New breakthroughs in veterinary oncology

In an interview with dvm360 at the Fetch dvm360 Conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Philip Bergman, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM, talked about his favorite lecture, “Top 10 Recent Advances in Veterinary Oncology.” He explained that given that the veterinary oncology profession is ever-changing, his lecture focuses on what he views are the most clinically relevant advances are in the profession. Topics include computed tomography scans (CTs) for staging, new therapies, the melanoma vaccine, the BRAF test, and more.

Below is a partial transcript:

Philip Bergman, DVM, MS, PhD, DACVIM: “Top 10 Recent Advances” is probably my favorite lecture to do because it's part of what attracted me to oncology 30 plus years ago, is that we're constantly changing, new things are constantly happening. And as oncologists, one of the things that we pride ourselves on is we're very data driven. And so, in that lecture, I'll actually walk folks through what I think, and this is going to be dependent on whoever's giving the talk, but what I think are the most clinically relevant advances.

So, we talk about, say, CTs or CAT scans for staging and the reason why that's so much better than a 3-view chest X ray. We spend time talking about Tanovea, which is one of the new lymphoma drugs that’s out there. We do a deep dive into Stelfonta for mast cell. We talk a little bit about the melanoma vaccine that I was the coprincipal investigator on that's available through Boehringer.