Dear Fomicheva, rabdomyosarcoma seems to be a rare neoplastric condition in dogs despite perivascular wall tumors ( more frequent). Few data are available on medical treatment of soft tissue sarcomas in dogs and new drugs are need for reduce relapse and increase progression survival time after surgical excision. However the dog has been recently considered a good cancer model form human (Rowell JL, McCarthy DO, Alvarez CE. Dog models of naturally occurring cancer.Trends Mol Med. 2011;17:380-388.) Which compounds wiil be suggest?

You can investigate the effects of different drugs with the S-180 sarcoma tumor model in BDF1 mice.

Yours sincerely

Dr. Miguel Tejeda

National Institute of Oncology

Budapest, Hungary

Dog's handling costs are extremely high. I would prefer go with rat or mice models. Our drugs is linked with the progression of some types of aggressive cancer, molecules which able to modulate the rate of oxygen consumption. Any suggestions for rats model? I

Dear Katya,

your question depends significantly on another question: Is a functional immune system necessary for the anti-cancer effect or not? If not, I would suggest to use the immunocompromized NSG mouse model (available via Jackson Laboratories) and a tumor cell line of your choise (e.g. a human fibrosarcoma cell line; currently, we use the Caco-2 colon carcinoma). For life imaging, the cell line should be transfected with an luciferase expression vector.

If the treatment needs a functional immune system, the NSG mouse can be reconstituted (at least in part) with an human immune system by transplantation of human hematopoietic stem cells.

Kind regards,

Jörg Lehmann,

Fraunhofer IZI, Leipzig, Germany

Jörg, how luciferase expression vector will work in extremely hypoxic tumors?

Dear Fomicheva,

Is it possible to expose us which compounds wiil be suggest and preliminary studies?

Sure, I mentioned it before since negative neck (N0) cancers are very aggressive and have ability to survive in hypoxia, we are intending to change their metabolism by molecules which able to modulate the rate of oxygen consumption