Canine Cancer Vaccination

Introducing Canine Cancer Immunotherapy

We prioritize the well-being of your canine companion. Our Canine Cancer Vaccination service is designed to provide proactive concurrent therapy to help our patients fight this devastating disease. With the latest advancements in veterinary medicine, we offer a new and effective way to safeguard give your pet the best chance at remission and a cancer-free future by partnering with Ardent Animal Health to provide expert progressive care.

While cancer screening programs for early detection in humans have led to significant reductions in cancer deaths, cancer screening for early detection in dogs lags far behind what is available for humans. Consequently, canine cancers are usually diagnosed in later stages of disease, making them more difficult to treat effectively and increasing the likelihood of tumor recurrence. Appropriately designed tumor vaccines can break immune tolerance, leading to an effective anti-tumor immune response which can improve survival and quality of life in veterinary patients. Melanoma in humans has been shown to be quite immunogenic and accordingly immunotherapeutic approaches for cancer have shown promise for melanoma, as well as for other immunogenic tumors. The early work of scientists at the NCI and other centers around the world led to FDA approval of the first and only therapeutic human cancer vaccine in 2010.

Individual molecule-targeted vaccines require precise knowledge of the targeted molecules before vaccine development can be pursued. Given that many (if not all) tumors can be recognized by the immune system, a broader and possibly better approach for vaccine development may be to use the entire tumor cell (autologous tumor) as the basis for the vaccine and to deliver it to patients in a manner that breaks tolerance to tumor cell antigens and promotes strong anti-tumor immunity.

A Personalized Approach to Canine Cancer

K9-ACV stands for Canine Autologous Cancer Vaccine. Using the therapeutic approach of immunotherapy, the scientists at Ardent Animal Health have developed a cancer vaccine, created personally for your pet that can be incorporated in your pet’s cancer treatment plan. Our hope is that K9-ACV will improve and extend the quality of life for your dog. K9-ACV is designed for all operable canine tumors.

Why K9-ACV?

Cancer cells can be recognized as foreign by the immune system if those cancer cells are presented to the immune system in a manner that “breaks immune tolerance.” Decades of research in mouse and human models have shown that tumor cells are very much like normal cells in that they express self-antigens that the body is taught to ignore early in development and throughout life. An immunosuppressive environment produced by growing tumors promotes an immune response toward the tumor that is ineffective, allowing the tumor to grow unchecked.