- Boomer.

Where are you, boy?

Boomer?

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- What is comparative Oncology?

- Comparative oncology involves clinical trials that include companion species, primarily dogs and cats.

- We are going to be taking a biopsy today so that we can look at how overall his cancer is behaving currently.

Big - Boy.

- Our goal is to inject this tumor.

- We happen to be a program located within the Center for Cancer Research that focuses on trying to understand pet dogs and the cancers that they develop naturally and how those relate to humans and how we can study them and improve the lives of both species.

- Is the melanoma right - Here?

What we're doing in the dog trials is exactly analogous to what we could be doing in, in human trials.

So I'm slowly injecting the drug - When I found out that there are dogs who went through this particular type of therapy first.

Maybe it'll fix me.

- This is basically on a cellular level, a human case of osteosarcoma and a a dog case of osteosarcoma.

Clinically, they present in the same way biologically.

They act in the same way.

- I remember I asked them if I could see it under a microscope.

It was a weird moment.

Seeing the literal thing that is trying to kill me center.

Being diagnosed with cancer at 20 years old is definitely difficult.

There are scientists and veterinarians out there that their full-time job is looking at canine cancers, osteosarcoma, trying to come up with a cure.

And I am one of the people that they are trying to cure.

- So today we are going to the vet clinic for Milton to get his fifth treatment for his research trial.

So he was diagnosed with oral melanoma last March.

And so he has his mass, this tumor in his mouth and the U of I Vet clinic is doing a research trial to try and get his immune system to sort of fight that tumor away.

And so Milton's had four injections already and today he's gonna get his fifth Leona's really grown up with him.

She's four now.

So all she's known is Milton.

- Right Noni?

I love you , Milton.

- Located near Washington DC in Bethesda, Maryland.

The National Institutes of Health is home to much of the nation's top cancer research, including the more recent contribution of veterinary science in the study of comparative oncology, Dr. Amy Leblanc is a veterinary oncologist, senior scientist and director of the National Cancer Institute's Comparative Oncology program where she oversees the comparative oncology trials consortia, which plans and carries out new cancer therapy clinical trials in pet dogs with cancer.

- We happen to be a program located within the intramural Center for Cancer research that focuses on trying to understand pet dogs and the cancers that they develop naturally in their lifespan and how those relate to humans and how we can study them to benefit outcomes and improve the lives of both species.

- Comparative oncology is the study of naturally occurring cancers in humans and their pets, particularly dogs.

While differences in shared cancers do exist, research is focused on the similarities between humans and dogs, such as bladder cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, osteosarcoma, and melanoma.

- These are your osteosarcoma lines that you are Yeah.

Down.

- Dr. Nicola Mason is a veterinarian and professor of medicine and pathobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine based in Philadelphia.

It is the coordinating center for canine cancer immunotherapy trials as part of the Cancer Moonshot program.

- You know, we're often asked why dogs?

Why should you use dogs in this sort of comparative way and and how can they help us advance these types of therapies?

And I think when we think about dogs, we recognize not only do they have very similar genetics to humans, but they also share our environment.

They're walking next to us, they share our food, they often sleep with us.

And so oftentimes when we think about cancers, there are genetic cues for cancers and there's environmental cues as well.

And so the fact that they - Get cancer is fundamentally really important for us to understand it.

They're getting cancer throughout the context of their natural lifespan just like a human would.

They are not getting cancer because somebody's giving it to them.

They're not experimental animal.

These are family members.

- Good morning everyone.

How are you guys?

How are you this morning?

Good, good.

How are you Milton?

Why don't we go back to an exam room and we'll talk about how he's been doing the last three weeks.

Perfect.

Okay.

We are at the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital, specifically in the cancer care clinic being this one here to our left.

Perfect.

And for about 10 years I helped out in chemotherapy ward and then 10 years later down the road, 10 years ago from today, started working with clinical trials specifically and and Dr.

Fan.

- Dr. Timothy Fan is a veterinarian and the associate director for translational research and development at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Cancer Center.

Good to see - You.

Good to see you.

There was always the appreciation for how pets with cancer could be helpful to understand cancer people.

But I think that that has really changed and transformed over, you know, the past 15 years.

There are more people that are doing comparative oncology and I think that there is a much broader acceptance of the value of how we can actually include pets with cancer into drug development pathway, especially for immunotherapeutics.

- Come on Milton.

Let's head on in 1, 2, 3.

All - Right.

Milton, look at how - Immunotherapy is actually one of the biggest changes since I've been here.

Most of the work, when I started working with Dr fan 10 years ago, we used more traditional type of treatments, different combinations of chemotherapy or chemotherapy with radiation therapy.

And building on this new frontier of immunotherapy, either by itself or in combination with some of those more treatments has really jumpstarted what we've been able to do and how well that we've been able to start fighting some of these harder to treat cancers.

So we're gathering some blood from Milton in order to get an insight on how his immune system is responding to our treatment.

As these animals are coming in, we're working with a scientist behind the scenes to see how their tumors are responding, how their immune system is responding.

Come on bud.

Alright.

- Yeah.

So what we went ahead and did we is we give an intravenous sedative and this is gonna let Milton get very calm and then he'll go into a very light plane kind of sedation and that will allow us to position him in the CT machine.

And then we'll go ahead and then capture the images.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make a comparison.

Our initial scan is on the right side and then today's scan is on the left side.

And what we're looking for is this, this mass here, which is on the roof of his mouth.

And this is an A lesion that we initially injected and it went very, very flat.

And today what we can see over on this scan, this is his mouth and we can see that there is more of a bulge right here, regrowth of that tumor right now.

And so our goal is to inject this tumor with the cytokine to try to get a lot of inflammation going there and hopefully his immune system will then recognize it and begin to attack it.

- Dr Fan's work focuses on molecules called cytokines that activate the immune system and can stop tumor growth while in theory that should make them a good option.

The problem with cytokines is that if you get large numbers of them circulating in your body, it can be toxic, sometimes deadly.

So Dr.

Fan and his team set out to find ways of keeping these cytokines in the tumor itself.

- How can we do that?

Some very, very smart scientists have really devised ways to retain these inflammatory cytokines within a specific area that you inject.

So the, the goal here is to inject this tumor.

And so you can see there's a little bit that leaked out in the center right here.

- Dr.

Fan is injecting Milton's tumor with a cytokine called interleukin 12 that has been modified to stay within the tumor, keeping the cancer fighting medicine there to prevent Milton from experiencing any toxic side effects.

- Clearly we know that we have very, very potent localized immune inflammation.

There's no question about that.

I think what we were really, really trying to go for and what everyone wants to try to go for is with that little spark that you create in that little tumor, can you actually have it catch fire across the body to the little baby tumors that may be somewhere else?

