Comparative Oncology | 60 Minutes Archive

Introduction to Comparative Oncology00:02

If you've ever lost a dog to disease, it may well have been cancer. Some 4 million dogs in the US are diagnosed with it every year. Often the same kinds of cancers humans get. We share many of the same genes with our canine companions. For cancer research, that's an opportunity scientists are trying to make the most of. It's called comparative oncology. Now funded in part by the White House's Cancer Moonshot Initiative, doctors and scientists are studying naturally developing cancers, mostly in dogs, and using what they learn to speed potential treatments to them and us.

Collecting Dog DNA Samples at Dog Shows00:31

A dog show might seem like an odd place to conduct cancer research. But this summer in Norwalk, Connecticut, that's where scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were swabbing and collecting DNA samples from all sorts of breeds. They've been doing this for nearly 30 years and have collected about 40,000 samples so far. Every few weeks, they're at a dog show. Leading the team is Elaine Ostrander, a senior geneticist at the NIH.

I always thought the National Institutes of Health study human diseases. Why is there scientists at the NIH studying dogs? We are studying human disease and we're doing it through dogs. And so dogs live in our world. They get all the same diseases we do. They eat our food. They're exposed to the same environmental pollutants, but they also have all the same genes that we do. And they have mutations in those genes that make them susceptible to everything you and I get. Whether it's diabetes or cancer or neuromuscular diseases, everything humans get, dogs get.

Ostrander says it's easier to study genes in dogs than humans because for the last 200 years they've been bred to emphasize specific traits. That's why they have all these distinct noses and tails and sizes from Great Danes to Chihuahua. Before Victorian times, dogs were pretty much the same. There was some variation from fossil and archaeological records. But almost all the variation you see running around in the rings today happened in the last 200 years. So that means it's probably going to be a really small number of genes responsible for most of the major differences. It turns out just one gene determines if a dog has cream colored hair or black. Other genes determine long hair or short.

Genetic Clues from Dog Traits02:30

Ostrander's team at the NIH has discovered some physical traits in dogs like ear position hold surprising clues about human health.

This was a study looking at prick ears versus floppy ears and that's due to a mutation in one gene called MSRB3. Just a mutation in one gene makes the difference between pointy ears and floppy ears. But what's really interesting about this story is that when this gene is perturbed or more dramatically mutated in humans, we get a form of deafness.

Some of the most promising genetic research in dogs involves cancer. Some breeds get certain types of cancers more often, making it easier for researchers to locate some of the genes responsible. Scottish terriers, for instance, are about 20 times more likely to get bladder cancer than the average mixed breed dog.

Now, if I were to look at a group of humans with bladder cancer, the story would be so much more complex. There would be different genes and different populations. There'd be different mutations, different contributions of environmental effects. So, when I look in one breed, I get much simpler stories.

Dogs are diagnosed with many of the same cancers found in humans: lymphoma, melanoma, brain and breast cancer, and the deadly bone cancer osteosarcoma.

Osteosarcoma in Dogs and Humans04:00

University of Pennsylvania professor and veterinarian Nicola Mason oversees a national network of comparative oncology trials funded by the White House's Cancer Moonshot Initiative. She showed just how similar osteosarcoma looks in dogs and people.

So what you can see there's lots of purple dots here. These are the nuclei of the cancerous cells. They look identical. Even a professional looking under a microscope would not be able to tell the difference between a dog with osteosarcoma and a human. Incredibly similar.

Osteosarcoma is aggressive and malignant. More than 10,000 dogs in the United States are estimated to get it each year, but only about a thousand people are, mostly children and young adults.

Christy Gomes was diagnosed in 2020 when she was 11. Her left thigh was hurting. She was used to getting bruised on the soccer field, so she and her mom Kathy Federer chalked it up to a sports injury. But after months of physical therapy, her doctor discovered osteosarcoma, that white mass had eroded most of Christy's thigh bone.

She comes in and she goes, "Uh, Christy has a cancerous tumor in her femur." And I was like, "What?" And I was I'm not like a crier. So I think I was processing it. And as I was processing it, I saw her cry. So then I started crying. And then she was like, "Wait, I have cancer."

Doctors removed the remaining bone and replaced it with this 9-inch metal rod. Months of grueling chemotherapy withered Christy to 72 lb. But her pediatric oncologist, Dr. Alyssa Rubin, told us the cancer came back, this time in Christy's lungs.

