Testing a New Treatment Protocol
“Do dogs,” he asked, “get melanoma?”
It was the right question, the right person, the right moment. Bergman happened to be one of the world’s few experts in how this difficult, aggressive form of cancer attacks dogs. And he was looking for his next big project.
Bergman and Wolchok started comparing human and canine melanoma. They quickly learned, as Bergman put it, that “the diseases are essentially one and the same.” In humans as in dogs, malignant melanomas often show up in the mouth, on foot pads, and under finger- and toenails. In both species, it metastasizes to the same “weird spots,” favoring the adrenal glands, heart, liver, brain membranes, and lungs. In humans, melanoma resists chemotherapy. Surgery and radiation often don’t keep it from spreading. It has a nasty trait of recurring, even after treatment. Same thing in dogs. Sadly, both humans and dogs have a very low survival rate with this cancer. Once diagnosed with advanced canine malignant melanoma, dogs can have as little as four and a half months to live. Human patients with metastatic melanoma often live less than one year. Wolchok and Bergman both knew that, for the sake of patients of both species, new approaches to malignant melanoma were “desperately needed.”
Wolchok confided to Bergman that he was on the trail of a novel therapy, one that would trick a patient’s immune system into attacking its own cancer.a His team at Sloan-Kettering had had some early success with mice. But they needed to know how the remedy might fare in animals with spontaneously occurring tumors, intact immune systems, and longer life spans. Bergman realized instantly that dogs could be that animal.
In three short months, Bergman had a trial up and running. He recruited nine pet dogs: a Siberian husky, a Lhasa apso, a bichon frise, and a German shepherd, as well as two cocker spaniels and three mixed breeds. All had been diagnosed with various stages of melanoma. For most of these pets, the experimental treatment was their last chance—and it was eagerly embraced by their grateful owners.
The therapy—which involved injecting human DNA into the dogs’ thigh musclesb—worked even better than Bergman and Wolchok expected. Overall, the dogs’ tumors shrank. Their survival rates soared. When the news of the success got out, Bergman started getting calls and e-mails from desperate dog owners all over the world. One client flew to New York from Napa Valley every two weeks so his dog could receive the injections. Another moved from Hong Kong with her pet and took up residence near Bergman’s New York office. Before long, Bergman had more volunteers for the new therapy than he could handle. With financial support from the drug company Merial and help from Sloan-Kettering to produce the drug, Bergman launched another round of trials. And even when the spots were filled, the owners of canine cancer patients kept calling.
The treatment was ultimately tested in more than 350 pet dogs—and prolonged life so well that more than half the animals who got the injections exceeded their cancer-shortened life expectancies. In 2009, Merial released the vaccine to veterinary oncologists, under the name Oncept, making the treatment available to thousands of family pets stricken with cancer.
Wolchok’s four zoobiquitous words—“Do dogs get melanoma?”—sparked an intense collaboration, one that may have permanently changed the way veterinarians treat the disease in canine patients. And the translational potential is enormous. Bergman and Wolchok’s success is inspiring work on a similar vaccine for melanoma in humans.c
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