Banking on a Brighter Future: OVC Veterinary Biobank Offers Hope for Pets and People

Deirdre Stuart often meets people and pets in her clinic when they’re facing a cancer diagnosis, and emotions and stress levels are high.

“I have been through cancer and various options and outcomes with my own pets,” says Stuart. “Everyone who works at OVC can relate on some level, and it helps to have people around who know what you’re going through.”

Stuart is the coordinator of the OVC Veterinary Biobank, formerly the Companion Animal Tumour Sample Bank, at the University of Guelph’s (U of G) Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation (ICCI). Her position is funded by OVC Pet Trust through the Smiling Blue Skies Cancer Fund. With her previous training and experience as a veterinary technician, Stuart is responsible for identifying biobank participants and collecting samples with client consent.

“We have some really amazing patients and clients, and the majority of clients are happy to participate, despite the difficult situations they’re facing” says Stuart. “Through their experience here, they are offering hope to another pet, another family, down the road. The biobank offers a starting point for a lot of research. That is a meaningful legacy.”

What started as a small tumour bank in 2009 has now become Canada’s largest veterinary biobank. Samples are available to industry and academic researchers at U of G and beyond.

What’s in the Bank?

Once a pet is identified as a suitable candidate for a biobank deposit and owners have consented, the biobank works with the veterinary team to collect samples such as blood, urine or tissue as part of the pet’s regular standard of care. While the biobank’s focus has been on collecting samples from cancer patients, the team has recently expanded its scope to include pets with other diseases and conditions such as epilepsy. The biobank also stores blood samples from healthy companion animals (dogs and cats) for comparative analysis.

“Biobank samples never interfere with a pet’s medical diagnosis, and we have protocols to ensure we are not taking too much or adding unnecessary procedures,” says Stuart.

Samples are processed and stored in ultracold -80 Celsius freezers or preserved as microscopy slides. Each case is assigned a unique number and the corresponding clinical information for each sample is anonymized and stored in a database.

The bank is overseen by Drs. Geoffrey Wood and Michelle Oblak, co-directors of ICCI. Wood says having access to such a variety of samples and clinical data leads to important work that improves the lives of companion animals.

“The idea of a bank, where we’re accumulating cases over time, allows us to have a larger number of samples that better represent the full spectrum of a disease condition,” says Wood. “It would be almost impossible if we had to start a project and then wait to see what cases came in.”

The OVC team has collected specimens from nearly 2,000 cases, totalling more than 30,000 samples. The growing library of resources has allowed for significant advancement in researchers’ understanding of cancer, and the newly expanded scope looks to do the same for other areas of companion animal disease.

Better Decision-Making Tools

The clinical information attached to each biobank sample holds valuable data to inform decision-making. Data may include details such as the pet’s diagnosis, the subclass or grade of the tumour, the pet’s age and any additional health conditions. Researchers compare this data with other pieces of the puzzle, including treatment approaches and efficacy.

“If our knowledge from past cases suggests that a pet coming in today has a good chance of a long, healthy recovery, we can advise it might be worth the time, the cost and the effort to pursue treatment,” says Wood. “And if we can tell that something looks bad and treatment is unlikely to help, everyone can feel more secure in a decision to take a palliative route.”

Studies based on biobank resources have also helped to identify knowledge gaps. For example, OVC researchers were able to determine that grading osteosarcoma (bone cancer) tumours is less effective than grading other tumour types. This information is helping to drive the development of new strategies for understanding osteosarcoma.

Similarly, reviewing biobank data from dogs previously diagnosed with lymphoma (a cancer of the lymph nodes) revealed that, although most dogs respond to chemotherapy, it is difficult to predict how effective the overall treatment will be or how long each dog will live after treatment.

Cancer as a One Health Problem

One Health – a concept reflecting the intersection of environmental, human and animal health – influences much of ICCI’s work.

“Our primary focus is pets, but we need to remember that they breathe the same air and drink the same water as the humans they live with,” says Wood. “Pets are also probably sharing a good amount of our food and sleeping in our beds, too.”

He notes that companion animals commonly develop health conditions that also affect humans such as obesity, diabetes and endocrine problems. Some of the cancers that OVC researchers study are common in pets and rare in humans. For example, hemangiosarcoma (cancer of the blood vessels) is common in dogs, but tissue samples from those tumours in humans is relatively rare. Having access to rare tumour samples and other biological materials like blood helps support translational cancer research.

DNA Sequencing for Animal Cancers

Human cancer researchers are using tools such as DNA sequencing, which helps researchers to identify mutations that disrupt normal cell growth in humans. OVC has been developing the same tools for some animal cancers.

“The underlying biology behind it is that all cancers have mutations in DNA, and it turns out many of the mutations are similar across multiple species, including cats and dogs, and sometimes horses and cows,” says Wood. “Many of the drugs that are becoming available for humans are directed against specific DNA mutations, and not necessarily the cell type or body location of the cancer.”

OVC researchers have sequenced three different cancer types so far, including hemangiosarcoma, osteosarcoma and bladder cancer.

“As we continue to develop this work at OVC and with other institutions that have high power DNA sequencing, there’s more opportunity for the veterinary cancers to help inform studies on human cancer, and to make room for a two-way exchange of data,” says Wood.

And, as technology continues to improve, samples stretch farther because researchers require less material. Wood’s current research interest is in using blood microRNAs, which are promising biomarkers that help predict outcomes in dogs diagnosed with osteosarcoma.

“Our plan is to expand this sequencing work to include more cancer types and compare across humans, dogs, cats and even horses, birds and other animals,” says Wood. “All of this work is possible because of the growing number of samples we are able to access from the biobank.”

This story originally appeared in Best Friends magazine (Spring/Summer 2024). Written by Lisa McLean.