Patients once their tumor comes back are really high risk. Probably 80% of the time we'll get new tumors. 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. that's harder to study because there's smaller numbers of patients to study in large trials and also since it's rare not a lot of funding goes to a lot of trials for it.

Listeria Immunotherapy Trials06:00

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.

This is Listeria causes food poisoning. This particular Listeria has been genetically modified so that it is far less virulent. The Listeria has also been modified to contain a specific protein called HER2 that's found on some osteosarcoma cells. Once injected into the dog's bloodstream, the Listeria awakens their immune systems making them feel sick. It also triggers killer immune cells to patrol the body and destroy the cancerous cells.

Sandy, a 9-year-old golden retriever, joined a nationwide trial in 2018. She's had her front leg amputated because of osteosarcoma. We met her this past August with her owner, Matt Olsen. During the trial, Dr. Mason said 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.

When Sandy was first diagnosed, her life expectancy with the standard care of amputation and chemotherapy was around a year, but that was four years ago. There's no sign of cancer.

Dr. Mason believes studying and treating naturally occurring cancers in pet dogs is more promising compared to using lab mice, which have to be artificially given cancer.

What we're trying to do is find a better way to determine which are the best treatments to take forward into the human. This is not giving dogs rare forms of cancer and then studying them and testing them in a lab. Exactly. So these are naturally occurring cancers. These are clinical trials just as you or I would go onto a clinical trial if we had a cancer. And we do exactly the same in the veterinary field.

Results from the first Listeria trial in pet dogs were encouraging, showing the dogs tolerated the immunotherapy and that it significantly increased duration of survival time. Those results were submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Last year, the FDA approved a phase 2 clinical trial using modified Listeria to treat young adults and children like Christy Gomes who have recurrent osteosarcoma that spread to their lungs.

We were with Christy in August at Children's Hospital of Orange County when she received her third Listeria infusion. First, she was given medications that made her sleepy.

When the infusion's actually happening, do you remember it afterward or do you painfully sleep through it? Just asleep. And then when I wake up, it hits like a truck. You get a headache. Bad headache and nauseous. And I hate nauseous and headache. Two things I don't like. It's two things guaranteed.

Once she was dozing, the Listeria started dripping into Christy's IV. An hour later, that truck Christy told us about hit her hard. But similar to what happened to Sandy the golden retriever, the Listeria appeared to awaken Christy's immune system and after 10 minutes her headache got better. A few hours later, she was able to leave the hospital.

It's so amazing to me how similar humans and dogs immune response is. We're very similar.

Brain Cancer Trials and Patient Stories10:34

The National Cancer Institute is spending more than $20 million to analyze cancer samples from pet dogs all over the country and oversee comparative oncology trials to improve treatments in humans and dogs. One of their targets is brain cancer.

This is Otto, a 7-year-old boxer who belongs to Dan Hefron. Otto was diagnosed with a deadly brain tumor in 2021. This is Julie Hinsath who's 59. She was diagnosed in 2020 with a similar nearly incurable brain cancer glioblastoma. She's had surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, but the cancer came back. Julie enrolled in clinical trials at the University of Minnesota that used virtually the same experimental treatment. A neurosurgeon and veterinary surgeon teamed up to treat and operate on Otto and other dogs with brain cancer and then shared their data about safety and dosing with a neurooncologist treating Julie and others.

Julie along with her husband Doug and daughter Kelly met Otto for the first time last spring. Two patients, similar cancers, different species.

What's it like to meet Otto? I'm crying now. I never thought I would be having a conversation with a person and a dog who were having the same treatment.

Inflammation in Julie's brain makes it difficult for her to speak.

You know what sort of an impact that he was going to have, not only for him but other dogs and humans.

But 2 months after that meeting, Otto's symptoms worsened. It appeared his cancer returned. Dan took him for a final swim in his favorite river and then said goodbye to the dog he called his best friend and a medical pioneer. Julie Hinsath's symptoms have now worsened as well. She stopped taking part in the trial and is spending time with her family. She told us she's grateful to have been part of an innovative interspecies battle to find new treatments.

I helped fight cancer. It gives you satisfaction to know that you helped fight cancer.

Reflections and Ongoing Impact13:01

I've had two dogs who have had cancer and the idea that cancer can be studied and treated and it can have an impact on humans is incredible. Dogs may hold the key.

Christy Gomes, who's now well into her freshman year in high school, says she agrees.

We have to have more common things than we think. It's not just that they need us for food and there's a real connection. It's that we have to have like more connection than that.

Christy's last scan showed no signs of cancer. She continues to get immunotherapy every 3 weeks. 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.