Tripawds Three Legged Dog & Cat Forum Archives

Kevin,

Here are some links outside Tripawds to check out:

Rosie's Road, the story of a yellow lab with mast cell cancer who has been on Palladia for along time.  Scroll down- there are lots of links to information on mast cell and palladia.

Canine Mast Cell Cancer, a Yahoo group for people and their pets fighting MCT.  You have to join, it is not as easy to navigate as Tripawds in general- but everyone there has some level of experience with mast cell in their dogs.

Dr. Dressler's Review of Palladia- there is a link here to the original study information.  Warning- Dr.D in this review did not think much of palladia.

I looked into palladia a little- and didn't like what I read about the side effects.  But there seem to be many dogs tolerating it just fine. 

In some reading I saw that palladia only works, or works better in dogs with a certain mutation in the mast cell tumors.  I read a couple of places that it is effective, or most effective in 40% or so of cases.   There is a test that can be done on the tumor to see if your dog is in that category. Here is the technical lingo:

Palladia is in a family of drugs called receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitors.
In a normal cell, cellular growth and proliferation is tightly controlled by RTK's that are found on the cytoplasmic or nuclear membrane of the cell. In malignant cells, there are mutations that cause these RTK's to be constituently activated, leading to unregulatedgrowth of these cells.

Palladia is a small molecule that fits into the receptor site of certain RTK's and then blocks kinase activation. Kit is a receptor that is found on the surface of mast cells and C-kit, the gene for this receptor, has been shown to be mutated in 20-30% of all mast cell tumors. Dogs with tumors that have this mutation are known to have a poorer prognosis. Palladia has been developed to be a specific inhibitor of kit.  Dogs with c-kit mutations and no lymph node metastasis were more likely to have a response to Palladia.

I'm not advocating for palladia, or trying to talk you out of it. You and your vet need to decide what is the best course of action to give Sadie the best chance.  I am just sharing the info I found while researching palladia.

Karen and the pugapalooza