There’s a new clinical trial of CAR-T Therapy for dogs out of the vet school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which is open to dogs with osteosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, and soft tissue sarcomas. It does not require a tumor sample from the dog and is open to dogs at many stages of disease and treatment, though it can’t be administered with 4 weeks of chemotherapy (before or after that is fine, it appears, but ask to clarify).

The good news is, if you have the challenge of treating osteo in a dog for whom amputation is not feasible (for example, if the dog is already a tripawd, is exceptionally arthritic, it is in some other part of the body instead of a limb, or has metastasized) this therapy could be effective without amputation in combination with radiation.

The costs of both the therapy and ongoing diagnostics are free, which also means that this study could be a viable alternative to other for-cost therapies if they are currently beyond your means. (Even less expensive than the Yale immunotherapy study, in which therapy is free, but diagnostics are at the owner’s expense.) That said, you would still need to commit to whatever schedule and visits are necessary to complete the study. Full details and contact are here, and learn more about the therapy in the video below: