Cancer cure through the canine?

Cancer Cure through the canine?

Have we finally found a link between the human and the dog that can possibly help us determine a cure for cancer?
From a recent article in ‘Science News’ from March the 2^nd of this year talks about a Genetic Link between humans and dogs that has recently been discovered. Researchers from the University of Minnesota and North Carolina State University unearthed that humans and dogs share the same genetic basis for some types of cancer. Professor Breen says that ‘forms of human cancer are associated with specific alterations to the number or structure of chromosomes and the genes they contain’. From this they have also found that the same structures occur in some canine cancers. The only types of cancers that they have tested in both the human and the canine are the blood and bone marrow, including chronic myelogenous leukaemia, Burkitt’s lymphoma, and chronic lymphocytic. It was found that these same genetic structures are near same of that of the humans with the same cancers. To some degree it is believed that the cancer is inevitable to humans and dogs with the way that our genomes have developed since the separation of the common ancestor.

Not concrete as of yet, the researchers believe that they can study these forms of cancer through the genomes and chromosomes in dogs and hopefully apply these studies to humans as well and create a better understanding of the risks and diagnosis’ applied in humans. Even though the number of chromosomes is almost double in that of the human amount, researchers found that the same translocation that occurs from the duplication process of cells was found for three blood and bone marrow cancers that they had tested.

Therefore, this has been a key factor in the research for cancer and can be the start of the process of research to continuous observations of the changes in the genomes of dogs that can also be found in humans and have the same consequences as in humans and dogs and is yet to be tested on various other dog breeds and with different forms of cancer.

So future studies and further research maybe it is possible that anything may happen. If researchers have found this much who knows what else they will be able to unearth, and inevitably, maybe a cure.

For further information you can go to the article:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080228112011.htm