Woman develops cancer treatment that offers hope to ailing dogs

Millions of cats and dogs get diagnosed with cancer each year, and a new treatment is helping to change their prognosis. The revolutionary veterinary cancer treatment is called VetiVax and it uses the animals tumor cells to create a personalized treatment to help fight the disease. The treatment helps trigger the immune system of the pet to help it recognize the tumor as foreign. It's being used to help dogs, cats and horses combat cancer.

The company behind the treatment, Torigen Pharmaceuticals, was founded by UConn alumna Ashley Kalinauskas four years ago. "This is my passion, this is my drive," she said. "Were changing how pets are treated and this is a modality that can be considered when a pet is diagnosed with cancer." Kalinauskas said her graduate professor at Notre Dame, Mark Suckow began research on tissue vaccines in 2004. When his dog Sadie was diagnosed with cancer in 2010, she said he came up with this method to try and fight the disease. "She had tumors growing almost all over her body and the veterinarian's prognosis was take her home, enjoy her over Christmas and right after the holidays we're gonna have to put her down," Kalinauskas said.

"He took a portion of Sadie's tumor, created it into the personalized treatment, gave it back over a series of three weeks and he noticed the tumors started to recede." In two and a half years, Kalinauskas said 150 animals have been treated with VetiVax. "We have unproven safety and unproven efficacy at the moment; however, what we do know is the animals have a favorable outcome after being diagnosed," she said.

One of those animals is a Yorkshire Terrier named Chloe whose owner Linda Levy told FOX61 since she's been given the treatment, she's had no signs of cancer. "Unfortunately, we all know that the terrible thing of having a dog is that you know you're going to see them go before you," Levy said. "You just want them to have the best possible life and treatment if they get sick and I feel like I've been able to find that for her." Kalinauskas works at a dedicated laboratory space in Farmington through the UConn Technology Incubation Program.

Her team members are also located in Minnesota and Arkansas. The company works with veterinarians to treat animals around the country. The cost of VetiVax is $1200. VetiVax can work for solid tumors including Melanoma, Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Fibrosarcoma, Soft Tissue Sarcoma, Hemangiosarcoma, Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Nasal Carcinoma, Osteosarcoma, Mast Cell Tumors, Basal Cell Carcinoma and Transitional Cell Carcinoma. "It's our belief that 10 years from now us as humans will start as our first line of defense with immunotherapies followed by the heavy hitters if it doesn't work with chemotherapy and radiation," she said.

FDA Warns of 14 ‘Fraudulent’ Cancer Cure Companies

The claims seem remarkable. "If a person eats 6-12 apricot kernels per day, they will never have to worry about cancer," one site says. "Silymarin also seems to have anticancer properties. It can stop cancer cells from multiplying, kill cancer cells, and block their blood supply," says another. They're also false, the Food and Drug Administration says. It's warned 14 companies to stop making claims about herbal products and other treatments marketed to treat or prevent cancer. They cannot and some may be dangerous, the FDA says.

"These companies used slick ads, videos, and other sophisticated marketing techniques, including testimonials about miraculous outcomes," the FDA's Donald Ashley and Douglas Stearn wrote in a blog post. "Often a single product was promoted as a treatment or cure for multiple diseases in humans and animals." The FDA has listed the 14 companies on its website and detailed the false claims they have made about their products, which include herbs, tinctures, supplements, teas and salves. The claims range from curing cancer to "detoxifying" the liver. t's illegal to make such claims without proving they are true and going through the FDA's process for verifying them. Just putting a little disclaimer at the bottom of an ad saying the FDA has not verified the claims doesn't cut it, the agency said.

"Hoping to skirt the law on a technicality, some sellers made false claims and then in small print provided a disclaimer that their products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease," Ashley and Stearn wrote. "Making such obvious claims and then saying later that you are not doing so might seem clever, but the technique does not comply with federal laws intended to protect public health." The companies are taking advantage of frightened cancer patients and their loved ones, said consumer safety officer Nicole Kornspan. And they make a lot of money doing it. Americans spend $30 billion a year on alternative therapies.

"Anyone who suffers from cancer, or knows someone who does, understands the fear and desperation that can set in," Kornspan said in a statement. "There can be a great temptation to jump at anything that appears to offer a chance for a cure." They especially take advantage of people's tendency to believe that "natural" cures and treatments are better than those developed by commercial pharmaceutical companies. But they're not only a waste of money — they can contain harmful ingredients.

For instance, "Everything Herbs" was advertising apricot kernels, which contain deadly cyanide. Apricot seeds were the basis for laetrile, an unproven but popular "alternative" cancer therapy sold online and in overseas clinics since the 1970s, despite much evidence it is worthless. "Contained within these kernels is a very small amount of a substance called nitriloside amygdalin. It goes directly to a cancer cell, stings it, and kills it," the FDA quoted the "Everything Herbs" site as saying. The website was down for repairs when NBC News investigated and a call to the firm's phone number yielded a voicemail saying the entire company was on vacation. Another site, DoctorVicks.com, sells a variety of herbs and supplements, including silymarin, also known as milk thistle. "Milk thistle's main ingredient silymarin has been found to support the liver in wondrous ways. It can help fix the damage done to the liver by alcohol or Tylenol, and can protect the liver from future damage," it claims. There is a compound that can help the damage done by Tylenol overdoses — it's called N-acetylcysteine (NAC) but it must be given immediately and by a medical professional.

