Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Safety of cowpea mosaic virus immunotherapy for dog oral tumors
By Delgado-Bonet, Pablo et al.·Published in Molecular pharmaceutics·2025·Unidad de Investigació, Spain·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Pilot Study of Intratumoral Immunotherapy with Cowpea Mosaic Virus Nanoparticles: Safety in Refractory Canine Oral Tumors.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
Four dogs with recurrent oral tumors that didn't respond to chemotherapy were treated with a new type of immunotherapy using cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) particles. While the tumors showed some initial improvement, they eventually progressed locally in all dogs. However, the treatment did not cause any serious side effects, and there was an increase in immune cells targeting the tumors, which is a positive sign. None of the dogs developed new lung tumors during the follow-up period. This suggests that CPMV could be a safe option worth exploring further for treating oral tumors in dogs.
People also search for: dog oral tumor treatment · canine squamous cell carcinoma immunotherapy · cowpea mosaic virus for dogs
Abstract
Oral tumors (squamous cell carcinoma, malignant melanoma, and fibrosarcoma) represent 6-7% of all canine cancers. Given that these tumors have a high local recurrence rate and metastatic potential, conventional therapies have suboptimal response rates, leading to poor patient outcomes. Here, we report the use of intratumoral virus-like particles from cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) in four canine patients with recurrent oral malignant tumors and lymph node metastasis. All tumors were nonresponders to chemotherapy and had a mild initial response to CPMV intratumoral immunotherapy without any serious immune-related adverse effects. None of the patients developed pulmonary metastasis during follow-up, although local progression was seen in all the patients. Furthermore, tumor-infiltrated immune T cells increased in number after the intratumoral immunotherapy with CPMV, suggesting activation of the tumor microenvironment. All the patients had a rapid decrease in the tumor-promoting chemokines IL-8 and CXCL1, which could indicate that a decrease in metastatic potential could have been generated by the CPMV immunotherapy. The increased number of infiltrated immune cells, the decrease in some pro-tumoral chemokines, and the absence of adverse effects suggest that CPMV could be a safe treatment and should be further explored as a novel therapy for canine oral tumors.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40226939/