And that's where everyone is trying to bring these technologies to locally deposit an immune stimulus to fight the tumor locally, but enough of that spark that feeds and actually grows distantly to affect other tumors that may be in the body.

This is a, a perfect storm in many ways of having great science and understanding how to manipulate the immune system to help treat pet dogs with really deadly cancers with immunotherapies.

It, it is a really gratifying full circle of discovery, translation development impact.

How you guys doing?

Good, how are you?

I'm fine.

So Milton had a good visit today.

- Good.

- Okay.

And so I think that injection went well and he was a very good patient.

- Nope.

Boop, he gets a boop and so Milton's doing a good job.

- We are gonna do our best job to try to help Milton - Down.

It really makes a difference each day extra that we get to spend with him.

So really appreciative.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's run!

Oh, come on - Milton, let's go home.

So being part of clinical trials has been a great way to give owners options outside of the normal handbag of tools that oncologists would have, gives them hope.

Where most of the time when we hear cancer we don't, we don't get that hope.

And so they're usually very thankful for, for that opportunity.

- Ready?

I'm Amanda Oand.

This is my husband Brian Ostrander and this is our special dog.

Desi, - For the last 13 years, part of the family, - He's just been a joy and he has been on quite a journey with cancer.

- We get the opportunity for Desi to come back after we haven't seen him in six months with both Amanda and Brian, but also their two daughters.

And I'm absolutely thrilled to see all of them, especially Mr. Desi.

It was March, 2021 - When he was first diagnosed, - Usually oral melanoma.

If it's not surgical we usually treat with radiation.

And to the disappointment of the radiation oncology resident, that tumor continued to grow larger and larger and larger.

- His owners had already tried other things, surgery, radiation therapy, and nothing was working.

- We knew he didn't have long 'cause he wasn't responding.

- The Ostranders were very, very devastated by this.

However, our medical oncology program, specifically our collagen anchored, intratumoral cytokine program had just opened and I had chatted with the radiation oncology resident to say, look, we have some really, really cool technology.

It would be great if Desi's owners if they, if they would want to try that.

- So then they said, would you wanna be part of a clinical trial?

And I was like, tell me more.

- There's no promises, no guarantees.

But they really wanted to do everything that they felt they could and not give up on Desi.

- We made the decision the best decision we've ever made to be part of the trial.

- We did a CT scan at day zero to see what happened before we began immunotherapy.

We did a CT scan at day 28, so after two doses and right before the third dose, - I'm checking it every day, but I'm certainly not a doctor.

And I'm like, I think it looks smaller.

So we come in and it's shrinking that night.

The next, you know, we bring 'em in for treatment, it's shrinking again.

- But day 84, it was really remarkable.

Like 95% of that tumor was already gone.

- At the end of the trial phase, he shrunk down to absolutely nothing.

There was no evidence of disease.

- And so that has continued and I know that for Desi, the time that we've started Desi until today has been 1034 days.

I'm so happy that, that we could help Desi.

As a researcher, we want to bring new technologies, new signs.

And I think that in Desi's case, we were able to cure his cancer.

- You guys have given us the gift of watching him grow old.

- To be involved in these type of discoveries, I feel fulfilled that I'm doing something that has a chance to be impactful.

- In the oncology world, unfortunately we don't get a ton of successes.

But to just get one win in the win column absolutely keeps me motivated to keep working the long days and to keep fighting for all of those four-legged animals out there.

Oh absolutely.

I'll give him a million kisses.

I love you.

I'm proud of you.

Yes, yes I am.

- While only around 30% of cancer patients respond to immunotherapy, it remains one of the most promising avenues for treating cancer.

And one of the initiatives of the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Moonshot program to encourage and accelerate cancer research across the United States.

- Today President Biden is making a push for his cancer moonshot initiative, which he hopes will end the, disease as we know it.

The goal is to cut cancer death rates by at least 50%.

At least 50% in the next 25 years to turn more cancers from death sentences into chronic diseases people can live with.

- Since its establishment.

In 2016, the Cancer Moonshot Initiative has provided nearly $2 billion in funding, supported over 70 programs and more than 250 cancer research projects, including innovation in the field of comparative oncology, which today continues to grow as more researchers across the country are working to find treatments for a range of cancers.

From the sprawling campus of the National Institutes of Health, the potential of comparative oncology flourishes in both veterinary and human research labs.

One of the pioneers of human vaccines is Dr. John Schiller.

In the 1990s, he and his colleague Dr. Doug Lowey, developed the technology that led to the HPV vaccine, which trains the immune system to fight off human papilloma viruses that cause cervical and other cancers.

Now Dr. Schiller is helping lead a new clinical trial repurposing the HPV vaccine and two other low cost vaccines that prevent shingles and rabies to treat solid tumor cancers in dogs.

The hope is that one day this cancer treatment will be available to people as well.

- Current cancer therapies are overwhelmingly moving to be personalized, complex and therefore expensive.

We are trying to develop with this technologies, cancer therapies that can work in low resource settings.

It's really neat that we can enroll any kind of dog.

Okay, so this is sort of the power that we think about this again for low resource settings is you got a tumor, we can treat it okay, as long as we can inject it.

Yeah.

And so, you know, in the trials we don't have to just have this one particular tumor type that has this one mutation and things like that.

It just got a dog has got a tumor, let's treat it.

- Well I think we're poised to learn a lot in the next 18 months.

So the enrollment as it continues and as we get, you know, samples and tissues back from these dogs that we're recruiting and treating and observing and caring for, you know, the next few months are gonna be really exciting to see what we learn.

- At the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine.

This concept is currently in the early stages of clinical testing.

Dr. David Vail heads the team of researchers moving this trial forward - With this technology.

We have a known target that's already commercially available and so we don't have to use the lab to create this process at all.

We just start going right away into the vaccination process.

- I'm Ruth Odegaard, this is my dog Duke.

There are some people that'll come up to me and think that he has a ball in his mouth.

And I'm like, no, it's not a ball.

He's, he's fighting cancer.

So my daughter-in-law actually made this really cool banner form that says, hi, my name is Duke, I'm a cancer fighter.

- Today we're planning on doing essentially the same thing that we've been doing every week.

So still giving him the treatment today, today's a little bit special though.

We are going to be taking a biopsy today and also getting like some full blood work, which we haven't necessarily been doing at every appointment.

- So Duke has a soft tissue sarcoma in his oral cavity there.

There's no bony component here.

The teeth are just kind of floating in tumor, which has pushed his bulb of his nose up and deformed his face.

There's a form of soft tissue sarcoma that is often referred to as a high low soft tissue sarcoma.

The oral cavity that is under the microscope, it looks relatively benign and non-aggressive, but in the clinical patient it is very aggressive and starts to eat away at bone and tissue in his oral cavity.

