Cancer collaboration could someday help dogs and their humans
Posted May 7, 2012; 12:00 p.m. When Olga Troyanskaya's dog Jessy
fell ill in early 2006, the vet had painful news. "The doctor
told me she had less than a week to live," Troyanskaya said.
Troyanskaya sought a second opinion with a dog cancer
specialist, with an unexpected result: The appointment launched
an innovative research collaboration to learn more about cancer,
possibly leading to new treatments for dogs like Jessy and
humans as well. At the appointment, Troyanskaya, a computational
biologist at Princeton University, got to talking with Jessy's
canine oncologist, Karin Sorenmo, head of the small animal
oncology service and an associate professor of oncology at the
Ryan Veterinary Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The
two researchers discovered that they share a goal to learn about
how to understand and treat cancer. Troyanskaya was interested
in the genes involved in cancer; Sorenmo wanted to explore the
mechanisms of cancer to fin