#Canine bone cancer

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Is immunotherapy the key to wiping out canine cancer?

An intact and functional immune system is essential to protect an organism against invading pathogens and infectious disease. However, the immune system also plays a pivotal role in identifying and eliminating transformed cells that, if left unchecked, would progress to cancer. Clinical evidence of the immune system's ability to control cancer comes from a number of observations in both the veterinary and medical settings. Consider the following examples: Cats receiving chronic immunosuppression following renal transplant have a higher incidence of lymphoma compared with the general feline population1,2 Spontaneous regression of transmissible venereal tumor is associated with an increased proportion of tumor-infiltrating cytotoxic CD8+ T cells3 Canine osteosarcoma patients that develop bacterial infections after limb-sparing surgery experience significantly prolonged survival times.4 The presence of tumor-specific, cytotoxic T cells within tumors, such as ovarian carcinoma, confers a favorable prognosis,5 whereas infiltration with regulatory or suppressor T cells confers a worse prognosis6 These observations, coupled with two decades of experimentation in murine cancer models, indicate that finding ways to initiate, augment, and broaden a patient's antitumor immune response holds promise for the treatment and possible prevention of cancer. Indeed, this is the aim of cancer immunotherapy, and recent advances in this field have …