Right now, at the extent of it, while it's visually very profound, soft tissue sarcomas in general do not systemically affect a patient to a great degree.

That is that they still feel good, they have a great appetite, they're not nauseated.

He runs around, does all the things that he would normally do during the day.

So he's really a good candidate for treatment.

- When I first came here, they did a biopsy to, to verify that it was cancer and then they did x-rays, they did a lot of blood work, they did a CT scan and then they gave me four options.

One of them was the option of taking his whole top jaw off and it would take away all the tumor.

And my second option was radiation and chemo.

And my third option was just taking him home, just letting him live out as healthy as a life as he could.

And then my fourth option was a clinical trial.

Okay.

So it wasn't an easy decision for me, but because the clinical trial he has, they're using his own immune system to fight to kill this tumor.

And because he has such a strong immune system and he is very healthy, I opted to go that route first - Blow back, okay, next quadrant.

And so the idea is that we've already primed the immune system to seek out those, those bad guys.

And now we've put the bad guys within the tumor and the immune system will attack the tumor.

- Because this is my second trip here, I don't know the outcome yet, but in my eyes, if this could help another dog down the road or future, one of my dogs down the road, that's why I decided to go with the clinical trial.

- Okay, ready?

Let's - Go.

Let's go.

Cancer's a hard thing, I think to say like you never wanna say you're completely free and clear because I think there's always that worry in the back of your head.

But I think how we look at it now is that today he's healthy.

Today he's good.

And this is how it started.

We met Batman at an adoption event and he was only a couple months old at that time, it was March 4th, 2018.

We officially adopted him.

And then September 4th, 2018 is when he got diagnosed with osteosarcoma.

I don't think we've realized how prevalent cancer was in dogs and that it was something like 50% of dogs will end up with cancer.

- So the rough estimates are somewhere between about 10 to 15,000 dogs per year in the US will be diagnosed with osteosarcoma.

- You know, once we found out about the study at Pen Vet, it was how soon can we get 'em in there?

What's the, I mean, what's the quickest we could do it?

So we had a couple connections to Dr. Mason and they emailed her.

We were able to get into the study.

- Batman was diagnosed when he was very young.

I think he was just over a year of age.

Whereas dogs are usually middle to older age and unfortunately frequently it's very aggressive.

- Osteosarcoma is an aggressive form of bone cancer in humans.

It's rare though usually affecting children and young adults in dogs, however, it's far more common.

- This is an example of this tumor with osteosarcoma.

When you compare these two, you can immediately see that there's something very abnormal happening here.

This moth eaten appearance here, this tumor eating away at the bone.

And this really is an indication of a very aggressive bone tumor.

- They did the amputation and then they started chemo pretty much right away on him.

And he had four rounds of chemo.

And then after the chemo was finished, he could do the vaccine, which they did three rounds of that on him.

- Nothing is is too much for Batman and, and he really just didn't miss a beat.

He went through this therapy as if including his amputation, as if nothing had happened is, oh, the leg missing.

Okay, must have left that somewhere.

Move on.

And I think his owners are very similar actually.

They sort of took Batman through this, this journey.

- It became this thing of let me get him to a year.

And then once we got him to one, I was like, let me get him to three.

And then once we got him to three it became, let me get him to six.

And so it was always having these milestones for him of, let us just get to the next birthday.

- This is 2024.

So this is just a few months ago now.

And that would be taking him out now to six years after his initial diagnosis.

So these were taken three months ago.

All looks clear in his chest.

And there's that VD view again just so that we can look at his lung fields.

And you can see that his chest there is, is clear.

No evidence of metastatic disease in his chest.

It's very exciting.

- Batman was diagnosed, gosh six years ago and the prognosis, the day of diagnosis, was a year at best.

That's what you can hope for.

And here we are six years later and he's happy, he's healthy, he's a normal dog.

If it wasn't for Dr. Mason and the work that she's doing with the vaccine, he wouldn't be here today.

It's really like a miracle.

The work that she's doing.

- Dr. Mason and her colleagues launched the first clinical trial to treat canine osteosarcoma using a vaccine made of something that may sound surprising.

Listeria.

What - Is listeria?

Listeria is a bacteria.

And you may have heard about it because it is the cause of food poisoning in some instances, in for example, processed meats and cheeses.

And it, it causes some very unpleasant clinical signs when you have listeria food poisoning.

And one of the reasons that it causes those sort of unpleasant clinical signs is because it is a really potent stimulator of your immune system.

- Dr. Mason and her colleagues took advantage of this, creating a vaccine with a modified version of listeria that doesn't cause any dangerous symptoms.

In this way, the modified listeria teaches the immune system to kill off any osteosarcoma cells throughout the body.

- So the first trial that we did with the listeria vaccine was solely at Penn.

We had dogs that came from all over the country, but the vaccine was administered here.

The follow-ups were done here.

Since Sasha was the first of 18 dogs, and the idea was that these patients would have amputation, they would have chemotherapy, so they have standard of care, but then they have the option if they so choose to receive this experimental vaccine.

Three doses at three week intervals.

- The first trial with 18 dogs lasted for three years, which included follow-up appointments.

- The results of the first trial were really very impressive.

So with those 18 dogs we were able to see a distinct increase in disease-free interval, meaning that the time between amputation and when the disease comes back, that time was significantly prolonged.

And also an increase in overall survival.

- The trials also gained the attention of Dr. Amy Leblanc and her colleagues at the National Institutes of Health.

In preparation of their own osteosarcoma clinical trial, - We reviewed a lot of different therapeutic concepts and one of them was Dr. Mason's listeria, HR-2 trial that was chosen as the, the trial concept that had the most promise in terms of being translationally relevant for humans and really able to fit within the construct of canine osteosarcoma care.

It is comparative oncology in action.

- And that involved 11 different academic sites around the country with the exactly the same vaccine that we had trialed here at the single site initial study at Penn.

- And we enrolled 118 dogs on that trial over about a two year period.

We definitely saw dogs that lived a really long time on that trial.

Those are obviously dogs that have the power to respond to an immunotherapeutic approach, but there were also certainly dogs that didn't.

And so what we're learning from continuing to look at the data from that trial is that there are biomarkers of response that you can correlate to a good outcome versus a bad outcome.

This is important because it has links to the way that immunotherapies being developed for humans.

- Come on.

My name is Matt Olson.

I'm from Hillsborough, New Jersey.

Next to me here is my adopted rescue dog Sandy.

She's a daddy's girl.

She has to be by my side all the time.

- But she was diagnosed about a year or so after he adopted her.

- Sandy was five and a half years old when she was first diagnosed with osteosarcoma.

- That was most likely to, to to cause her to die within the year.

- So my regular vet, he knew of Dr. Mason and the study of the listeria vaccine that they were down here at University of Pennsylvania.

