Three yips for veterinary medicine. A vaccine recently approved for efficacy trials (systematic live trials to test effectiveness) by the U.S. Department of Agriculture offers the first real hope for treating canine melanoma, a frequently fatal disease. And if the vaccine succeeds in dogs, it could be adapted for humans.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Animal Medical Center of New York (AMC) worked with Merial, an animal health company, to develop this unprecedented therapy. The USDA conditionally approved the vaccine trials because early tests showed no side effects as well as more promising results than any existing therapies for dogs. Unlike humans, in whom melanomas most often show up on sun-exposed skin where it can be readily spotted, dogs usually first develop the disease in areas such as the oral cavities, foot pads and digits, where it tends to be especially virulent when first discovered. “Unfortunately, once the disease advances, it spreads to similar locations across both species, including vital organs,” says Philip J. Bergman, DVM, PhD, an oncologist with the Animal Medical Center of New York.

The vaccine, which started development in 2000, “has been a win-win situation for us,” adds Dr. Bergman, who is also head of the Donaldson-Atwood Cancer Clinic and Director of the Flaherty Comparative Oncology Laboratory. “Obviously, we’re helping pets, which is important to me as a veterinary oncologist, but all the work we have done also gets shared with the people at Sloan-Kettering.”

As a result, if all goes well, the treatment could one day prove a boon to two-footed as well as four-footed melanoma patients.