2006-07: Project One
Can dendritic cell vaccines effectively treat canine oral melanoma?
Drs. Monique Mayer, John Gordon and Hui Huang
WCVM scientists are testing the potential of dendritic cell vaccinations to treat malignant canine oral melanoma — a highly metastatic (spreadable) type of cancer that’s difficult to treat even with multiple therapies.
Dendritic cells are special antigen-presenting white blood cells that initiate a body’s primary immune response to disease. Based on techniques developed in human research, the WCVM team will extract immature dendritic cells from a cancer patient’s blood, then encourage the cells to grow and multiply in the laboratory. Before vaccinating each patient with its own dendritic cells, researchers will expose the cells to the dog’s own tumour cells — stimulating an immune response.
If the vaccine slows down the development of metastatic disease and increases the overall survival rate of the pilot study’s five patients, researchers will develop a clinical trial to test the vaccine’s efficacy in a larger number of dogs.
