Canine melanoma study identifies genetic basis of disease; potential drug targets

As a veterinarian, Dr. Carolyn Duregger is familiar with the telltale signs of canine melanoma. So when she gave her own dog, Parker, a routine oral examination, the 1-centimeter-diameter discolored lump in the pup's upper right gums took her breath away. "It's an aggressive cancer with poor prognosis that I've seen many times. My stomach dropped. I literally gasped," said Dr. Duregger, recalling the moment she realized her fluffy, 9-year-old Wheaten terrier might be in big trouble. Dr. Duregger surgically removed the cancerous lump, and started Parker on radiation and an immunotherapy drug. But these measures don't always last, which is why she whole-heartedly supports the molecular-level precision medicine research led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope. Researchers specifically identified mutations in a gene called PTPRJ, a tumor suppressor gene, according to the multi-year study published today in the journal PLOS Genetics. In the most comprehensive study of its kind, TGen and its collaborators from across the nation used multiple genomic analysis techniques to identify several gene…