The National Cancer Institute started a program about a year-and-a-half ago that allowed pet owners to enroll their dogs in clinical trials when conventional treatment wasn't working. The idea was to stop giving cancer to animals, start trying to help animals who developed cancer naturally, and help humans in the process. The Comparative Oncology Program (COP) is helping change the controversial issue of medical research involving animals.

Dogs develop many of the same kind of cancers that humans develop and cancer in dogs also metastasizes more similar to humans than lab mice. Dogs are also closer in weight to humans and share the same environment. The types of cancer in dogs that could translate into results for humans include osteosarcoma, breast and prostate cancer, colon, melanoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, head and neck carcinoma, and soft-tissue sarcoma.

Conventional cancer treatments can cost between $4,000 and $7,000 for a dog and sometimes it can be much higher. The COP trials are expected to be very low-cost, or free. Most of the pet owners expense will be for the initial evaluation. Someone whose dog is diagnosed with cancer may be referred by their veterinarian to a local veterinary teaching hospital and if that hospital is a member of the COP consortium and is participating in a clinical trial for that dog's cancer diagnosis, the owner will have the option of enrolling their pet.

The COP Web site features a list of all of the trials sponsored at the various consortium hospitals.