Some studies have suggested silymarin may be helpful but it has not been approved and the dose has not been established. Dr. Vicks did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. The FDA has given the companies 15 days to come up with a plan to comply with FDA orders. The agency can prosecute and fine the companies and even seek prison terms. "The message to consumers is this: These products are untested. Some contain ingredients that may be a direct risk to your health," the FDA said. "The ingredients may interact in a dangerous way with professionally-prescribed treatments. They are not a substitute for appropriate treatments. Using these products can waste your money, and, more importantly, endanger your health."

No Cure Yet for Breast Cancer, but 3 Big Advances in 2016

In the U.S., one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. I became one of those eight women a decade ago and endured the go-to treatment at the time for breast cancer -- chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, with ensuing hair loss and constant nausea. But there's great news for all women. That toxic regimen may be headed out the door, because breast cancer treatment is rapidly moving to a more personalized and targeted paradigm that could save millions of lives and drastically change the quality of life of patients. Here are three dramatic advances that are leading to more effective treatments, as well as brand new ways to think about what causes the deadly disease. 

Targeted combo therapy completely obliterates signs of cancer

The biggest advance of 2016 in breast cancer has to be how a combination of targeted cancer drugs completely obliterated all signs of breast cancer in 11% of patients in only 11 days.

The UK-based study involved 257 women with particularly virulent type of breast cancer (HER2-positive), and combined two drugs from GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) and Roche Holdings (NASDAQOTH:RHHBY). While 11% may not seem that impressive, for even one breast cancer tumor to be completely eradicated by a drug in less than two weeks is electrifying. Cancer tumors develop resistance to chemotherapy agents so rapidly, these drugs often have no impact on a tumor even after many months of treatment. Instead, tumors are removed surgically first. Chemotherapy comes afterwards -- to mop up stray cancer cells that might have spread elsewhere in the body.

In the past few years, a small minority of women have been having chemotherapy first. While that regimen sometimes shrinks the size of tumors, typically the order is reversed because the oncologist is more concerned about where the cancer could be going rather than the primary tumor. But Glaxo and Roche's drugs -- Herceptin and Tykerb -- are not infused chemotherapies, but simple oral pills. In addition, these drugs are highly targeted treatments, and attack cancer cells specifically. That's a huge plus because patients do not have to deal with the severe side effects of chemotherapy, which kills all rapidly dividing cells in the body like hair follicles and healthy bone marrow cells. Better yet, there is a large arsenal of these new therapies already on the market, including monoclonal antibodies like Herceptin and Tykerb, checkpoint products such as PD-1, and other treatments that unleash the power of the patient's immune system.

As was seen in the Glaxo/Roche drug trial, pairing these drugs together in a one-two punch is raising the success level of treatment and may eventually point the way to a cure.

93 genes causing breast cancer identified

This May, UK-based researchers at Cambridge Research Institute, unpacked the whole picture of what genetic events could be causing breast cancer. Thanks to their efforts, we should soon have a much better idea why the disease strikes certain individuals. Specifically, the scientists found 93 genes whose mutations convert a normal breast cell into a cancer cell. Professor Mike Straton, who led the study, said the list "would be handed over to the universities, the pharmaceuticals, the biotech companies to start developing new drugs."

It's hard to overstate how big this win is. The more we know about the genetics of cancer, the more we will know about what treatments will work for an individual women, paving the way to much higher survival rates.

Blood test could replace mammograms

Another huge breakthrough this year brought us much closer to a blood test for breast cancer. Specifically, researchers in France and Australiareported that a change in the isotopic proportions of carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 can reveal the presence of the disease. With this new way of detecting breast cancer, the project's lead researcher Professor Guillaume Tcherkez said we could have a simple blood test in a few years. That's terrific news for women, because mammograms, the best method currently available, are inaccurate 16% of the time. The resulting misdiagnosis includes highly stressful false positives, where the screening incorrectly shows breast cancer, and potentially fatal false negatives, where the mammogram fails to detect cancer. An innovative breast cancer blood test is already being developed in France, while here in the U.S. gene sequencing powerhouse Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN) is working on all-in-one liquid cancer biopsy that can detect virtually any cancer. Illumina has said an early version of that test should be on the market in three years. If that goal is achieved, many forms of cancer will be found earlier, when it tends to be treatable, which should massively decrease the world's cancer mortality. 

How to take advantage of cancer breakthroughs

Anyone at risk of breast cancer -- which includes all women, and although much more rarely, all men -- strongly benefits from being informed about breast cancer breakthroughs. The disease strikes without warning, and with the flood of new treatments reaching the market, many doctors have never prescribed some of them and may be hesitant, or even uniformed, about their possible benefits. In fact, taking charge of your own health is the best way to beat this disease. That doesn't mean you should ignore your doctors' advice, but that you should diligently practice ways to prevent cancer such as eating a healthy diet and exercise, make sure you get necessary screenings, ask questions if you are diagnosed, and seek a second opinion if you are not satisfied with the answers.

While survival rates have doubled over the past 20 years, a women still dies from breast cancer every 12 minutes in the United States. So never forget, this disease presents a serious threat to your life and no one cares about your life more than you do. But there's no reason to end on a somber note, because research is now showing how powerfully our own bodies can be mobilized to fight it. That's not only improving the odds for survival; it's also bringing us closer to the day when we can finally claim a cure.