SRA

In 2019 it was estimated that 40% of UK households had pets, with dogs (25%) and cats (17%) representing the top two pet populations. The most common reason for getting a pet dog or cat was companionship and the majority of pet owners reported they love and care for their pet as much as any other family member. In addition, companion animals, principally dogs, are also used extensively by the agricultural, law enforcement and health care communities and aid the blind and patients with neurological diseases such as epilepsy. Thus it is important to note that the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in dogs and cats is cancer. In 2017, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital published a landmark paper in which tumour and matched normal DNA from >10,000 human patients with advanced cancer were sequenced for 410 cancer-associated genes. Analysis of data available from patients who had received targeted therapy prior to their tumours being sequenced revealed that molecular information was predictive of patient outcome regardless of tumour histology, thus highlighting the importance of broad molecular phenotyping across tumour types. Although only a few targeted therapies are currently approved for use in veterinary medicine, their use is likely to increase given the marked success of such agents in human cancer treatment. However, this will only be possible if genomic alterations found in canine and feline cancers can be effectively identified. Thus we propose to sequence tumour-germline pairs of commonly occurring cancer types in dogs and cats, to help define the landscape driver genes in companion animal cancers thus promoting precision oncology and advances in our understanding of the etiology of these diseases. The cases in this cohort are feline oral squamous cell carcinomas.