Transcripts

LORNA BENSON: This morning was nerve wracking for Dr. G. Elizabeth Pluhar. The veterinary surgeon, had spent the past year caring for Batman during his cancer treatment. And after months of good progress reports, today was his final visit to her lab for a brain scan.

ELIZABETH PLUHAR: What's it look like, Greg? [LAUGHS]

LORNA BENSON: They had already looked at some images that showed no signs of cancer. But the true measure of success was a series of contrast photos that were still loading into the computer.

SPEAKER: These are the images here.

ELIZABETH PLUHAR: Yeah, it's a little difficult because there's scar tissue in there, too.

LORNA BENSON: Scar tissue from Batman's surgery looks a little suspicious when you see it on a scan. But a trained eye like Pluhar's knows it's nothing to worry about. A few moments later, she gives the all clear.

ELIZABETH PLUHAR: I don't see any tumor right now- which is wonderful.

LORNA BENSON: Batman's recovery is remarkable. The 13-year-old shepherd mix had a very aggressive form of brain cancer called a glioma. It's the same type of cancer Senator Ted Kennedy is battling. Gliomas are tricky to treat, because they send out little tentacles that infiltrate other parts of the brain. Usually, surgery alone isn't sufficient to cure a glioma. So University researchers from the vet school, the medical school, and the Masonic Cancer Center, devised a treatment for Batman that began with surgery.

After that, the dog received gene therapy, and a custom made anti-cancer vaccine designed to rev up his immune system. Researcher John Ohlfest helped create the new immune therapies. He says the vaccine is made up of dead cancer cells from Batman's tumor that have been enhanced in a way that makes them much more obvious to the dog's immune system. Ohlfest can't say exactly why the vaccine has worked so well, but his team is working feverishly to figure it out.

JOHN OHLFEST: We've gone through, well, hypothesis A, hypothesis B, hypothesis C, why is it better? And I think we're on hypothesis S by now. [LAUGHS] But we're getting very close. We're very close to understanding it.

LORNA BENSON: That answer will be very important in determining whether the treatment could be used on people someday, which is the ultimate goal of the university's research. In fact, it's not by chance that researchers are trying out their experimental cancer treatments on dogs. Ohlfest says dogs are actually a much better animal model for testing brain cancer treatments, because they're big enough to operate on, and they're also big enough to handle treatment doses that would be comparable to what a human might need. Those have been major stumbling blocks in applying rodent studies to humans.

JOHN OHLFEST: The problem is that over 90% of cancer therapies that have worked in mice have failed in people. And not only did they fail, but toxicities that were not observed in mice occurred in people. So it's, double edged bad news there.

LORNA BENSON: So far, the U's experiment has been nothing but good news for Batman.

ELIZABETH PLUHAR: Hey, buddy. Come on. Wake up. Well, there's a little swallow. How about another one?

LORNA BENSON: Veterinarian G. Elizabeth Pluhar says her patient appears to be in perfect health.

ELIZABETH PLUHAR: Being a year out and still having no sign of any tumor, no evidence of disease, is amazing. Because I do think that had we done nothing, had we just done surgery, that he wouldn't be alive right now.

LORNA BENSON: Pluhar and Ohlfest have secured funding to treat another 60 to 70 dogs with brain cancer as part of their clinical trial. So far, they've enrolled about a half dozen. All of the treatments are free for participating in the research. Normally, the treatments would cost between $10,000 to $20,000 for people without pet insurance. Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio News.