Why Scientists Are Studying Dogs to Learn More About Human Cancers

Many dogs get the same forms of cancer as people — lymphoma, melanoma, brain and breast cancer, osteosarcoma — and we share many of the same genes. So a team of doctors and scientists with the National Institutes of Health, funded in part by the Cancer Moonshot initiative, are collecting samples from man’s best friend to find ways to better treat human cancers, a field of research called comparative oncology. “Dogs live in our world. They get all the same diseases we do. They eat our food. They’re exposed to the same environmental pollutants. But they also have all the same genes that we do. And 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,” Elaine Ostrander, a senior geneticist at the NIH who is leading the team, told 60 Minutes. “Everything humans get, dogs get.” In many instances, it can be easier to study cancer in dogs because some breeds are more prone to certain types, allowing researchers to locate which genes are responsible for the mutation. “When I look in one breed, I get much simpler stories,” Ostrander said.

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