Cancer – a single word that can change your world in an instant. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care if you’re old or young, rich or poor, kind or spiteful; it is the great equalizer. It is also one area of medical research that is constantly on the move. This week, we were lucky enough to speak to one of the pioneers of an extraordinary new weapon in the war against cancer in both humans and pets.
For better or worse, artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of our lives, sometimes without us even realizing it. While its infiltration of the arts is not always well received, the unparalleled processing and problem-solving capacity of AI is being harnessed by Dr Ilona Holcomb and the team at ImpriMed to provide a customized chemotherapy treatment protocol for individual pets, and they’re doing it with their hearts on their sleeves.
Chemotherapy for Pets?
When you hear the words ‘chemotherapy’ and ‘pets’ in the same sentence, your initial reaction may be one of horror, picturing the ravaging effects this course of treatment can have on human patients. However, when pets undergo chemotherapy, the drugs and doses are carefully calculated to ensure that those side effects are kept to a minimum. The consequence of this is that we don’t often achieve complete cure with veterinary chemotherapy, but the length and quality of many pets’ lives have been very much improved by receiving it.
There are around a dozen drugs used in chemotherapy treatment protocols, but most of those are reserved for unresponsive or relapsing cases. Traditionally, a treatment protocol for a patient is based on the specific form of cancer and which drug combinations usually achieve the best results. This can involve a certain amount of trial and error, substituting different chemicals depending on how the patient – and their cancer – respond.
What ImpriMed are doing is taking the same samples that would typically be used for diagnosis (blood, lymph node aspirates) and using an AI program that has been created using years of statistics, case studies, and patient outcomes to test the specific cancer of each individual. The goal is to find out not just how it might respond to certain chemotherapy treatments, but how it DOES respond to them.
Culture and Sensitivity Testing for Cancer
When we deal with an infection, an important step in accurate treatment and diagnosis is called culture & sensitivity testing. This is where a sample of the bacteria is grown in a lab in order to identify it and then test which antibiotics will eliminate it. In many ways, the process used at ImpriMed is the same (although infinitely more complicated!). Cancer cells are isolated, identified, and run through multiple treatment combinations to find out which drugs are going to work best, taking the guesswork out of treatment. Within a week, your vet will have a personalized prediction profile for your pet.
Most of the side effects of chemotherapy occur because the cytotoxic chemicals used will kill any cell, not just the cancer cells. These drugs are most effective against rapidly dividing cells, which is why cancer cells are the ones most affected, but like the cancer itself, these cytotoxic chemicals will not discriminate between cancerous and non-cancerous cells.
By using drugs that we know are going to be particularly effective against the cells in this individual, those risks are minimized.
Which Cancers Will It Work On?
At this stage, this AI service is available for feline lymphoma and canine lymphoma and leukemia. There are already plans underway to extend this into other common cancers seen in cats and dogs, such as mast cell tumors. With the virtually limitless ability of AI to test cancer tissue, there is hope that treatments could be found for some forms of cancer that are currently unresponsive to chemotherapy, as well as explore different drug formulations and combinations.
Click here to read one of the company’s success stories: Yoki’s Story.
It Must Be Expensive, Right?
These days, it’s impossible to hear about wonderful advances like this without cynically assuming it will be inaccessible to all but the super-rich. However, Dr Holcomb is a self-confessed soft-hearted pet lover who seems to genuinely want this technology to be available to all, and the base price for a comprehensive personalized chemotherapy prediction profile will usually be around $1,000 from your vet*. This may seem like a lot of money, but when you consider the complexity of this technology, as well as how much time it saves getting your dog’s treatment right the first time, it’s actually very reasonable.
The added benefit of this testing is that it avoids any ‘trial and error’ treatment, minimizing the risk of relapse and the potential need for additional drugs, and will likely reduce the overall treatment costs.
*As of February 2025. Indicative price only. Excludes additional costs (eg. consultations, sampling fees etc). Contact your vet for further information.
It’s refreshing to come across an ethically run company that seems to care about pets and their parents, and we can only hope that it stays that way.
ImpriMed’s services are available throughout the country and internationally, so if your pet has been diagnosed with cancer, you might want to talk to a vet about exploring this option.
Featured image credit: Natali_Mis, Shutterstock
