Amil Kaba

201600079
Bio 209 Presentation
Dr. Rizkallah
September 19, 2017

Cancer Cues From Pet Dogs

Slide 1: outline

Slide 2:
Cancer: a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body
that results in a tumor.
Some types of cancer include:
Breast, lung, brain, blood, bone cancers and many more.
Some of these types are common between humans and dogs as we will see towards the end
of the presentation.
However, The National Cancer Institute aims to eliminate the suffering and death.
Now, scientist do not have a broad understanding of what cancer is, in fact, they have made
great advances in understanding what cancer can do. In other words, they have detailed and
wide knowledge concerning this disease. However, translating this knowledge into a definite
medication that saves lives has been slow.

Slide 3:
Most of us are familiar of how rodents are scientists favorite research model. They use mice
to test most diseases treatments on. However, cancer treatments that work in rats and mice
often fail in humans.
More than a third of U.S. households include dogs, and around four million of these dogs
will be diagnosed with cancer this year.
Cancer causes nearly half the deaths of dogs over the age of 10.

Slide 4:
Oncologists, doctors who are qualified to diagnose and treat tumors, are hoping that studying
caner in dogs will help them understand and treat human cancers in a better way.
Understanding the similarities between the cancers of humans and dogs would help in many
ways:
- As mentioned earlier, it will help reach better conclusions concerning cancer
treatments.
- After testing on dogs specific dosages and having an approximation on what is the
right dosage to be applied. It can later be used on humans instead of experimenting it
randomly and for the first time on them.
- Identifying the different stages of cancer more accurately
 - Identifying what causes cancer from the first place
- And ways to prevent this disease
Slide 5:
Different breeds are prone to particular types of cancers similar to those that strike humans.
- Chow Chow: stomach cancer
- Boxer: brain cancer
- Scottish Terrier: bladder cancer
- Rottweiler: bone cancer
- Golden Retriever: lymphoma
- Collie: nasal cancer

Slide 6:
The spread of cancer from the primary or initial site of disease to another part of the body is
called metastasis and it is the most deadly aspect of cancer.
Cancers usually spread to very similar sites in humans and dogs.

Slide 7-8:
Now some of the disadvantages or what makes it hard having dogs as a reference is that:
Unlike the studies done on rodents, cancer researchers cannot induce the disease in dogs. So
research cannot be done unless the dog is actually diagnosed with the disease naturally.
Also, since cancer treatments are risky, usually pet owners wouldnt accept tests to be done only
in the most advanced and unresponsive cancer stages.
This makes some results in accurate because if a specific treatment fails in the late stages of
cancer, it might have worked in the early stages but they couldnt test it back then because they
cannot risk the dogs life from the early stages.

Slide 9-10:
Because of the compressed life span of dogs, scientists would be able to quickly determine
whether a new prevention or treatment strategy has a chance of working in people or not.
Just like humans, as dogs grow older, they are less likely to contract cancer and their death
would be associated to other things not related to cancer. So, understanding what makes these
old dogs resistant to cancer might be applicable old humans.

Slide 11:
We can get to know more about cancer causing genes from the study of dog and human
genome sequences. Genome sequencing is knowing the order of DNA nucleotide bases in a
gene; Which is the order of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts on a DNA strand. There might be a specific
order of bases that causes cancer.
 So basically scientists see if there is a relationship between certain orders and occurrences of
cancer, and then see the similarity of these relationships between dogs and humans. And
further research in the field of dogs can help us validate our claims or hypothesis in humans.