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Drug-laser therapy is promising treatment for pet cancer

August 30, 1996
Web posted at: 11:55 p.m. EDT

the cat and the laser beam

From Correspondent Ed Garsten

DETROIT (CNN) -- Veronique Frucot is the sort of person who will go far to take care of her family. That's why she didn't mind taking her cat Bulu from suburban Philadelphia to a veterinarian in Detroit who she believes can help save the feline's life.

Bulu has advanced cancer, and radiation treatments haven't helped. So Frucot is going the experimental route.

Frucot

"At this point, it's either that or she has a few months left. Even now, we're not sure, because it's well advanced, how well it's going to go," she said. "But I thought we'd give it a try."

The experimental cancer treatment, photodynamic therapy, is a two-part treatment in which the animal first gets a drug injection, then a laser light activates the chemical.

Beck

"Either one alone does nothing, but when you put them together, it's pretty fatal for cancer," said Dr. Elsa Beck, who is treating Bulu.

She said over the past seven years she has treated close to 500 animals. Photodynamic therapy has been from 40 percent to 95 percent successful in curing the cancer, she said, depending on the location of the tumor.

Beck hopes her work with animals will lead to similar treatments for humans, "as photo therapy becomes more and more accepted. It's a one-time treatment, and the people can be awake, as opposed to (having) 30 radiation therapy treatments that have a lot more side effects than this does."

pup

She feels confident of her results, partly because she says there's a big difference in testing the procedure with animals like Bulu and testing so-called lab animals. The difference is that in Bulu and other pets, the cancers have occurred spontaneously. In lab animals, the cancers are induced for experimentation.

"Generally the pet benefits from the treatment as well, and if we can work out some of the details on how to do the treatment in the animals, then that saves people experimentation and early clinical trials," Beck said.

Some of the details include coming up with proper laser dosages for humans. It's just one of those cases where medicine for man's (and woman's) best friends may also help save human lives.

As for Bulu, Beck said, "In my mind it already looks better."

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