Surgical removal of a tumor is sometimes just the first step in optimally ensuring the tumor has not spread or has the potential to regrow. In the case of aggressive cancerous tumors, some form of follow up treatment is often recommended, even when the tumors have been successfully resected with clean surgical margins. All it takes is one cell to have left the primary tumor to have already seeded in another tissue for the cancer to spread, what we call metastasis.
Premier Veterinary Care has partnered with innovative veterinary pharmaceutical Torigen, to utilize what was once the original problem, into the long term treatment solution. Torigen does this by harvesting a small section of the tumor and using its antigenic biological signatures to develop a vaccine against the cancer, in effect, programming the patient’s own immune system to attack and eliminate cancer cells specific to that tumor.
To be sure, for aggressive high grade cancerous tumors in dogs and cats, the gold standard of still care remains referral to a veterinary oncologist for follow up chemotherapy. However, a Torigen vaccine can be ideal for several situations:
- Low or mid grade tumors where surgical excision has a good to fair probability of being curative, but hardly guaranteed.
- Aggressive tumors where there are significant barriers to traditional chemotherapy, such as cost, age, mitigating factors, temperament not amenable to frequent clinic visits, etc.
The Torigen process is very simple. After we surgically remove a tumor, we place it in a container and cold ship the sample to Torigen. Upon arrival, Torigen harvests a small sample of the tumor before sending it on to pathology for diagnosis. Torigen does not charge to ship, collect, or store the sample. If the diagnosis is cancer and the pet parent opts in for the vaccine, Torigen can develop a vaccine in 1-2 weeks.
When vaccine arrives at Premier Veterinary Care, we alert the pet parent, and schedule the initial vaccine and follow up boosters. Following the initial vaccine, two additional boosters are administered at week 2 and week 3. The vaccines are minimally painful, with a small volume administered by subcutaneous injection, not unlike like the immunizations that we routinely administer against infectious diseases.