![\"a](\"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/aguilar-dog-1-1024x639.jpg\")
The lead investigator at Purdue is Dr. R. Claudio Aguilar, associate professor and assistant head of biological sciences in Purdue\u2019s College of Science. Dr. Aguilar\u2019s research group worked with Purdue teams led by Dr. Timothy Ratliff, distinguished professor of comparative pathobiology and the Robert Wallace Miller Director of the Purdue Center for Cancer Research, and Dr. Deborah Knapp, the Dolores L. McCall Professor of Comparative Oncology and director of the Purdue Comparative Oncology Program, to conduct clinical testing. They tested the new agent in dogs with bladder cancer, specifically dogs that had failed to respond to other therapies or who could not receive other therapies. Following the treatment with the toxin, the tumors decreased in size and the dogs did not experience any bothersome side effects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have effectively come up with a promising method to kill the\ncancer cells without harming the normal cells in the bladder,\u201d said Dr. Aguilar. \u201cIt is basically like creating a special\nsolution that targets cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.\u201d The\nresearch was published in the October 4 issue of the International\nJournal of Cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bladder cancer strikes more than 74,000 people in the U.S. every year and about 17,000 die from the disease. Current treatments are expensive and invasive, often requiring patients to sit for hours at a time with a bladder full of an agent designed to kill cancer cells and tumors. In contrast, Dr. Aguilar said the Purdue system works within minutes to target the cancer cells in the bladder. He explained that the bladder has its own protective layer, which saves the good cells from the anthrax mixture, but offers no protection for the cancer cells and tumors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n