The Science Behind Canine Cancer
- The Well-Trained Dog
- 1 hour ago
- 8 min read
Decades ago, we never heard of dogs dying from cancer, but now it's an almost everyday occurrence. But there is ground-breaking research going on right here in the Roanoke Valley.
I spoke with Joanne Tuhey from the Virginia Tech Animal Cancer Care and Research Center about their work with cancer patients. A transcript follows the interview.
Hi, it's Beverly with the Well-Trained Dog and Pet Care, and my guest today is Dr. Joanne Tuohy. She is with the Virginia Tech Animal Cancer Care and Research Center that's located beside the medical school on Riverside Circle in almost downtown Roanoke, but right down in Roanoke. Welcome, Dr. Toohey. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Tell me a little bit about how this cancer center and research center got started.
Yes, so the Animal Cancer Care and Research Center has been a long kind of vision and planning on the part of the university to create what is essentially a one-of-a-kind cancer center for veterinary patients, and we provide clinical care for dogs and cats and sometimes other species as well with cancer.
And also, another part of our mission is to advance comparative oncology research that would help our pets with cancer in the future. And also, we hope that that research can provide data to help inform people who are doing research in human cancers to advance treatments and care for human cancer patients as well.
And that's due to the strength of our pets as comparative oncology research models because the tumors, the cancers that develop in our dogs and cats can be very similar to the cancers that develop in people.
When people hear the dreaded C word, I mean, it's bad enough for parents or humans, and we love our pets like children. Yes. What should we do first? Do you require a referral?
Yes, so I know cancer is a very devastating diagnosis to hear. For human and for veterinary patients alike, and it's never easy. So one of the first things, if a pet family is interested in coming to see us, is to ask their referring or their primary veterinarian to put in a referral through our portal, which is the website. It's on the website for the Animal Cancer Cancer Research Center homepage. And there is a link there for referrals. And the veterinarian can go there and put in a referral.
And at that time, also upload the pertinent medical information that comes with the pet. And it allows us to look at the information and then be able to decide how the appointment might be recommended. And then we would contact the family to offer them appointments to come and see us if that appears to be appropriate.
Because cancer is so changing and can be so rapid, is there a backlog? Do you have a wait list of patients trying to get in for treatment?
Yes, unfortunately, we have more pets with cancer, even in the region that need care than, say, we would be able to accommodate within a very short time frame, unfortunately. We hope that that is not the case. And we aim to work towards a time when we can accommodate very quickly the pets who need care, pets with cancer.
We do, we very much realize, and we're very cognizant of the fact that cancer cannot wait. And so when we encounter periods where we may have a longer wait time than we think is appropriate for a pet with cancer, we will inform the family and give them information if they are in the region and we're familiar with some other practices that might be able to, they might be able to go and see if they can seek care sooner. For example, NC State, North Carolina State University is about three and a half hours or three hours from Roanoke.
And so we may inform some of the pet families that they could try and seek care there if they can get them in sooner. Unfortunately, there is a backlog in basically every practice that we know of. And it's, I wish I could change that. But it is, it's I think an unfortunate situation that I hope will change as we grow over time.
But we know that we cannot delay treatment. And so if we're not able to provide it in a timely manner, we will certainly try our best to inform pet families as to where they might be able to go if we have actual information about places that they can seek care.
How far is the radius where you will accept pets?
There is no defined radius. We have pets coming to us from neighboring states, for example, Tennessee and sometimes in North Carolina, they come to us as well. So there isn't a set radius that limits a pet to be seen here.
You know, 40, 50 years ago, nobody ever heard about pets with cancer. What has changed in that amount of time? I'm sure there's various factors, but is there one or two main things that have changed?
Right, I think that's a really good question. We don't have a definitive answer to say exactly. Oh, A, B, and C are exactly what the causes are. But I think for one, over the last few decades, pet veterinary care has grown and changed also. So and that change has come with technologies that were previously perhaps only available to people.
So for example, a CT scan, you know, or tests to test for cancers like lymphoma, those have become available or more available. And also concurrently, I think that as pets become much more part of people's families over time, the approach to perhaps veterinary care and veterinary health care screening, I suspect has evolved over the decades as well. So pets now more commonly get wellness checks that are routine.
