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goda90yesterday at 7:38 PM2 repliesview on HN

I wonder how long until we'll start seeing these breakthrough cancer treatment articles for clinical trials done in dogs. Oncologists think dog research is a better fit than mice because of greater genetic similarities to humans and the fact that pet dogs live in similar environments as their owners. I think in general people definitely wouldn't be as ok with inducing cancer in dogs as in mice, but finding volunteers owners of dogs with existing cancer is certainly easier.


Replies

dekhnyesterday at 10:27 PM

I used to work at a biomedical institution that did cancer treatment experiments on dogs. There was basically a kennel and periodically they would take a dog and irradiate it.

That was fine in the abstract, but there were computational labs above the kennel and periodically you'd just get this huge outporing of dogs barking and howling and it was really hard to get any work done.

dillydoggyesterday at 8:28 PM

That's interesting because rodents and apes share a more recent common ancestor (75Mya) than dogs and apes (85 Mya).