Multiple breast malignancies in dogs; Improved understanding of disease progression by human-canine comparison

Dogs have proved efficient comparative models for human breast cancer, however there is still a need for a thorough characterization of canine mammary gland tumors in comparison with human tumors. Knowledge across species can also benefit the canine patients resulting in more precise treatment. 

This project is funded by the research council of Norway and is a collaboration between our group and the medical genetics research group at the Veterinary faculty, Norwegian University of Life Sciences led by Prof. Frode Lingaas. The overall aim is to contribute with new knowledge about tumor progression in dogs and humans using a comparative approach. Multiple breast tumors frequently occur in dogs and represent an important source of research material that is not easily available from human breast cancer cases. These tumors provide an excellent resource both for studying germline risk factors and for mutations and expression profiling in pairs of morphologically equal tumors vs. pairs with different morphology. We have already collected a material of tumors from 350 dogs, where around 100 had two or more synchronous mammary gland tumors. We aim to explore the nature of multiple mammary gland tumors by analyses of genomic and tumor DNA, somatic gene expression and tissue protein. We also have access to samples from several dogs collected from the same tumor over time, which can yield important knowledge about tumor progression.