We're more similar to our dogs than perhaps we would like to admit.
Humans and dogs share very similar genetics and similar environments.
We hear a lot about people developing breast cancer.
Dogs develop breast cancer, prostate cancer.
Dogs develop prostate cancer.
Naturally occurring, just like you or I develop cancer, dogs develop cancer.
So, it's not really that surprising that dogs could inform human clinical trial design.
A bold public effort to focus on a complex set of diseases,
fueled by a 1.8 billion dollar government investment.
Supporting more than 240 research projects across 70 initiatives,
driven by team science and data sharing.
Changing the culture of research to reduce the burden of cancer
on everyone whose lives are affected.
Cancer Moonshot.
All right, we're off.
We haven't changed the way we treat canine osteosarcoma for 30 or 40 years.
We're still doing surgery and chemotherapy.
It's the same in children.
So, it's time to change.
It's time to find something that's better and more effective.
And we have to do it quickly.
My name is Nicola Mason.
I'm a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
And I work here at the University's Veterinary Hospital.
I run a translational research lab here to treat dogs with cancers.
Who's this?
This is Lulu.
Lulu. And what's wrong with Lulu?
Lulu has lymphoma.
Lulu has lymphoma, 14.
You're getting chemo today, Lulu.
She's a little slow.
Hi, that's okay.
I'm older than that, and I'm also slow.
Hi. How are you, little one?
I also run the Cancer Moonshot Initiative Precinct,
which is the Premedical Cancer Immunotherapy Network for canine trials.
The Cancer Moonshot Initiative provided funding for a virtual network of academic sites
with a data coordinating center to develop novel therapies to treat dogs
with spontaneous cancers, with the ultimate goal being to identify those therapies that are safe
and have evidence of effectiveness to move them into the human clinic.
Hi!
The great thing about this is you have all sorts of different shapes and different sizes.
You're cute.
Several of the clinical trials that we've had running
through Moonshot are now translating into clinical trials in people.
We have two trial sites that are working
on really cutting edge novel therapies
to treat dogs with glioblastoma,
which is a very aggressive brain tumor
that affects children, as well as adults.
We have several sites using natural killer cells
to treat canine patients
with metastatic osteosarcoma.
And we continue to learn from those canine patients.
So, it's extremely exciting.
Of course it's exciting.
I mean, all of this data that is coming in from people's pets that are being treated
with cutting edge immunotherapies is all being directed into an integrated canine data commons
where it can be harmonized and then informing everybody about how these drugs might work
and how the dogs and humans might respond.
So, it's helping out on both ends of the leash, right?
You know, you help the dogs and you help the people.
She's a sweet potato.
Look, she's a sweet potato.
You're famous.
If Cancer Moonshot did not exist, I think it would be a lonely world.
I think it would be a slow world.
That is actually a dog called Casey who was diagnosed with bone cancer when she was two.
She's now 10.
Like us all, a little bit grayer.
Let's give her a little bit of a polish in case her Dad's watching.
We all feel very fortunate that we're getting some umph behind us.
I do truly believe that through Moonshot, we are going to see
more effective therapies in the veterinary clinics and in the human clinics.
And I think we're going to see them soon.
We're going to see them in my lifetime, which would be super.
[ Music ]
The landmark legislation of the National Cancer Act of 1971
set the foundation for programs like Cancer Moonshot.
Fifty years of progress.
Nothing will stop us.