2008-01-08 The Best Veterinary Breakthroughs of 2007
Jan. 3, 2008
Americans now spend more than $41 billion a year on their pets, according to Business Week magazine.
This year much of that money has been spent on a wide range of exciting breakthroughs in pet care. Marty Becker, veterinarian and author of two new books, "Bow Wow" and "Meow Wow," joined "Good Morning America" to talk about 2007's innovations in pet veterinary medicine.
Melanoma Vaccine
The canine melanoma vaccine from Merial is the first therapeutic cancer vaccine approved in the United States for any species, human or animal.
We all knew you could vaccinate for viral diseases, such as distemper and rabies, but for bacterial diseases, such as periodontal disease, or some cancers? Wow!
The vaccine was developed through a partnership between Merial, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Animal Medical Center of New York. As an adjunct to traditional therapies, initial trials using this vaccine show significantly longer survival times for dogs with melanoma.
Note: There's also a vaccine for melanoma being jointly developed by the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and its School of Veterinary Medicine. If this vaccine continues to work well in dogs with lymphoma, it would eventually be tested in children with the human equivalent, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Dental Disease Vaccine
The new Porphyromonas bacterin dental vaccine from Pfizer targets................
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