Are Mechanisms of Human Disease Relevant for Animal Disease?

"One of the questions that comes up not uncommonly with researchers is, 'Are the same mechanisms that are relevant in the human disease also relevant in the animal disease?'" explains Carol Robertson-Plouch, DVM, Translational and Comparative Medical Research (TCMR), LRL Strategic R&D Innovations at Eli Lilly Research Laboratories.

"So, as an example, are the mechanisms that are important for human lymphoma the same mechanisms that are important for canine lymphoma? In order to expound on that further, there are genomic studies that are going on right now. In fact, there is an effort from the National Cancer Institute to support these studies. They've released a number of grants to individuals and we will expect to have data coming back from those studies in the next year or 2 years or so."