Prolonged remission of advanced bronchoalveolar adenocarcinoma in a dog treated with autologous, tumour-derived chaperone-rich cell lysate (CRCL) vaccine.

PURPOSE: This paper presents the treatment of a 12-year-old female spayed Great Dane who presented with vestibular signs (ataxia, nystagmus, hind end collapse). Thoracic radiographs revealed a discrete pulmonary nodule in the right cranial lung lobe. Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspirate detected primary bronchoalveolar adenocarcinoma, verified via computed tomography, with a second smaller nodule discovered in the right cranial lung lobe. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A lateral thoracotomy with right cranial lung lobectomy was performed. Histopathological analysis of the nodules and an excised lymph node identified grade III bronchoalveolar adenocarcinoma with vascular infiltration and lymph node metastasis - a grim diagnosis with a reported median survival time of 6-27 days. A 10-g sample of the tumour was processed into a chaperone-rich cell lysate (CRCL) vaccine, which was administered weekly to the patient. Imiquimod - a Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) agonist - was applied topically for the first 12 treatments to stimulate local Langerhans cells. A single injection of bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) was administered for additional immune stimulation at week 30 of treatment. RESULTS: The dog remained stable and in otherwise good health until diffuse relapse occurred 44 weeks after the initial treatment; following gastrointestinal bleeding, the dog was euthanised 50+ weeks post diagnosis. CONCLUSION: To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of significantly prolonged survival following a diagnosis of grade III/stage III bronchoalveolar adenocarcinoma in a canine patient. This case report suggests that CRCL vaccine combined with topical imiquimod is a safe, effective treatment for canine tumours.

Prospective evaluation of flow cytometric characteristics, histopathologic diagnosis and clinical outcome in dogs with naïve B-cell lymphoma treated with a 19-week CHOP protocol.

Canine B-cell lymphoma is a clinically heterogenous disease; however, it is generally treated as a single disease entity. The purpose of this clinical trial was to prospectively evaluate naïve canine B-cell lymphoma patients using histopathology, flow cytometry (FC) and a standardized chemotherapy protocol to better define subsets of this disease that may respond differently to treatment. Sixty-four dogs with naïve multicentric B-cell lymphoma were treated with a standardized 19-week CHOP (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) chemotherapy protocol. Most of the dogs (84.3%) were diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), followed by nodal marginal zone (7.8%), small B-cell (4.7%), Burkitt-like (1.6%) and follicular lymphoma (1.6%). FC confirmed the diagnosis of B-cell lymphoma in all cases. There were no clear phenotyping differences between the subtypes of B-cell lymphoma detectable by our FC panel. The histologic subtypes in this study exhibited a range of forward scatter values on flow cytometry, but all of the DLBCL cases were higher than a value of 469, while the only cases with a lower forward scatter value were follicular lymphoma and diffuse small B-cell lymphoma. Dogs with DLBCL had a significantly better objective response rate to the CHOP protocol (96.3%) than the non-DLBCL subtypes (70%, P = .024). The median progression-free survival time for patients with DLBCL (233 days) was significantly longer than that of all other histopathologic subgroups combined (163 days, P = .0005).