And within two weeks we were down here having her treatment beginning.

- Sandy was able to be enrolled on that clinical trial, underwent a full limb amputation, also went through chemotherapy without any side effects and took the vaccine as well in her stride.

- She did show signs of response to the listeria vaccine, which was a temperature rise indicating that the body was reacting and fighting back.

- These are Sandy's records.

We have radiographs from her last visit on the clinical trial now three years from her initial diagnosis.

And again, we see no evidence of of metastatic disease.

And of course that's, that's really very encouraging.

- Trial was completed in 2021.

So for three years I was bringing her down here every, every two months.

- Sandy, a 9-year-old golden retriever, joined a nationwide trial in 2018.

We met her this past August with her owner Matt Olson.

- So yes, Matt, Sandy and I ended up on, on 60 minutes.

- During the trial, Dr. Mason told us Sandy's immune system reacted to the listeria just as she'd hoped.

- Her body temperature started to increase, peaked around about four hours and then started to drop down again.

We sort of want to see that because it tells us that the immunotherapy is in fact stimulating her immune response, which is what we want to happen.

- There's no sign of cancer?

- No.

- And you've had four great years with her.

Yeah.

Did she get like extra treats when she got through it all?

- She got everything.

She, she still does.

- Bet she does.

I bet she does.

The 60 minute segment on comparative oncology really helped the public awareness of what was possible in terms of studying dogs and offering dogs therapies that were really designed to help humans, but were also able to help dogs themselves with the cancers that they developed.

- Sandy is 11 years old now.

She's doing fantastic.

She's getting a little older.

Walking a little slower, but she is in great shape.

- Hey, how are you?

Hi.

Hi.

So good to see you.

Oh my gosh, how are you?

I'm well, how are you doing?

Good.

How you doing?

How she doing?

She's doing great.

We just had x-rays six months ago.

- Yes, - They were clear.

So six years.

Six years now.

- It's all one big team effort and it's wonderful to see this result.

It really is.

You know, she's teaching us a lot.

We were looking at various things in her blood to see if we could understand, you know, why she had done so well.

So we continued to learn from her, don't we?

- So I understand that this study that was related to the dogs here is now being transferred to young children.

- Yes, yes, that's correct.

That's absolutely correct.

And we know that the dogs who have this disease have have a very similar type of disease as the children do as well.

So you know, the concept of a comparative approach is that if we can find therapies that benefit the dogs with this disease, then we are very hopeful that this type of approach could actually benefit people as well.

And we know that those cancers are really very similar between the dogs and the humans.

This is basically on a cellular level, the osteosarcoma lesions: a human case of osteosarcoma and a a dog case of osteosarcoma, side by side.

And I think what you can see is both of these look really very, very similar.

So what we are seeing here in sort of the dark purple are the osteoblast, the nuclei of those cells that are actually the cancer cells.

So clinically they present in the same way.

They act in the same way.

You know, this again emphasizes the idea that the dogs that develop these naturally occurring tumors, really many of them will look very similar to tumors in humans.

- And I think that therein lies an opportunity, right?

To study a common canine tumor for the benefit of a rare human tumor to benefit, really everybody.

- While research drives innovation in medicine, dealing with cancer ultimately brings the disease home and to the heart.

Just outside of Philadelphia, the Augusti family adjusts to the loss of their son.

And brother Mossi.

At just 16 years old, he had recently lost a two year battle with osteosarcoma.

- Mossi was a very kind, very compassionate kid, always active and engaged with life and people and asking questions and loved to travel and play sports and be with family.

And none of that changed.

And I think even as much as osteosarcoma took away, including his leg, ultimately his life, he somehow managed to just keep doing things until he just couldn't anymore.

Pediatric oncologist somewhere said that when a child has cancer, a family has cancer.

And that is so true.

- The loss is recent, but it's been a long journey.

Two plus years of his fight against osteosarcoma.

It's such a rare disease.

Four to 500 kids in the US get osteosarcoma.

- It's very aggressive.

It grows quickly.

It can spread to other parts of the body.

And so it's a really tough cancer.

It's a scary cancer.

Mossi started to have knee pain in February, March of 2022.

- And he was running track, he was playing soccer and you know, he's 14, he just start hit his growth spurts.

So we're thinking, you know, growing pains, maybe tendonitis.

- We didn't realize that it was actually bone cancer until the end of April.

Mossi felt that to really maximize his chances of surviving this cancer to really try and make sure it doesn't come back either in the leg or the lung.

He was going to amputate.

It is a long healing process.

Just as soon as he could, started to get fitted for a prosthetic.

But he wasn't really able to do it intensively and sort of master the art of walking with a a prosthetic limb until he was done with his chemotherapy.

It didn't stop him.

It really was exactly what he wanted, which was to be able to resume living this life in motion.

- Once he relapsed, after three months of of being in remission, we were in the clinical wilderness.

- You could do chemotherapy again.

But we knew that it was unlikely to work.

And so we were suddenly cast into this jungle of clinical trials with no path.

You don't know which one to choose.

Is it going to work?

Is it going to be safe?

Where is it located?

Will I qualify?

And here was this story on 60 minutes.

- The 60 minutes story I think came to our attention 'cause someone, a friend of ours said, you gotta see this story.

Have there been a lot of new treatments for osteosarcoma?

- Unfortunately, no.

We've been using the same chemotherapy for about the last 60 years or so.

- Really?

Is that because it's a rare form of cancer?

- Yeah, it's harder to study 'cause there's smaller numbers of patients to, you know, study in large trials.

And also since it's rare, not a lot of funding goes to a lot of trials for it.

- But there were trials in pet dogs of an experimental immunotherapy treatment for osteosarcoma that began in 2012 led by Dr. Nicola Mason, using the bacteria listeria.

- That story in 60 Minutes where they interviewed Dr. Nicola Mason, a Penn vet really resonated with me because I'm a vaccine specialist.

So I mentioned that I'm a pediatrician and a scientist and my science is vaccines.

And so to hear about a cancer vaccine for a rare pediatric cancer like osteosarcoma just brought together all of these worlds that were really important to me.

- In 2021, the FDA approved a phase two clinical trial using modified listeria to treat young adults and children like Kristy Gomes, who have recurring osteosarcoma that spread to their lungs.

- I was very moved by the fact that people were trying to help kids and dogs with osteosarcoma and that in fact it started with dogs.

It didn't even start in pediatrics.

It started in veterinarian medicine.

And then someone had the vision to think, oh my goodness, there are these 500 kids every year in the United States who get osteosarcoma.

Maybe this can help them too.

And here was this story on 60 Minutes that was already showing you that there was some promise it wasn't guaranteed to work for everyone who took this vaccine, but there were some examples that really gave hope.

- Christie's last scan showed no signs of cancer.

