The two-way street of canine and human medicine

Frederick R. Appelbaum, MD, executive vice president at the Fred Hutchinson (Hutch) Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, and associate director for the Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children's Cancer Consortium, discusses the pivotal role of canine models in advancing both human and veterinary medicine in this interview on his lecture on bone marrow transplantation at the 2025 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) Forum in Louisville, Kentucky. In this video, Appelbaum shares how early studies in dogs led not only to the development of marrow transplantation in humans, but also to expanded research into canine genetics and disease.

Below is the interview transcript.

Frederick R. Appelbaum, MD: One of the other things that I mentioned in my lecture is how the study of natural phenomena in animals has been so instrumental in informing our understanding of both disease processes and also therapies in humans. For example, we very early on at the Hutch, used a canine model to develop marrow transplantation. But because of that, we also became very interested in other diseases and the genetics of canines—of dogs.

One of our investigators, Elaine Ostrander, [PhD], that worked with us, was instrumental in being one of the leaders in being able to sequence the canine genome. And in sequencing the canine genome, we learned about diseases such as narcolepsy. We learned about the reasons that certain animals develop certain kinds of tumors, lymphomas, et cetera.

And so, studying [the] canine model helped us develop marrow transplantation, but it also let us become much more interested in just the biology of animals and canines, for example, which then led us to much better understanding of many human diseases and also better understanding of canine diseases as well. So again, you know, the research is, I think, as I mentioned, bidirectional. We learn from the canine model. Canine model informs humans. What we learn in humans can then be applied to canine care because, frankly, the amount of money that goes into developing therapies for humans is going to be a lot more than what goes into developing new therapies for canines, but once you show it works in humans, there's no reason it can't be pretty easily translated back to help our pets.