The enormous biologic complexity of human cancer has stimulated the development of
more appropriate experimental models that could resemble in a natural and spontaneous
manner the physiopathologic aspects of cancer biology. Companion animals have many
desired characteristics that fill the gap between in vitro and in vivo studies, and these characteristics have proven to be important in understanding many
complex molecular aspects of human cancer. Spontaneous tumors in dogs share a wide
variety of epidemiologic, biologic, and clinical features with human cancer, which
makes this animal model both attractive and underused in oncology research.
In this review, we summarize the importance of naturally occurring canine tumors as
valuable tools for studying numerous aspects of human cancer as well as the potential
use of this animal model for the development of new cancer treatments. We address
specifically the use of canine mammary tumors as an increasingly powerful model to
study human breast cancer.
Abbreviations:
AKT1 (akt-murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 1), ER (estrogen receptor), EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor), ERA (estrogen receptor-alpha), MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase), PI3K (phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase), PIK3CA (phosphoinositide-3-kinase, catalytic, alpha polypeptide), PR (progesterone receptor), PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog), RTK (indolinone receptor tyrosine kinase), WHO (World Health Organization)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 22, 2011
Accepted:
November 18,
2011
Received in revised form:
November 17,
2011
Received:
September 15,
2011
Footnotes
Supported by grants PTDC/CVT/65537/2006] and [PTDC/CVT/111358/2009 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and “financiados no âmbito do Programa Operacional Temático Factores de Competitividade (COMPETE) e comparticipado pelo fundo Comunitário Europeu FEDER” as well as by Grant SFRH/BPD/63094/2009 from FCT and Luso-American Foundation (FLAD) (to S.S.P.).
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Mosby, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
