Caninecancer.org.au

Very pleasing the forum is finally working again. I could never post on the old one as it would log me out all the time.

There seems to be a lot in the news on vaccines for cancer. There was one a few moonths ago in the press from the rainforrest of Queensland and there is another vaccine they are trialling at Gatton for cancer. Then there is a melanoma vaccine overseas.

Is this the way of the future and have any of them been proven to do the job? In the future will these vaccines if they work be a prevenatitve or will you get them if you dog gets cancer?

Sorry you had so much trouble with the old forum. It was frustrating for me contacting the "Program Experts" over and over and have them say they could not replicate the behaviour. I sent them emails from others and still nothing. Completely useless and I wish I had never used the program I do for my website. The entire program is a piece of rubbish with so many glitches all the time. Problem is there is a lot of info on the website and to redo would be worse. It took countless hours to manually change the forum over. The "Program Experts" modified the phpbb to fit their program. Clearly clueless when they did that. Hopefully there will be no more problems for you or anyone else.

I will leave the medical question to the "Experts" I can assure you the "Experts" here in the field of oncology do know what they are doing

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1. Sending tumours to the lab saves lives
2. Pet insurance allows you to give your dog the best treatments available
3. Using an oncologist gives your dog the best chance of survival.

Vaccines are hopefully going to be a major part of cancer treatment in the future. As yet, there is no magic bullet. Historically, anything effective has been dangerous and anything safe has been minimally effective. The Oncept vaccine certainly has published evidence of benefit though there is still much to learn about which types of melanoma respond best. Some oncologists suspect it is not as successful as initial data suggested. But basic research is making huge advance into the understanding of the immune system and hopefully benefits will come.
The main problem to date is that most non-viral and non-sunlight induced tumours are not readily seen by the immune system so that simple vaccines fail. Broadly stimulating the immune system to an effective level carries very high risks of severe side effects. Much to learn but the next decade will prove to be far more fruitful than the last few I suspect.

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Dr Ken Wyatt BSc BVMS FANZCVS
Specialist Veterinary Oncologist
Perth Veterinary Oncology