She continues to get immunotherapy every three weeks.

- Benjamin come here - Between treatments and homework, you'll find her with her Yorkie Benny, a gift from her mom -- one more dog that's helping her in her recovery.

- I didn't know Dr. Mason beforehand, but after the 60 Minutes interview, I definitely wanted to know her better, and the work that she was doing.

And I reached out to her after Mossi's Cancer returned and we knew that our options were very limited.

And furthermore, she was right there in our backyard.

She's in downtown Philadelphia at the Penn Vet School.

And so I reached out to her and to be honest, I wasn't totally expecting to hear back, but I heard back right away.

- I remember that we sort of started straight away talking about the vaccine and it was clear that Yas had medical knowledge.

She wanted to know how the dogs had responded to the vaccine, sort of the side effects that the dogs had got, how the dogs were doing... - How was it designed?

What was it meant to do?

What had she observed in the dogs who had received the vaccine?

- And sort of halfway through that conversation, I sort of stopped her and I sort of said, you know, I'm assuming that you're asking these questions because your dog has osteosarcoma.

And she said, no, my son has osteosarcoma.

And I just remember being sort of hit like a ton of bricks.

There was sort of a, a sudden realization of this is, this is quite different.

I speak to a lot of people who have dogs with osteosarcoma and here I was talking to a lady whose son was battling osteosarcoma.

And I do remember that had quite a profound effect on me during that call and afterwards as well.

- Welcome to Osteosarcoma.

It brings a lot of different worlds together.

There's a lot of strange coincidences, which, you know, we've come to realize are not coincidences.

So the fact that someone was working on an osteosarcoma treatment in our own backyard here in Philadelphia, that showed promise, something we hadn't seen in our experience with osteosarcoma, was just amazing.

- So he had multiple tumors that had appeared or reappeared in both of his lungs.

And as we looked into clinical trials and learned more about the listeria HR-2 vaccine trial that Dr. Nicola Mason had done in dogs, we learned that in order to qualify, in order to get into the trial, you had to have clear lungs.

All of those tumors needed to be removed.

And after his first surgery, we thought everything was going well.

He was recovering easily and feeling good.

And unfortunately, the night before he was scheduled for the second lung surgery, he got sick.

And we ended up having to take him to the emergency room.

And while he was there, he had an x-ray of his lungs.

And it showed that the tumors had actually returned to the side that we had just operated on.

And so it became very apparent that he would not qualify to participate in this clinical trial.

It was literally gone overnight.

We really didn't know what to do.

It was, it was devastating.

Chemotherapy was already off the table.

Mossi had made it clear he was not doing that again.

And there were a couple of pill based treatments that had already been tested and they were not cures, they were really just treatments that were meant to buy you time.

He felt, and we supported him a hundred percent, that this was probably the best thing to do, was to just go home, take these pills and just see how much time it could buy you.

- We created a public Facebook group to document his journey.

We called it the Mossi Strong Group.

And he really inspired a lot of people, certainly, you know, beyond the family.

- For most of his relapse period from March, 2023, right through Christmas 2023.

There were ups and downs and of course he had bad days, but, but mostly he was really able to live life as much as he possibly could.

After Christmas, you could sense that there was a change.

I think as, as Mossi was dying, it became more and more important to us as a family to find a way to make sure that his life and his death did not go to waste.

- What followed from that for us naturally was that, well, what is the way to continue that fight even after Mossi's death?

And that natural, the answer to that really was donating the tissues to science to allow that critical research to continue - Because the answers are in there and it's hard for researchers to get samples of tumors from children.

As I understood, reading a lot of publications, especially ones by Dr. Amy Leblanc.

- She had eard about us through Dr. Mason because they have a connection at CHOP in Philadelphia.

And she knew that we were trying very hard to establish that molecular genomic framework of osteosarcoma between dogs and humans.

And I felt comfortable reaching out and just asking her, what can we do?

How can we help?

Would it be helpful to you if we donated Mossi's tumors to your research?

- These came to us from a family, a mom who contacted us about collecting these samples from her son when he passes away and having them be a part of our work, which is just an amazing act of courage and strength to take that moment of suffering and turn it into something that could really help other patients that suffer from this disease.

So they're incredibly important to us and have come to us at a time that it's just really transformational for this project.

- It's an amazing feeling knowing that Mossi's tumor samples are contributing to research.

Because you know, when you think about the fact that those very tumors that killed Mossi in the end are potentially now going to save lives for hundreds, if not thousands of kids in the future.

There's really no better way to honor Mossi's legacy than to have done that.

- I am Olga Nikitin.

I live in Portland, Oregon.

When I was 37, I was diagnosed with stage three breast breast cancer.

After that it was found in my chest wall and then traveled to my spine and eventually to my liver.

And about a year ago, about 17 years since the first diagnosis, they found tumors in my other breast.

- There's such a lot of world to see.

Music plays a huge role in my life, ever since I was a young child.

If I'm sad or stressed, music can cheer me up.

That was beautiful.

I grew up in Odessa, Ukraine and I've been in the country for, well since 1993.

Our family came as Jewish refugees.

We've been here, only in Portland, only four and a half years.

We came from California, the Bay Area.

- How was the singing lesson?

- Singing lesson was good.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm just not happy to go to treatment tomorrow.

- I'm sorry, - Another day.

That's okay.

- Not the first time.

- Not the last time.

My husband is an engineer.

My son graduated from Yale last year and just started medical school recently in New York.

- Hi mom.

- Hi.

Woo woo.

How are you?

- I'm good.

I'm tired.

It's been a long day.

How are you doing?

- I'm good, I'm good.

Getting ready for my procedure tomorrow.

- So what, what treatment is this for you?

- It's, it's going to be number six.

be number six.

- Number six.

Wow.

Yeah, so including tomorrow I'll have three more.

And then I don't know what happens afterwards.

So let's just hope I'm cured, magically.

When I heard about this experimental study that it's immune therapy and when, when the drug is injected directly into the tumor, for some reason I thought that's, that's what I need.

Because it's stage A testing, it's at, at some point they only had I think eight people who were, who were, you know, using this drug.

You know, actually was just told recently that, you know, the same clinical trial that I'm having was done on dogs before.

First.

So can you imagine, - So it was originally done on dogs?

- that was originally done on dogs.

Yes.

And dogs with mouth melanoma.

And it actually, the drug was very helpful.

And dogs, some dogs went well.

Many dogs probably went into remission.

So I'm hoping, and it's, I I kind of consider that be a good sign for me, right?

Because I know how much I like doggies.

- How much you love dogs?

- Yeah, I love dogs.

- So, so the treatment was, was entirely developed originally for, for dogs to begin with?

- Yeah, I think it's, it was targeted just like, just like this one for, for me, so, which is so super - Cool.

