BY: SAMANTHA BARTLETT, DVM

The Wellcome Sanger Institute and University of Guelph collaborated to isolate important gene mutations for human bladder cancer by studying tumors in cats and dogs. The researchers sequenced the cancer tumors of dogs and cats and compared them with sequences from human bladder cancer to analyze the variations between species. By finding common bladder cancer mutations across different species, the researchers seek to isolate the important gene mutations for targeted therapy for humans. Previous sequencing of bladder tumors in humans showed almost 60 genes involved in the development of cancer. From these 60 genes in human cancer, three were found in cat bladder cancer and two in dogs. The most frequently mutated gene in cats was the same as the most frequently mutated gene in human bladder cancer. While BRAF was the most frequently mutated gene in dog blader cancers, it constitutes only about 3 percent of human cases.  These findings will help develop new targeted treatments for bladder cancer in humans and perhaps shed some light on treatment of bladder cancer in cats and dogs.

The research was published in Genome Biology.