Veterinary Specialist Forum Recap

As I mentioned last week, the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine held its annual forum in Denver recently, and I got the chance to attend one of the four days. Here is a brief overview of some of what I did, saw, and learned.

Because these sessions target veterinary specialists, they’re often highly technical, but having written about veterinary medicine since around 1995, I hung in there pretty well … even with the hard stuff. So, I’ll do my best to hit a few highlights today. More to come as I have time.

Breed-Associated Differential microRNA Expressions in Canine Osteosarcoma

Because the session I hoped to attend first on research into raw diets for pets got cancelled when the presenter got crazy, icky travel germs, I instead attended this bone cancer session.

Researchers in human medicine have found implications of microRNA playing a fundamental role in both cancer initiation and cancer progression. So, veterinary oncologists began looking for this gene expression in breeds of dogs known to be at higher risk of bone cancer:

• Golden retrievers
• Rottweilers
• Greyhounds (the racing kind, not the AKC kind)

They did indeed find “significant correlations” between breed and microRNA expressions. The “heat maps” show how much of this microRNA they found in the dogs tested, with Goldens having the most active heat maps.

Now, the trick is to figure out what biological consequences dogs might experience based on these levels of microRNA expression. For example, the next step might be to look at dogs in these breeds who do NOT have osteosarcoma and compare their results to those in the same breeds who do.

Phase I Evaluation of Vinblastine / Palladia Combination in Dogs With Mast Cell Tumors

Mast cell tumors are a common form of cancer in dogs (about 20% of all skin tumors in dogs). Because we know that combining various chemotherapy drugs often works well in treating various kinds of human cancers, the researchers set out to explore safe doses of these two cancer drugs together in dogs.

Basically, oncologists look to combine drugs that have:

• Documented activity (meaning they work on the cancer in question)
• Different mechanisms of activity (meaning they work on the cancer in different ways)
• Toxicity affects that do NOT overlap (to lessen possible side-effects)
• An effective way to schedule drug timing for peak tissue to recovery

Vinblastine and Palladia meet those criteria and showed “an objective clinical response” of 71% in this phase I trial. In other words, it sure looked like it worked well. Next up, phase II and phase III trials.

In the meantime, these oncologists are recommending a sequential combination (rather than concurrent combination) of these two drugs. For example, an induction dose of Vinblastine, followed by maintenance with Palladia.

I hope you never need to know that info, but just in case … now you do.

Customized Home-Cooked Diets: Advantages of Working With a Veterinary Nutritionist

I actually plan to write much more about this session in the coming weeks on my Dog Food Dish Blog, but I’ll just say here that homemade foods, with the help of a veterinary nutritionist, is often a good solution for dogs needing help because of:

• Adverse food responses / food allergies + kidney disease
• Adverse food responses / food allergies + fat intake issues (like pancreatitis)
• Needing a feeding tube

Our local and blogging friend K from Romping and Rolling in the Rockies is a good example of reason #2. I did a whole Q&A about homemade, medically necessary food a while back on the other blog.

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I absolutely did NOT mean to write about such heavy topics at a time when everyone’s mood is full of summer and holiday weekend plans, so we’ll continue this discussion later with some of the other sessions I attended.

Lilly and I wish you a happy, happy Independence Day weekend. Be safe!