Canines-N-Kids Foundation To Host Symposium, Aims To Accelerate Drug Development For Child, Dog Cancers

By Bio-IT World Staff

September 21, 2018 | Canines-N-Kids Foundation is hosting the Paws for a Cure Research Symposium this November at the Merck Research Laboratories in Boston. The Foundation hopes to examine challenges and progress in accelerating cancer drug development for cancers shared between children and dogs.

Both children and canine companions spontaneously develop a number of cancers with remarkable similarities. The challenges inherent in designing and implementing pediatric oncology clinical trials for limited number of children with cancer, coupled with scant resources for conducting research on pediatric cancers, makes finding cures difficult for the roughly 16,000 children diagnosed in the US each year.

In addition, little pharmaceutical industry funding goes to pediatric cancer research. As a result, only four new medications have been approved for the treatment of pediatric cancer in the last 30 years. For the 6 million dogs diagnosed with cancer in the US each year, the outlook is no better. The integration of drug development in pediatric and pet populations has great potential to accelerate the discovery of novel, more effective, less toxic treatments for the cancers that plague children and dogs.

The Paws for a Cure Research Symposium will convene experts to discuss advancing research in pediatric cancer treatments, including how to use comparative approaches to make progress. The meeting will bring together pediatric oncologists, veterinary oncologists, translational research scientists in academia and in industry; pharma and biotech professionals in preclinical research, drug development, oncology and animal health; nonprofit and other funders.

The event will feature the state of the art in comparative and novel translational cancer research; ongoing preclinical, translational and clinical projects leveraging the canine patient model; the most promising prospects for future scientific exploration, collaboration and funding; and childhood cancer survivors and advocates’ life journeys.