THE WSAVA One Health Committee
(OHC) held its December meeting at
the National Institutes for Health (NIH)
in Washington DC to discuss how comparative and translational research
into spontaneously arising small
companion animal diseases can lead to
advances in human health.
The meeting was hosted by Dr
Chand Khanna, director of the
Comparative Oncology Program at the
Center for Cancer Research in the
National Cancer Institute (NCI) who
reviewed developments in the
understanding of osteosarcoma
metastasis brought about by
comparative human and canine studies.
Dr Elaine Ostrander, head of the
Comparative Genetics Section of the
NCI, discussed her research into the
genetic basis of body size and
chondrodysplasia in the dog and recent
studies of breed-associated digital
squamous cell carcinoma.
Other contributors included Dr
Mark Simpson, who heads the
Comparative Biomedical Science
Training Programme, a partnership
between the NIH and several American
veterinary schools, and Dr Melissa
Paoloni, who runs the Comparative
Oncology Trials Consortium (COTC),
linking the NIH with a network of 19
veterinary teaching hospitals in the US
and Canada.
This final meeting in the OHC’s
initial three-year programme also
discussed projects they hope to pursue
in its second phase, starting in 2013.
