a higher risk of cancer, neurotoxicity and other life-threatening illnesses, a research organization warns.

The dog foods contain fluoride levels 2.5 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s national drinking water standard and those excessive levels “can predispose dogs to health problems, along with high veterinary bills, later in life,” according to the Environmental Working Group.

“Due to a failed regulatory system and suspect practices by some in the pet food industry, countless dogs may be ingesting excessive fluoride that could put them at risk,” Olga Naidenko, lead researcher of the Environmental Working Group-sponsored study, states in a media release.

Scientists have yet to determine how much fluoride is safe for dogs, but they have found people who consume excessive fluoride often develop mottled teeth (dental fluorosis) and weakened bones, leading to more fractures. High fluoride consumption is also associated with reproductive and developmental system damage, neurotoxicity, hormonal disruption, and bone cancer.

Three studies show that boys ages 6 to 8 who drink fluoridated tap water face a heightened risk of osteosarcoma, the rare but deadly form of bone cancer associated with fluoride. Scientists suspect that boys’ rapid growth may make them more susceptible to bone cancer.

Dogs may be even more vulnerable to osteosarcoma than humans, according to EWG. More than 8,000 osteosarcoma cases occur in dogs each year in the United States, nearly 10 times the number that occur in people, according to the study.

“Whatever the size and the appetite of a dog, combined fluoride exposure from food and water can easily range into unsafe territory,” the study states. “And, unlike children, who enjoy a variety of foods as they grow up, puppies and adult dogs eat the same food from the same bag every day, constantly consuming more fluoride than is healthy for normal growth.”

In the study, 10 brands of dog food were tested. Two dog food brands, one with vegetarian ingredients and one made by a small manufacturer, had no detectable levels of fluoride. But eight others – all major brands – found to contain high levels of fluoride. The contents of those brands included chicken byproduct meal, poultry byproduct meal, chicken meal, beef and bone meal. Any ingredient described as “animal meal” is basically ground bones, cooked with steam, dried, and mashed to make a cheap dog food filler.

The Washington-based Environmental Working Group, whose stated purpose is to protect human health and the environment, advises pet parents to feed food to their dogs that contains no bone meal and other meat byproducts to minimize exposure to harmful pollutants, including fluoride. “To protect pets from excessive fluoride exposures, dog owners can purchase pet foods that do not contain bone meal and other animal byproducts,” the study states.

Pet food should be held to the same health and safety standards as human food and should be free of contaminants that may endanger pets’ health, the study states. Yet, the federal Food and Drug Administration has little authority and few resources to ensure that products produced for pets are safe. The fact so many popular national pet food brands contain previously undetected health hazards shows that better federal food safety regulations are needed.

Vitamin D could help in fighting pediatric bone cancer

Comments Off
Posted 17 Dec 2011 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma, Local Recurrence, Lung Metastases, Metastases, Osteosarcoma, Vitamin D

Posted by Laura HerringDecember 16, 2011 at 9:05 a.m.

A study by a group of Kansas University researchers found that vitamin D can cause cancerous bone cells to turn to normal bone cells.

The findings, which were published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, could lead to a new treatment in fighting pediatric bone cancer, which has a survival rate of 60 percent to 70 percent.

Recent studies have shown vitamin D can inhibit the growth of malignant cells in breast, prostate and colon cancer. Kim Templeton, an orthopedic surgeon at Kansas University Hospital, was among the experts on a panel that discussed vitamin D research and cancer. She was surprised that none of the studies or trials included the effect of vitamin D on osteosarcoma, a malignant bone tumor that mainly affects children and adolescents.

“It’s the most common type of bone cancer in kids and teenagers and vitamin D is critical to bone health,” she said. So an interdisciplinary team at the Kansas University Medical Center came together to study how vitamin D affects bone cancer. The team used cancerous tumor cells to do the research.

“My question was if the tumor recognizes Vitamin D and if it would help control the cells,” Templeton said. In the laboratory tests, not only did the cancerous cells recognize the vitamin D, but it prevented the osteosarcoma cells from replicating as quickly and promoted the growth of normal bone cells.

“What should happen and what does happen (in the lab) is always two different things,” Templeton said. “So, I was happy it turned out the way we thought it would.”

The findings are important for a cancer who hasn’t seen the treatment methods or rate of survival change in the past 20 to 25 years. Most osteosarcoma patients undergo 10 weeks of chemotherapy before the tumor is removed.

The findings suggest that a normal size dose of vitamin D could become another tool in the treatment of osteosarcoma. Unlike chemotherapy, normal doses of vitamin D don’t have any negative side effects and it is inexpensive.

Before clinical trials on humans can began, researchers would have to test the effects of vitamin D on animals, which might include large dogs since they have a high rate of osteosarcoma.

Templeton said the findings don’t suggest people should start taking vitamin D to prevent bone cancer. Although that is a connection researchers might study in the future.

