Dogs with a type of mouth cancer called oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) often undergo a disfiguring surgery that sometimes removes up to a quarter of the jawbone. Drs. Santiago Peralta and William Katt think there might be a better way. They are developing new models of OSCC with funding from the Cornell Canine Health Center to test out novel therapies in the lab that may one day be used in humans.
Additional collaborators on this project include Rishi Puri, project manager of the PATh PDX Facility, which is developing the mouse tumor models; Jen Grenier, director of the Genomics Innovation Hub, who is helping with tumor sequencing efforts; and Gerald Duhamel, professor of anatomic pathology in Biomedical Sciences, who confirms that the tumors are in fact OSCC. Susan Garrison and Denise F. LaLonde-Paul from the Cornell Veterinary Biobank are helping to facilitate the collection and storage of samples.
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