Dogs May Be The Key To Future Cancer Treatments

Approximately 4 million dogs in the US are diagnosed with cancer every year. And often, they are diagnosed with the same kinds of cancers as humans due to us sharing many of the same genes. This is why researchers are now enrolling dogs into clinical trials in the hope of finding new cancer treatments. "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," Elaine Ostrander, Senior Geneticist At The National Institutes of Health. The process is called comparative oncology and it's now funded in part by the White House's Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Researchers are hoping that the trials will speed up the process of developing potential treatments for various cancers.