By Christine Metz

New studies help extend the lives of dogs with cancer

Comments Off
Posted 05 Dec 2011 — by James Street
Category Dog Osteosarcoma
The College of Veterinary Medicine will begin a new trial this week.
Luke enjoys playing with a tennis ball while his owner,Track Huston, sits beside him Saturday at home in Crystal, Minn. Luke, a 6-year-old English Springer Spaniel, was the first participant in a trial for dogs with lymphoma at the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
Anthony Kwan
Published: 2011-12-05
Rachel Raveling rraveling@mndaily.com

When Luke, the Huston family’s 6-year-old English Springer Spaniel, was diagnosed with lymphoma, their vet recommended a new trial at the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Luke was the first participant in a trial for dogs with lymphoma, but he’s one of many animal-companion owners bring to the University to contribute to research.

This week, the College of Veterinary Medicine will begin a new trial aimed at the latest treatment for dogs with osteosarcoma, a cancerous bone tumor.

Osteosarcoma often occurs in dogs’ front or hind legs, causing pain and bone destruction. It has high potential to spread to other parts of the body, said Antonella Borgatti, assistant professor of oncology and a researcher for the trial.

Catherine St. Hill, assistant professor of veterinary clinical science, said there are carbohydrates attached to cancer cells that make it easier for them to bind tightly to blood vessels — their mode of transportation through the body.

The goal of her research is to discover a way to either prevent the making of the carbohydrate or slow the progression of the disease.

When dogs pass away from osteosarcoma, it is most commonly a result of spreading, Borgatti said.

The OSAL —  osteosarcoma and salmonella —trial aims to stop the spread of cancer through amputation of the infected limb followed by chemotherapy and treatment using genetically modified salmonella designed to attack only the cancerous cells.

Kathy Stuebner, research coordinator for the University’s Clinical Investigation Center, said researchers will use PET-CT, a full body scan used to detect cancer and cancer spread.  It will be used on dogs for the first time before and after the treatment to help detect its effectiveness and identify proper treatment levels.

The goal for all their trials is to keep the dogs comfortable and prolong remission, she said.

Stuebner said the trial is “approved and ready to go.”  They hope to start this week.

In the meantime, five other oncology trials are active.  The trial that Luke initiated, called “Licking Lymphoma,” is testing Valspodar, a study drug, which Borgatti said should decrease the resistance to chemotherapy.

The trial was designed by Jaime Modiano, professor of veterinary clinical science, in partnership with Purdue University and the University of Pennsylvania.  Modiano said the trial was designed out of “scientific curiosity” and it “is transformational because it combines companion animals and human benefit.”

Dogs with lymphoma —cancer of the lymph nodes — go through “staging,” or full body testing, with X-rays and biopsies to determine the stage of their cancer.  Generally, healthy dogs with “B cell” lymphoma are accepted for the study, Borgatti said.

The dogs are put into two groups, some are given Valspodar and others are given a placebo, for four days.  Then they all go through chemotherapy.

The Huston family got involved in the “Licking Lymphoma” trial in April when they noticed their dog Luke had swollen lymph nodes in his neck.

Mike Huston, Luke’s owner, said they took him to the vet thinking he was suffering from allergies.  After a blood test, they were told that Luke might have lymphoma.  Their vet said Luke might meet the criteria to be a participant in the University’s lymphoma trials.

Huston said they took Luke to the University to be tested and after a long discussion as a family they decided to apply for the trial.

After the treatment Huston said Luke went into remission for seven months.

Borgatti said that most dogs only go into remission for a few months, so in Luke’s case, the trial was a success.

“Luke never showed any signs of pain, even during treatment.  He still runs and plays ball, everything is the same,” Huston said.

He added that the experience was much easier than he imagined because the veterinarians were very professional, yet personable.

“If he was going to get treatment, we decided we should do it there because the facility is the best and he could contribute to future research,” he said.

All studies that are done in the CVM are approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, who check for ethics and animal welfare, which comforts many pet owners, Stuebner said.

There is also a financial incentive for owners to help pay for the chemotherapy in the oncology trials.  The “Licking Lymphoma” trial credits the owner $2,500 after he or she makes an initial payment before treatment.

“It’s a hard decision to make and most people wouldn’t pay for treatment for their pet without financial incentive,” Borgatti said.

There are free social services available to all clients who need extra support and help making a decision about what is best for them and their pet, she said.

She added that “most owners are happy that the trial is giving them an option.” By participating in research, they get more personal attention than they would at a normal vet.

“The trials give us a chance to get to know the owners really well,” Stuebner said.

Stuebner and Borgatti said the lymphoma trial has been going on for about six months and based on their expectations, they said they hope the study will be finished in six months to a year.

The trials being done for dogs in the CVM are unique because they hope the research will be used for humans with similar diseases in the future, Borgatti said.

“It is very satisfying because if we’re wrong, we learn from it,” Modiano said. “And if we’re right, we’ve got something that works better than anything else.”

Luke’s lymphoma has returned, but like always, he still enjoys playing around with his family. The Hustons are working with the University to keep him comfortable as the disease progresses.

← Previous Entries