Grant Amount: $12,960

Dr. Kevin Morris, PhD, Sirius Medicine, LLC

September 1, 2006 - February 28, 2007

Breed(s): -All Dogs

Abstract

Many cancers in dogs go untreated because of the expense. A course of conventional veterinary radiation therapy, in the few parts of the country where it is available, can cost thousands of dollars. Sirius Medicine is developing Contrast-Enhanced Radiotherapy (CERT) to treat veterinary tumors with radiation at a fraction of that cost. Further, we are combining CERT with a drug called hGMCSF (human granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor) to activate the immune system against the cancer. The goal is to expand the localized radiation therapy into a treatment for the cancer that may have spread elsewhere in the body. Sirius has treated a wide variety of advanced cancers in dogs with the combination of CERT and hGMCSF with very encouraging results. It has monitored the activity of a small panel of genes in these patients to identify what types of immune responses are occurring in regressing tumors. This molecular information has led to ways to improve the therapy. Sirius is now proposing to expand this limited molecular analysis to all of the tens-of-thousands of genes in the dog genome using microarray analysis. This is expected to provide detailed molecular information that can be used to quickly monitor responses to treatment and further optimize and expand the combination of CERT and immunotherapy for treating veterinary cancer.