A pilot study of the oral drug OXC-101 was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in April. The research was conducted in nine pet dogs with either lymphoma or hemangiosarcoma.
OXC-101 works through two mechanisms: it forces cancer cells to incorporate damaged DNA building blocks, and it disrupts microtubules needed for cell division. The drug is already being evaluated in human clinical trials and has received Orphan Drug Designation for acute myeloid leukemia.
Dogs received the drug orally at home. Most of the lymphoma dogs had already relapsed after failing Adriamycin-based chemotherapy. Despite that, they showed stable disease to partial responses lasting up to five months, with improved quality of life and no evident toxicity. In the hemangiosarcoma group, two of three dogs that had undergone splenectomy remained recurrence-free beyond one hundred fifty days with good quality of life.
Across all nine dogs, OXC-101 was extremely well tolerated. There were no gastrointestinal side effects, no neutropenia or thrombocytopenia, and no significant biochemical abnormalities.
The researchers concluded that OXC-101 appears safe and shows early antitumor activity in relapsed lymphoma and post-operative hemangiosarcoma. Given the biological similarity between these canine cancers and their human counterparts, these results support further clinical development for both veterinary and human oncology.
