K9 osteosarcoma samples identify drivers of metastasis in pediatric bone cancer

Human osteosarcoma samples are hard to come by, making the disease difficult to study. However, K9 bone cancer is genetically indistinguishable from the human form of the disease, and over 10,000 canine patients develop the disease every year. Research from the University of Colorado Cancer Center and the Colorado State University Flint Animal Cancer Center presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 used easily available K9 osteosarcoma samples to discover a novel protein that governs metastasis and chemoresistance in pediatric osteosarcoma.