Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Cancer is an increasingly more common disease in both humans and animals and requires several sets of characteristics to grow and metastasize. To obtain these characteristics, signalling via cytokines are crucial. The way that cancer manipulates the environment in which it resides to create a favourable outcome for tumour survival, growth and metastasis is an area of great interest, not only for development of potential cancer biomarkers, but also new and innovative adjuvant cancer therapies. Certain subsets of cytokines, such as IL-17 and IL-23, can favour tumour survival by allowing the tumour to evade immune surveillance, and has been linked to poorer prognosis and response to treatment in several cancers. Likewise, other subsets of cytokines, such as IL-2 and IL-12, are related to better disease outcome and treatment response. The recruitment of immune cells, such as certain populations of T cells, into the tumour tissue alters the tumour microenvironment towards either a pro- or anti-tumour profile depending on which sets of cytokines are being produced. In this study, canine patients with lymphoma, mammary tumours and mast-cell tumours were analysed with regards to the serum levels of IL-12p40, a subset shared between IL-12 and IL-23. Each group were analysed with ELISA and compared to disease-free controls. The levels of IL-12p40 were significantly increased in patients with lymphoma compared to the other tumour groups and controls, but no differences were found amongst the other groups. Since sample size is small, no definite conclusions could be drawn with regards to the usefulness of IL-12p40 as a biomarker in canine cancer, apart from a potential use in canine patients with lymphoma. Further studies are required in all groups, preferably with larger populations and multiple types of cancer, as well as pre and post treatment measurements to evaluate the potential prognostic value of IL-12p40 in canine cancer.