And so I think there is that factor of increasing health care for veterinary patients that also then lead to perhaps earlier diagnosis and also a willingness for families to move ahead with trying to try to diagnose and treat cancer. That's my theory about it. You know, I can't, I don't have data to back that up.
But I think over the decades and the evolution of how we see our pets as part of our families, the evolution of the advancement of technologies available in veterinary health care, I think those go hand in hand with perhaps an increase in cancer awareness and diagnosis in pets.
Could there be other factors as well? I think potentially, yes. Pets, just like people, I think are living longer lifespans because of the excellent veterinary care that families are able to give their pets. And so with longer lifespan also comes potentially an increase in the incidence of cancer as we live longer as people and as pets. And so that perhaps could be a contributing factor as well.
As we have increased lifespans and also potentially as we have shared, more shared environments with pets being part of our households, perhaps. And again, this is just a hypothesis of mine. I can't back it up with data, but perhaps there are shared kind of exposures to perhaps factors that could increase risk of cancer, perhaps, as pets and people get more integrated with the environments in which they thrive and they live together.
Some people say that the advancement of kibble and that it's so freeze-dried and so preserved and everything could cause cancers, or perhaps over-vaccination, that people should just have their puppies vaccinated and never vaccinate them again, except for rabies, of course. Does your research show anything about that? Any kind of trends with either kibble or vaccinations?
Yeah, so I personally don't do research in those fields. So I can't claim to be an expert in them. But as far as I understand and bearing in mind, my understanding would be limited to not being an expert in that field, is that I don't think that there is a definitive answer. We don't actually know whether, say, certain food additives or anything that's associated with kibble or with vaccines are necessarily associated with increase in cancer incidence.
The studies, the few studies that are based in epidemiology that have explored associations between environmental, maybe dietary factors with incidences of cancer, certain cancers in the veterinary patients, they do not show kibble, as in commercially available kibble or vaccines as associated with increased cancer diagnoses or even associated with a particular development of a specific cancer. There are some other associations, but that hasn't been shown. Those two haven't been shown in those papers that have been published.
What kind of research is the research center doing? I mean, do you have made any great breakthroughs in prevention or in helping people get, and our pets, obviously, get over cancer, recover from cancer?
Yeah, thank you. So my research primarily focuses not so much on prevention as much as improving treatment and survival in cancers. And the cancer that I've been working with for a long time is osteosarcoma. It's a bone cancer in dogs. It's the most common bone cancer in dogs. It's devastating. And it is also a cancer that afflicts people, especially adolescents and children. And it's absolutely heartbreaking.
And osteosarcoma in the dog is very, very comparable to osteosarcoma in people. They're very similar. There are a lot of similarities between both species, the cancer in both species. And so that allows our pet dogs to contribute in a way to research that is going to help other dogs in the future and hopefully also people with osteosarcoma.
So with the work that I do, the research that I do, we conduct it in the form of clinical trials for our veterinary patients with osteosarcoma and also with other cancers. And so what I aim to do specifically for my research is to develop a non-invasive way of treating these bone cancers, because up to now, primarily surgery has been the primary modality of removing these cancers from the bone. And they typically involve a limb amputation.
So my work is very much focused on developing ablation methods, tumor ablation methods that would hopefully help dogs avoid having to get surgery to treat the primary bone tumor. And also I am an immunologist by my PhD training as well. So I also work on developing immunotherapies for dogs with cancer, especially osteosarcoma and combining immunotherapy treatment with the tumor ablation treatment to advance the treatment so that we make it less invasive.
And also perhaps if we are successful in the future, be able to improve the survival expectations for dogs with osteosarcoma and other cancers, and then hopefully within people as well.
This is so fascinating. I could talk to you for hours, but I don't want to take too much more of your time. But Dr. Joanne Toohey, thank you so much from the Virginia Tech Animal Cancer Care and Research Center. Thanks so much for enlightening us on cancer.
Thank you.
***
Beverly Amsler is the owner of The Well-Trained Dog & Pet Care. She has been a professional dog trainer, dog walker, and pet sitter since 2014. Beverly is a Certified Dog Trainer through the Victoria Stilwell Academy and a Certified Professional Pet Sitter through Pet Sitters International. She is a member of the Texas Pet Sitters Association and the Association For Professional Dog Training. Before starting her business, Beverly spent more than 30 years as a journalist for newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, and Utah. Learn more about Beverly.
Comments