And it worked for the dogs?

- Yeah.

It worked with the dogs, which makes me very happy and I would like to see some photographs of dogs who survived that cancer.

When my told me about the clinical trial, I was so excited about it, even though it's just a very, very early stage of testing.

- Ready.

Set.

Go!.

But when I found out that there are dogs who went through this particular type of therapy first and they also participated in such an advanced clinical trial... - I love you too.

Okay.

Sorry baby.

There you go.

As, as a result I was able to treat it with the same drug.

It's a good sign for me because I, I love dogs so much and I always felt connection to them.

Do you love me?

Oh, you love me.

And so now I believe that this treatment will be successful even more in this clinical trial, I have been approved for eight treatments.

There are three weeks between treatments and the trial is going to be completed for me after eight, after eight treatments.

And right now is actually treatment number six.

I could have gone on oral chemo, which for some reason just scared me a lot.

And, and so I was, you know, speaking to my fa my doctors, my family, my son.

And we went to look for other treatments, possibly experimental treatment.

- Olga has had surgery for breast cancer.

She's had breast cancer come back in her spine, in her liver, in her lymph nodes, and now even, even in her chest wall.

Good morning Olga.

How are you doing?

Good.

How are you?

How Olga's done traditional treatments.

She's done a lot of focus treatments.

She's done endocrine therapies.

She's done targeted therapies.

Now doing immunotherapy, my hope for her is this can give her some great disease control, keep her cancer under control, and that she can delay or put off doing more cytotoxic chemotherapy for a while.

Okay.

Morning.

Good morning.

I've known Olga for several years, but not her entire cancer journey.

When I met her, she already had advanced cancer and was looking for other treatments.

We were able to find treatments for her that were standard of care that were approved.

But always we were asking the question each time it was time for a new treatment: is there a new study?

Is there a good clinical trial to go on?

And so this is, this is where we're at now.

- I want to ask, I was talking to my son Ben yesterday.

And we're just wondering what's going to happen next.

So I know that there are, including today, there are three more, right?

Three more treatments.

- Right.

Presumably if everything still looks stable, we'll have to make a decision.

We'll have to decide should we kind of just wait and sort of see how things go and decide whenever we want.

You know, the study may say you have to wait 'til March for a CT scan.

We may decide we wanna get it earlier.

If we're not doing anything, we could at that time go to the Xeloda, you know, kind of our backup option had been oral Xeloda pills.

But we might just observe, you know, the idea of immunotherapy is sometimes allowing the body to have time.

- Right?

- So you, you've been feeling really well not having to do this kind of a toxic treatment, so - Oh gosh, so much better.

I know.

Yeah, I know.

So, so hopefully I will not have to go on Xelota.

- Yeah, I feel like pushing that out as long as possible is one of the ideas we've been trying to accomplish.

Immunotherapy was just an idea 20 plus years ago and now it's the standard of care.

Even in breast cancer, as I mentioned, you know, immunotherapy has been late to the game in, in, in breast cancer.

But in triple negative breast cancer, it's a standard of care.

We're hoping we can find some of these treatments that are standard of care in other subtypes of breast cancer.

But it's been amazing, the idea that you can do something that makes your own body fight your cancer, of course is something patients are interested in, doctors are interested in.

There's less side effects potentially from it.

Maybe different side effects, but immunotherapy has come so far in the last 20 years.

- Olga is one of my patients on a clinical trial I coordinate here.

Dr. Conlin knew she wanted specifically the ANC 101 injection drug for Olga.

Like six-o.

Okay.

We got Olga started in the beginning of July and at this point she's had six treatments.

- The ANC 101 treatment Olga has been receiving is the human prepared version of the interleukin 12 cytokine used by Dr.

Fan during the University of Illinois veterinary trials.

- I mean, what's so interesting about this trial is that this is the same exact drug: ANC 101 was used in dogs and shown to be effective.

And now we're using it in humans.

- All right.

We'll get Dr. Gibson.

Though Olga has metastatic advanced breast cancer with the help of the interventional radiology team here and Dr. Conlin, we chose three lesions to inject.

- Okay.

Reviewing the imaging on Olga before doing her injection.

There are three areas that we're going to treat today.

The first is a new area.

It's here along the left chest wall.

You can see there's an abnormal soft tissue mass measures about 2.6 centimeters in size.

The next site we are going to treat is an additional chest wall mass, which is a little harder to see, but it's involves the muscle here along the left chest wall involving the, the pectus musculature and extending into the soft tissues.

And the last place to treat will be a lymph node in the left axilla or armpit, which also measures about 2.5 centimeters.

Each one of these will receive one milliliter of investigational drug injected - In the very beginning when Olga began this trial, so four and a half months ago, I saw her being very brave, ready to just take it on.

And, you know, getting injections for an experimental therapy into your cancer lesions in particular in in the breast area, is, is vulnerable.

- Ready to go today?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Do I have a choice?

Yeah.

- I guess I do.

You do have a choice.

Yeah.

Okay, so we're doing three sites today, right?

Two on the left chest wall, one in the armpit, just like we've done before, okay?

She's, she's tough.

Most every patient I've ever helped is tough as nails.

Very resilient and they, they often don't let their loved ones or even me see them have a tough time, you know?

But every now and then we get a glimpse of things being hard on them and we do our very best to support them through it.

So what she's going through, even though she's doing better, it's still, it's still hard for her.

- The drug gets injected directly into the tumor.

- Alright, you ready to go?

We're gonna inject the - And then's ultrasound guided injections.

- So I'm slowly injecting the drug and I'm moving the needle around to get it to different locations of the tumor.

- He then is able to connect the syringe to the guide needle and inject the tumor at that time, fanning the drug out and it's usually given over a couple of minutes per lesion.

And then we move on to the next lesion for injection.

- This was a great fit for her 'cause we can inject into the tumor, which can kind of change the tumor microenvironment.

That's something pretty important in immunotherapy.

Good first one done.

Good job.

- Okay, let's go to the next.

- And so far it's been working.

She's had really good response in the places we've injected.

Some of the other places have stabilized.

Theoretically those should be growing if something isn't happening in her body.

So I think the idea is we're injecting tumors, her body's coming, it's making a response and then kind of going nearby potentially and helping other areas respond.

That's kind of the holy grail, - Really nice work that went.

So - Olga has advanced cancer and where she's at, she's going to be living with it for the rest of her life.

So overall, we're very pleased with how Olga's doing on this trial.

And she's been able to maintain a quality of life, which is the most important thing.

Stay warm.

If you start feeling the jitters as you know.

Yeah.

You know what that feels like.

Pile on blankets, do whatever you need to do.

- And the dog - And the dog.

Cuddle with your dog.

That's a perfect idea.

Hot water.

It's like a hot water bottle, right?

