Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
High osteopontin blood levels in dogs with mammary tumors
By Kaur, Ramandeep et al.·Published in Topics in companion animal medicine·2025·College of Animal Biotechnology, India·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Serum osteopontin level is elevated in dogs with mammary carcinomas.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with mammary tumors had their blood tested for a protein called osteopontin (OPN) to see if it could help identify the cancer. The study found that dogs with these tumors had much higher levels of OPN in their blood compared to healthy dogs. This suggests that measuring OPN could be a useful way for veterinarians to detect mammary tumors in dogs. While this research is still in the early stages, it points to a potential new tool for diagnosing this type of cancer in pets.
People also search for: dog mammary tumor symptoms · elevated osteopontin in dogs · how to detect dog breast cancer
Abstract
The objective of the current research was to assess osteopontin (OPN) as a biomarker of canine mammary tumors (CMT). Twenty CMT tissues were collected post-surgery. Blood samples were also collected from the same dogs as well as healthy tumor free dogs and serum was harvested. Fragment encoding the immunodominant region of canine osteopontin (693 bp) was cloned and expressed as a HISx6 - tagged protein in a prokaryotic expression system using pPROEX-HTa vector. A 26 kDa recombinant osteopontin (rOPN) was expressed, purified by Ni-NTA affinity chromatography and assessed by SDS-PAGE and western blot analysis. In order to optimize a sandwich ELISA for the relative assessment of circulating OPN in the sera of dogs with mammary tumors, hyperimmune sera were produced against the expressed protein in rabbits and mice. The developed sELISA was found to be 90 % specific and 85 % sensitive with respect to histopathological examination in detecting CMT. The circulating levels of OPN were significantly elevated in dogs with mammary tumors as compared to the healthy animals. The results suggest that OPN can serve as a serum biomarker of CMT.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41033609/