Cancer vaccine used on dogs may one day help their owners

Ingrid and Ben Herrmann-Holmes love their dogs and tend to adopt older ones, like their three elderly basset hounds — one who needs a wheelchair.

So when their 13-year-old Blue Tick Coonhound began limping on his left front leg, they took him to the vet right away. The news wasn’t good.

Stephen was suffering from an aggressive cancer and needed immediate treatment.

But in their southwest Virginia town, there aren’t any specialty veterinarians. A web search led them to Upstate Veterinary Specialists in Greenville, where Stephen is getting a new vaccine designed to kick the immune system into attacking the cancer that could one day be used on people.

“We consider pets part of our family. We take really good care of them,” Ingrid Hermann-Holmes told The Greenville News. “They’re our fur kids.”

Since the beginning of June, Stephen has been treated by Dr. Amanda Fulmer, who said the cancer has spread from his leg into the lymph nodes.

“The vaccine’s job is to introduce an antigen that will make Stephen’s immune system recognize the cancer as foreign,” she said. “And then his own body ... destroys (the cancer cells) itself.”

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The treatment, ImmuneFx, is made by Morphogenesis of Florida, she said. And often, what works in dogs can work in humans too because the immune systems are similar.

“The nice thing about it is we’re able to take this type of treatment and see how it works in dogs, and we’re if getting promising responses ... then we’re able to take these studies to human oncologists and researchers and evaluate them as a possibility for humans as well.”

Currently, vaccines in humans target specific cancers, she said. ImmuneFx is being tested to see if it works on all kinds of cancers in dogs.

It would be a huge step if a vaccine could be found that treats a variety of cancers in humans, she said.

And because it’s a vaccine instead of chemotherapy, it has fewer side effects so Stephen’s not likely to suffer the hair loss, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea that chemo can cause, she said.

While this is the first time Fulmer has used ImmuneFx, she said she’s used a melanoma vaccine in dogs extensively.

In addition to his weekly vaccine, Stephen also undergoes radiation to try to shrink the tumor in his bone and gets a drug to help strengthen weakened bones.

The treatments are expected to buy him another nine to 18 months, Fulmer said.

“Everything seems to be going really well and he’s much more comfortable on the leg,” she said. “But we’re not expecting him to be cured given the ... extent of disease.”

Hermann-Holmes, who teaches pathology at the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine, said the family travels to Greenville and the clinic’s Asheville satellite twice a week — once for Stephen’s vaccine infusion and another time for his radiation treatment, which cost thousands of dollars each time.

But since shelter dog Stephen is their fur baby, they are trying to find the funds to continue his treatment.

“My husband and I are big animal lovers,” she said. “They are the Lord’s creatures and gifts to us. And they give us unconditional love.”

To learn more or to help, go to https://www.youcaring.com/ingrid-herrmann-holmes-599704