The word hope is really tricky in oncology.

I feel like we can hope for realistic things, but I, I really try not to tell a patient how to hope.

Obviously the, the dream, of course is to kill all the cancer and it goes away completely for her to be cured.

That just isn't the reality right now at this point.

It would be great if we could discover that and find the right treatment for her in that setting.

But, but really the, the primary goal with, with her is control spread of disease.

- I never really thought that I could die.

This thought for some reason.

Never, never kind of entered my mind.

I, I guess I was greedy to live.

And that's, that's another, another thing.

This fight was without any resentment.

I never asked: why me?

I just took it the way it was, a disease.

And at this point it's a chronic disease.

I don't even know why I didn't really worry that it's a very beginning of this particular study.

I think it was more worrisome for my family.

But I just have a... this silly tendency to believe that everything is going to be okay.

And that I'm just lucky that this, we found out about this study and maybe it'll fix me.

Okay.

- Ready to go for a walk?

Serena Sabuda lives in Washington DC with her husband Matt and their dog Milo.

For the past seven years, Serena has been battling osteosarcoma.

- So I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma when I was 20 years old and I just finished the clinical trial right before I was about to turn 26.

Being diagnosed with cancer at 20 years old is definitely difficult.

For five years I was doing toxic chemo, super invasive surgery, to more chemo, to relapsing, to more surgery, relapsing again.

And that happened about six times and in the back of my head I just kept thinking about what happens when I run out of treatment options.

Then that's it.

Like then there's nothing else for me to do because osteosarcoma is such a rare cancer, the community is very strong.

It's a lot of like Facebook groups and like social media groups where people will come and chat.

There is one nonprofit charity for specifically osteosarcoma research.

And so they put on a conference every year.

- It's a very unusual and and one of my favorite conferences in as much as the patients and the patient families are there together with the researchers and the clinicians.

I think I was - 21 years old at the time and I was particularly interested in Dr. Mason's talk because she was a veterinarian and it was titled: "Old Tricks and New Leads for Dogs with OS" And being a dog lover, that just really peaked my interest.

- I know her story to some extent and my understanding is that Serena was actually in the audience.

- And she presented some very promising research that it was currently helping dogs with osteosarcoma.

And they were currently investigating how that could potentially be translated over to humans.

I mean it sounds really cool, but I thought that maybe this would be a treatment in 10, 20 years or so.

Yeah, I didn't think it would be so soon.

So when my oncologist first told me about the clinical trial, it was pretty scary.

But also because I had heard about the trial earlier and knew it was tested on dogs and now it was gonna be in humans, I was super hopeful and really excited at the chance to be able to be cured of osteosarcoma.

The clinical trial, it was basically one day at the hospital, getting the infusion every three weeks and that was for 48 weeks.

And so it was a total of I think 16 treatments.

Throughout the treatment.

I was getting three months CT scans and each CT scan would come back and they would be good.

And then I finished treatment and I always really struggle after I finish treatment because I'm basically leaving my body up to whatever it wants to do.

But I kept getting good scans even after the treatment and that's something that has never happened to me before.

- So I was at a hill briefing on the topic of creating a canine cancer registry and presented the work of the comparative oncology program.

A young woman in the audience stood up and said, you know, I have osteosarcoma and I am alive today because of a trial that I was treated with at Hopkins that was based on the canine listeria HR-2 two trial.

- I didn't have a question.

I just wanted people to know that I'm currently on the trial, the human trial that Dr. Leblanc is talking and giving you all a briefing on.

And I let everyone know that I had relapsed like seven times.

And since being on the trial, I have been disease free for the longest time ever.

And that the trial might be working for me.

- I had no idea that I would be fortunate enough to meet somebody who could stand there and bravely tell their story about how our work had impacted her directly.

And it's just, it was just a really powerful moment for me.

Serena Sabuda is a warrior against osteosarcoma.

- I ended up visiting her lab at the NIH.

It was just really fascinating hearing it all about all the data she's collecting and all the research that she's doing and seeing osteosarcoma under a microscope.

'cause I was just intrigued and it was kind of, it was a weird moment seeing the literal thing that is trying to kill me.

I think comparative oncology is just like a really new and cool way to view cancers.

Now we have become advanced enough to where we are able to use even other species to kind of try to cure osteosarcoma.

- So why don't you click on the doctor note.

- Okay.

These scans just came in and they're still good - Trial's, still working.

- It's always crazy to me that there are scientists and veterinarians out there that their full-time job is looking at canine cancers, osteosarcoma, trying to come up with a cure.

And I am one of the people that they are trying to cure - Her oncologists and the folks that cared for her and enrolled her on the listeria trial at Hopkins.

Of course, they are the ones who are responsible for saving her life.

But is it possible that our work and our willingness to do new things and break boundaries and offer that experience in dogs to the physician world might have had a role there?

I'd, I'd love to think that that's true.

I would love to think that maybe incrementally we are helping change the face of how that disease is cared and managed.

- Comparative oncology research and clinical trials for a growing number of cancers continues across the country.

New research and treatments, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, car T cell therapy, and cancer vaccines, could reshape how we treat cancer.

While scientists are also embracing cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence in-depth, DNA sequencing and advanced 3D imaging to explore the complexity of tumors like never before, analyzing massive amounts of data and pushing the search for lifesaving treatments forward.

- So What you're seeing here is basically a morphological map of the entire lung sample.

- We have not just a three dimensional map, but an incredibly high resolution map of the all the different cell types that comprise a metastatic tumor.

This imaging will give us the information we need to think very carefully about rational therapeutic strategies.

And having this level of, of data and just a fundamental understanding of the disease and how it grows and develops in the, will be transformative for the way that we think about the next generation of clinical trials.

- What my objective is as sort of a physicist and an engineer is to give you more information, to give you a complete three-dimensional reconstruction of all the relevant biomolecules.

- Yeah.

- And that's gonna help you figure out better ways of attacking this disease.

- Being here at the NIH within the National Cancer Institute affords a huge amount of opportunity in terms of resources, support, and incredibly talented people.

- So the work that we're doing with Amy's lab and the comparative oncology branch is immensely gratifying from an intellectual perspective.

It's also sort of, it's personally relevant.

My wife lost a dog to osteosarcoma.

She and I have since adopted another dog that we lost to, you know, bladder cancer.

So it hits home and that makes it, you know, a little more important.

- While many immunotherapy treatments in clinical trials are showing positive results, the drugs currently being tested may not be available to treat dogs with cancer for some time due to the need for ongoing study and regulatory approvals.

There are, however, scientists on the front lines of research who are working with existing drugs already approved by the FDA and repurposing them to provide promising immunotherapy treatments for cancer.

This is important because these drugs are available to help treat a dog that has certain cancers.

Right now.

