Grant Amount: $48,880.08

Dr. Stephen A Johnston, PhD, Arizona State University

January 1, 2012 - December 31, 2012

Sponsor(s): American Whippet Club, Basset Hound Club of America, Inc., Flat-Coated Retriever Foundation, Leonberger Health Foundation, National Beagle Club, National Redbone Coonhound Association, Pembroke Welsh Corgi Club of America, Redbone Coonhound Association of America, The K9 College

Breed(s): -All Dogs

Disease(s): Lymphoma

Research Program Area: Oncology - Lymphoma

Abstract

Canine lymphoma is one of the most common cancers encountered in veterinary oncology. While most canine lymphoma patients initially respond to chemotherapy, the majority of patients ultimately relapse. A noninvasive means for the early detection of relapse has the potential to improve patient outcome, as effective therapy can be re-started earlier. Identifying effective disease-specific biomarkers can be challenging. With thousands of candidate human disease biomarkers identified, only a few are approved each year. The physical features of antibodies make them ideal biomarkers. Furthermore, antibodies may be elicited early in the ontogeny of different chronic diseases, including cancer. Autoantibodies have been identified for specific diseases, but as yet there is no systematic, simple method to identify informative antibodies. The hypothesis we intend to investigate is that serum immunoproteomic profiling will allow the serial monitoring of remission status in dogs with multicentric lymphoma. We intend to investigate this hypothesis through the completion of the following objectives: 1. To compare the serum antibody response of dogs with lymphoma at the time of diagnosis and at the time of remission; 2. To evaluate samples from the time of relapse and preceding relapse to determine if changes in serum immunoproteomic profiles precede clinical relapse. These objectives will be completed using sera collected prospectively as part of this study. Successful demonstration that this novel and flexible technique can monitor remission status in dogs with lymphoma will provide important proof of concept justifying larger-scale evaluations of this approach in dogs with lymphoma and other diseases.

Publication(s)

None at this time.