2018 CVM News: How dogs are teaching researchers new tricks for treating cancer

Abstract

This news item is about: In 2003, newly minted MD Kristy Richards was preparing to move to Houston, Texas, to start a fellowship in oncology. At a friend's wedding, she got talking with a fellow guest from Houston, a veterinarian who treated dogs with cancer. Richards was incredulous. “You give chemo to dogs?” she recalls asking. Yes, veterinarians do give chemotherapy to dogs. In the case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, for example, the pooches get a cocktail of four drugs known by the initials CHOP, a mainstay of first-line chemotherapy in humans.