NCI renews UC Davis Comparative Oncology Program

UC Davis’ Comparative Oncology Program—a partnership between UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and Veterinary Medicine that combines human and veterinary oncology—has been included in the renewal of UC Davis’ status as a “comprehensive” cancer center by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

According to a university release, comparative research is essential to accelerating the understanding of tumor biology, speeding therapy developments, and offering hope to both people and their pets affected by cancer.

“The Comparative Oncology Program at UC Davis creates an important bridge of scientific and medical understanding between humans and animals,” said Michael Kent, DVM, DACVIM, DACVR, co-director of the program and professor of radiation oncology. “We are gratified that the NCI has reaffirmed the importance of our work as part of the designation renewal.”

The program has advanced important breakthroughs such as playing a significant role in the creation of the EXPLORER project—the world’s first total-body PET scanner. A prototype version of the EXPLORER (called the miniEXPLORER II) was installed at the school of veterinary medicine in 2017 in partnership with the Biomedical Technology Program (BTP) and was key in providing information that contributed to its human counterpart's development by the School of Medicine.

Additionally, the program revealed new understandings of disease through its translational research into canines and humans. What's more, the center developed a novel radioimmunotherapy strategy to analyze the treatment of advanced metastatic disease. A human clinical trial using a similar paradigm opened as a researcher began clinical trials in humans, displaying the direct translation from basic science to mouse models to dogs with spontaneously developing tumors to humans. Additionally, this work has resulted in the opening of a nationwide clinical trial.

Program details

According to the release, the Comparative Oncology Program strives to define neoplastic processes in biologically relevant, predictive and innovative animal model systems and translate those findings to address cancer in humans and animals. It evaluates cancers that are experimentally induced by genetic engineering and oncogenic viruses, in addition to cancers that develop spontaneously in companion animals.

The program is comprised of 20 full members and 39 associate members across 5 schools/colleges, with knowledge ranging from basic cancer biology, medical and veterinary oncology, to radiation physics. These areas of expertise are spearheaded by the specific and novel resources and infrastructure provided at UC Davis.

The program has a total direct funding of ~$5.0 million—97% of which are peer-reviewed— including $2.7 million NCI funding (55%) and $1.8 million other NIH peer-reviewed funding (37%), according to the release.

Program members cultivate innovative cancer-related research (333 articles) published in prestigious journals—24% of the articles were published in high-impact journals. The members are highly collaborative as demonstrated by 42% multi-institutional, 25% intra-program and 44% inter-program publications. The program has produced fundamental knowledge of trans-species tumor biology and translated this information into novel clinical trials in companion animals designed to inform human cancer patient outcomes and drug discovery.

Along with research, the program involves education, training and development of the next generation of basic science and clinical researchers in comparative oncology; facilitation and enhancement of opportunities for collaborations between basic scientists and clinical investigators; and encouragement of collaborative development of new technologies with shared resources.

The Comparative Oncology Program is co-directed by Kent, Robert Canter, MD, clinician-scientist and surgical oncologist, and Xinbin Chen, DVM, MS, PhD, professor of surgical and radiological sciences.

Reference

Warren R. NCI renews UC Davis comparative oncology program as part of its “comprehensive” Cancer Center designation renewal. News release. UC Davis. October 26, 2021. Accessed October 27, 2021. https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/news/nci-renews-uc-davis-comparative-oncology-program-part-its-comprehensive-cancer-center