Through the design of clinical trials that include pet animals a broader understanding of the treatment and biology of cancer will be attained. Many factors contribute to the value of these spontaneous cancers as relevant models for human cancer. They share tumor biology with their human counterparts, and in some cases have identical tumor histology and response rates to conventional chemotherapy. Pet animals share many environmental risk factors as their human owners. In most cases the prevalence of these cancers is sufficient for clinical trials and biological studies to be initiated and rapidly completed. The size of dogs and cats makes the evaluation of multi-modality protocols feasible including novel approaches at imaging cancer patients. The lack of "gold standard" treatments allows early and humane evaluation of novel therapies.

For pet animals and pet owners, well-designed clinical trials will offer the same opportunities that exist for human cancer patients who choose to enter clinical trials. Clinical trials will be designed to evaluate the newest options available for the treatment of cancer. The majority of these novel treatments are designed with a more extensive understanding of the biology of cancer and more specifically target cancer cells. As a result we may expect these cancer treatments to be better tolerated than most conventional forms of chemotherapy. In most cases a large part of the cost associated with treating a pet animal with cancer will be covered through participation in the clinical trial. At this time there are no open clinical trials through the Comparative Oncology Program. For information about clinical trials available for pet animals in the United States please see www.vetcancersociety.org.

CCR - Comparative Oncology Program preclinical trails will be undertaken in collaboration with University Veterinary Teaching Hospitals. Other collaborating groups will include extramural academic institutions, and the pharmaceutical industry. A focus of these trials is the simultaneous assessment of agent activity and validation of biological and surrogate endpoints that can be directly translated to future human trials. The CCR - Comparative Oncology Program will initially focus efforts on prostate cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and osteosarcoma. The planned outcome of these collaborative efforts will be the integration of comparative models of cancer into the process of cancer drug development and delivery.

The newly formed CCR - Comparative Oncology Program expects to become a core resource for faculties and investigators within the CCR interested in the use of comparative models of cancer.
The initial goals of the CCR - Comparative Oncology Program include:
• Characterization and validation of comparative models for use in pre-clinical trials
• Design, implementation and management of pre-clinical trials involving pet animals that will evaluate novel therapeutic strategies developed within and outside the CCR
• Increase the awareness of the use of naturally occurring cancer models in translational and biological cancer research
For more information on resources available through the Comparative Oncology Program, contact Dr. Chand Khanna (khannac@mail.nih.gov).