HokieTalks: Cancer Research- Dogs lead the way for cures in humans

[00:00:02] >> Thank you thank you everybody and so I'm going to start by explaining a little bit what I'm doing for a living I'm a veterinarian oncologist So that means. Seeing incurable cancer in dogs and cats so I'm not a working with mice I'm not working with experimental. Cancer animals get sick and get diagnosed with cancer come through our teaching hospital and if Their cancer is to be monitored usually we're involved in monitoring other animals after surgery or radiation and most of them get some sort of medical treatment because they have widespread disease so what this cancer cancer you can look at it as a biologist so there won't be an exam or a quiz at the end but these are the basic minimum traits that a normal cell in our body needs to acquire to become cancerous they need to divide it needs to lose the brakes that stop division it needs to be mortal because all our cells have it. [00:01:13] ticking clock that will stop them from dividing after hitting a certain limit and finally needs to make its own blood vessels evade immune system and metastasized and it's usually the spread of the cancer or the metastasis and it's usually the spread that actually gets you the primary tumor we're fairly good in controlling the spread is where we've have a problem the way I see it philosophically is kind of like the cancer cell becomes selfish So when you cut your hand actually in order for that wound to heal the cells the fiberglass there start dividing to close the gap when the ga