First Drug to Treat Cancer in Dogs Approved

The first cancer treatment specifically approved for dogs has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The new drug, Palladia, was developed by Pfizer Animal Health Inc. to treat a type of cancer that accounts for about one in five canine skin tumors.

All cancer drugs up until now used in veterinary medicine were developed for human use and not approved for animals. Federal laws allowed vets to administer these cancer medicines to animals under controlled circumstances. “This cancer drug approval for dogs is an important step forward for veterinary medicine,” Bernadette Dunham, director of FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, said in a statement. “Prior to this approval, veterinarians had to rely on human oncology drugs without knowledge of how safe or effective they would be for dogs.”

Palladia is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that works by killing tumor cells and cutting off blood supply to the tumor. In a clinical trial, the drug showed a statistically significant difference in tumor shrinkage when compared with a placebo. The most common side effects include diarrhea, loss of appetite, lameness, weight loss and blood in the stool.
Pfizer said it would begin selling Palladia in 2010. However, the drug will be made available to certain veterinary oncology specialists prior to that date. The company estimates that 1.2 million canine cancer cases are reported in the United States each year.

AUTHOR: Annette Hulbert