This blog post is about: When we think of progress in biomedical cancer research, we often conjure up images of lab mice and cell cultures. However, Dr. Kristy Richards, an Associate Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and her graduate student, Dr. Dania Villarnovo, are taking a unique approach to understanding cancer and developing drug treatments. Through the use of dogs as a model for cancer, Richards and Villarnovo have been able to bypass many obstacles faced during drug development and are able to start clinical trials at an accelerated pace compared to industry norms. Ultimately, they hope to find more efficient ways to treat cancers that plague both humans and companion animals and hopes to rework the current basic research to the clinical trials pipeline.