We’re ironing out the details of Stuart’s Fund so that you can learn more about Hemangiosarcoma (HSA).

Until this site is entirely up and running, and fundraising mechanisms have been put in place, here’s an intro.

From Dr. Nick Dervisis, DVM, PhD, DACVIM (Oncology) Medical Oncology/Assistant Professor at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine:

Hemangiosarcoma is an aggressive and common cancer in dogs. While cutaneous masses are often treatable by tumor excision, visceral and cardiac tumors are almost always incurable. Treatment options for this disease have been limited with virtually no significant advances in the last 30 years, mostly due to our poor understanding of the disease biology. While we have thought that HSA originates from neoplastic endothelial cells, accumulating data now suggest a bone marrow progenitor as the cell of origin for this disease. 

 Dr. Erin Fagan, our Medical Oncology Resident is working on exploring a cell signalling pathway in HSA. The Jak/STAT signaling pathway functions to regulate cell growth and proliferation in many normal bone marrow cells. Dysregulation of the Jak/STAT pathway has implications in human malignancies, including leukemias, lymphomas, and sarcomas. To date, there is very little research investigating presence and activity of this pathway in canine HSA. The aim of Dr. Fagan’s study is to identify and characterize the activity of this pathway in hemangiosarcoma. We use archived tumor tissues, from dogs diagnosed with the disease, and interrogate the signaling pathway’s activation status using immunohistochemistry.

Stuart’s Fund helps support this study and more.

Thank you for your interest.

Stay tuned as the countdown continues.