Dr. Steve Dow and Dr. Dan Regan at Colorado State University and Dr. Cheryl London at Tufts University are working with medications that can be repurposed and combined to provide more effective cancer treatments.

Good girl.

- Sort of the guiding principle for our lab in the past 15 to 20 years has been looking for drugs that are already approved for other diseases.

For example, high blood pressure, screening them to see if they have interesting immunological activities and then if they do, if we can identify drugs that seem promising and then moving them to clinical trials in dogs and ultimately to people.

And the reason we've taken this approach is it allows us to bypass that five to 10 year lag of new drug development where you're not sure it's gonna make it through trials.

It's not available, it's too expensive.

Using these selected repurpose drugs really sort of solves a number of problems for us and really allows us to advance to clinical trials much quicker.

- They conducted a successful clinical trial to treat metastatic osteosarcoma using the blood pressure drug losartan and another drug called palladia.

- Yeah.

So this two drug protocol is actually being used clinically now across the country.

And because we selected drugs that were readily available, relatively inexpensive, had good safety profiles, they could be quickly adopted by the cancer research community.

So it really validated our approach in the sense that we could push the information out and it would get into the hands of veterinarians pretty quickly.

- This treatment is being used after a dog has undergone the standard of care of amputation and chemotherapy and its tumor has come back.

Although these treatments may not be well known, a veterinarian or veterinary oncologist can prescribe them to treat certain canine cancers.

- With losartan, with this drug being a repurposed drug that's, you know, off patent, right?

It's, it's cheap and readily available.

So I think, you know, now you don't, you don't have to be enrolled on a clinical trial to get this two drug immunotherapy protocol.

It's just can be prescribed by your, by your clinician, by your, by your veterinarian.

- This drug combination can possibly prevent or delay bone cancer from metastasizing and can help treat cancer that has already spread to the lungs by slowing growth and prolonging and improving a dog's quality of life.

- So I think the success with the two drug protocol and we're, we're not there yet.

I mean, this isn't a home run, but we see about a 25% response rate compared to zero before this.

I think it really gives us the, the impetus to look further at other combinations so we can build off of this platform.

We kind of see this as an early platform that we would then add other drugs to.

And we've had success now adding a third drug, which bumps the response rate up to about 30 to 35%.

And we're busy screening new drugs now that would go into that basic platform to again, stack drugs because more drugs typically are gonna work better.

- So five months later this nodule is completely gone and she hasn't developed any new nodules with, which is just not something that we've seen.

- The promise of repurposing existing drugs for new cancer treatments is creating new opportunities in the field of research.

The clinical trial that doctors Dao and Regan did for canine osteosarcoma has led to a human clinical trial at Children's Hospital of Colorado, using the same two drug combination.

- Once they saw the canine data and the efficacy of these two drugs of losartin and paladia in our canine osteosarcoma patients, you know, they knew they wanted to translate this into, to kids with this disease.

We meet monthly with Children's Hospital Colorado, you know that they're sending the human patient samples right down here to our veterinary hospital and our labs here looking at that data.

And I think, you know, despite the, the slow process and the long timeline, you know, the level of enthusiasms remain there and we're able to continue to kind of enroll patients and, and move this forward.

Let's go.

So it takes, you know, this kind of multidisciplinary interdisciplinary collaboration and this comparative oncology approach, I think to kind of accelerate research in this area and hopefully find new, new therapies for, for pets and people.

- And I think, you know, one thing I often say to my kids and to people on my team, like what got us here is not going to be what gets us there.

Obviously what has been going on for the last 40 years in pediatric oncology has not moved the needle at all.

So it's time for some fresh perspective and some new thinking.

So that's what I'm really hopeful for in the future.

- Let's go.

What we were always told in this study by everyone who, who we came into contact with was just how important the study with the dogs was.

Because if it worked could have this huge impact on pediatric osteosarcoma.

You know, even though how heartbreaking and scary it was to go through everything, the outcome was completely worth it.

His last scan was at the end of March.

- Yes.

Still clear?

Yes.

Everything clear?

- Still clear.

- You are a rock star, aren't you?

- Yeah.

It'll be seven in the fall if you can believe it.

No way.

Yep.

Seven - Dogs are amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

And I think we're gonna see a lot more of the comparative oncology approach being implemented, and then I think that's really gonna drive home the value of looking at canine patients with naturally occurring cancers to advance human clinical trials.

- I would really like to thank Dr. Nicola Mason for the work that she and her lab have been doing all these years, and for having the vision not just to help her patients, which are dogs, but also my patients, which are children.

Because both of these groups really deserve a chance at life, especially in the face of such a monstrous, devastating disease like osteosarcoma.

- I know you would.

Duke the first dog we treated was an absolute pioneer and his owner was, you know, an absolute pioneer to do something.

And this, this is the same thing that gets faced with human patients.

That's a very brave person.

But that, that's how science proceeds.

You know, we have people that are willing to, to take chances.

If we knew that this was gonna work, we wouldn't have to do the study.

Okay.

And that's this, this whole enterprise is based upon brave people coming forward and willing to do, to, to participate in trials.

- Dogs are helping people because lots of them went into remission as a result of this clinical trial.

And now people can be treated with the same, basically same drug to, you know, help help them go into remission.

It, it actually fascinates me in ge in general, you know, how, how close we are and how connected we are, but in this case it's just, it's, it's a, it's completely amazing.

- This is the whole idea about discovery, right?

To really hope that we can reactivate our immune system and we won't know until we try.

I feel privileged to be involved in these type of discoveries.

It is a group effort and I'm glad that we can work together as a community to improve and bring forth new technologies that are gonna help pets and pet owners help our, our research profession rise to greater and greater heights of recognition.

And hopefully to have those same technologies really be impactful to saving lives and curing cancer people.

- Center.

Good boy!

Stay.

Dogs have helped me in more ways than one.

I mean, my own dog has helped me mentally when I was at the darkest place of my life and physically getting out of the house and walking around.

And then the fact that these dogs that I don't even know have potentially, hopefully cured my cancer is just, it's mind blowing and truly unbelievable.

And I'm so grateful.

- I will fight.

I'll fight for you.

I always do.

Until my heart is black and blue, I reach my hands out in the dark and wait for yours to interlock.

I wait for you.

I wait for you.

'Cause I'm not givin' up I'm not givin' up I'm not givin' up, givin' up no, not yet.

Even when I'm down to my last breath.

Even when they say there's nothin' left.

So don't give up on...

I'm not givin' up.

I'm not givin' up, givin' up.

No, not me.

Even when nobody else believes, I'm not goin' down that easily.

So don't give up on me.

Petco Love Lost.

A national lost and found pet database can help.

Using image recognition technology, so every pet can be back where they belong.

Oh, my baby!

Home, with the families that love them.

Petco Love Lost.