In February 2023, veterinarians told Allison Roth that her 9-year-old golden retriever, Lola, likely had less than six months to live.
An aggressive oral melanoma had already spread to her lungs. What no one expected was that Lola would still be here, cancer free, two years later.
Lola was referred to the Oncology Service at the UC Davis William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, a facility Roth would come to call “the Mayo Clinic for dogs.”
Coincidentally, Roth had her own history with cancer. Years earlier, while she underwent multiple brain surgeries at the actual Mayo Clinic, Lola had never left her side.
Given the option between palliative radiation or enrolling in a clinical trial, Roth chose the trial, a study testing intravenous chemotherapy paired with inhaled IL-15 immunotherapy, led by Dr. Robert Rebhun and Dr. Michael Kent at UC Davis and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.
At first, it didn’t work. Lola’s follow-up x-rays showed even more tumor growth in her lungs, and she was withdrawn from the trial.
Roth moved forward with six rounds of radiation therapy that summer, which shrank the tumor in Lola’s mouth, but her lung scans still weren’t improving.
“We thought we were going to lose her that summer,” Roth said. But Lola held on. When they returned for another x-ray in September, everyone was stunned. All of her tumors were gone.
Doctors believe Lola experienced a delayed response to the immunotherapy trial, something known in human medicine as pseudoprogression, where tumors can appear to worsen before ultimately shrinking.
Nearly two years later, Lola remains cancer free, continuing regular checkups at UC Davis with no signs of the disease returning. This October, she’ll turn 11 years old.
Lola was one of just ten dogs in that trial, and researchers say she represents a small subset who responded to the treatment.
Now they’re working to understand exactly what made her different, hoping to turn her story from a rare exception into something more dogs, and eventually more people, can count on.
“I don’t know how to express how grateful we are,” Roth said of the care Lola received. For a dog who once stood by her owner through brain surgery, it seems only right that science found a way to stand by Lola too.
Do you know a pet who beat the odds against a serious illness?
Source:
– vetmed ucdavis – “Dog Beats Cancer Odds After Successful Completion of Clinical Trial”
– cbsnews – “A golden success: Dog’s terminal cancer diagnosis dropped after UC Davis clinical trial”