From: Birmingham Business Journal

By Tyler Patchen  – Health and Technology Reporter, Birmingham Business Journal
Apr 18, 2018

UAB Medicine is leading an initiative to study brain tumors in dogs, which may lead to further investigations to treat humans.
The five-year, $2.6 million project project is funded by the Comparative Oncology Program of the National Cancer Institute.
“Brain tumors in dogs and humans are remarkably similar,” said Renee Chambers, professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at UAB School of Medicine. “They share similar rates of incidence and mortality, and they share similar symptoms such as seizures, which is often the first symptom observed in both humans and dogs. Treatment is very much the same too, with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy the standard of care.”

Chambers is both a veterinarian and a neurosurgeon at UAB.

“There are many shared factors between people and their pet dogs,” she said. “Dogs live in our houses, sharing the same environment and the same sleep patterns, for example. Some lucky dogs even share their owner’s diet. It is not unreasonable to assume that the dog will be a highly useful model of human brain tumors.”

Chambers said that because of the similarities in biology, new therapies are being develop for humans that might also work on dogs. With that in mind, UAB is partnering with veterinary schools to conduct the first immunotherapy study for brain tumors in pet dogs, using an oncolytic herpes simplex virus, known as M032.

M032 was developed at UAB by neurosurgeon James Markert, who has been studying viral therapies for brain tumors for more than 25 years. M032 is a second-generation virus, the previous engineered virus was known as G207.

“Both G207 and M032 have been engineered to minimize the production of any toxic effects for the patient receiving the therapy,” said Markert, chair of the UAB Department of Neurosurgery. “Both are now in human studies, an M032 study in adults at UAB, along with a companion pediatric study of G207 underway at Children’s of Alabama. These studies mark the first time one institution has conducted trials of genetically engineered herpes virus in both adult and pediatric — and now canine — populations.”

Chambers is now working with a network of regional colleges of Veterinary Medicine, including Auburn University, Mississippi State and the University of Georgia to use M032 to treat canines with naturally occurring brain tumors.

“We anticipate that M032 will be as safe and effective in dogs as it is proving to be in humans,” Chambers said. “It opens up an exciting new research pathway, while providing the potential of a therapy that could benefit both humans and canines with brain tumors.

The objective is to treat around 14 dogs per year at the participating schools. The M032 virus has been designated to infect tumor cells while leaving healthy cell alone. It then replicates in the tumor cell, which kills the cell and causes it to act as a factory to produce new viruses. As the tumor dies ,the progeny viruses are released from the cell. The bures infect other tumor cells in the vicinity and contain the process of tumor killing.

According to Chambers, the first step of the new project will be to determine a safe and optimal dosage of the virus for canine patients.