Canine Cancers

EnGeneIC is currently carrying out research case studies in dogs suffering from several different types of cancers. The aim is to study the safety, toxicity and efficacy in animals with endogenous tumours, i.e. not mouse xenografts. These studies are not a clinical trial and are only research case studies. The dogs are at two of Sydney’s specialist veterinary oncology clinics, and along with key scientists from EnGeneIC, several veterinary clinical oncologists are involved in these studies.

Only the published work is described below.
The rest of the cases are on-going.

Case studies in dogs with late-stage
T-cell Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
The anti-cancer efficacy of the EDVs was evaluated in two case studies in which dogs with advanced (stage 4) T-cell Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) were treated i.v. with anti-canine CD3-targeted, Doxorubicin-packaged EDVs (anti-canine-CD3EDVDox). One dog (4kg) received a total of five doses over 35 days and the other (40kg – shown below) receiving seven doses over 48 days, providing total amounts of Dox of 24ug and 584ug, respectively. Both dogs demonstrated marked tumour regression, as evident by highly significant reductions in lymph node size (shown below), with the smaller dog also developing tumor lysis syndrome (hyperkalemia) by day 37.

For the dog shown above:
Tumour volume measurements of lymph nodes in the various areas revealed significant regression as early as 15 days post-treatment and highly significant regression by days 28 and 37. When the dog was left untreated between days 28 and 43, the nodes increased in size but again regressed with additional doses of CD3EDVDox on days 43 and 48, suggesting that repeat dosing did not result in immune response-mediated exclusion of subsequent doses. Of considerable interest was the observation that the two NHL dogs, despite receiving ~25,000-fold and 10,270-fold less Dox via EDV administration than that normally administered as part of conventional combination chemotherapy, achieved a highly significant therapeutic benefit with no toxic side effect.