Introduction

Hemangiosarcoma is a common, fatal cancer of dogs that grows insidiously without pain or obvious symptomatology, so diagnosis usually happens late in the course of disease or after death. A precision medicine approach of early detection and prevention could significantly reduce the burden of hemangiosarcoma in companion dogs.

Methods

The Shine On Suspicion (SOS) test uses flow cytometry to detect hemangiosarcoma-associated cells in circulation and machine learning for risk assignment. The 10x Genomics single cell RNA sequencing was used to define the ontogeny of hemangiosarcoma-associated cells. Ninety-seven samples from dogs with known conditions constituted the training set and 209 samples from clinically healthy dogs older than 6 years of age constituted the validation set for machine learning. A single cycle of eBAT was used for prevention.

Results

The SOS test achieved 89% sensitivity and 95% specificity for hemangiosarcoma detection. Our results suggest that the test can be used to assign dogs into risk categories for hemangiosarcoma by detecting circulating cells up to 24 months before gross disease develops. While follow-up will continue through the lifetime of every dog in the study, early results suggest that eBAT prevention can diminish risk of hemangiosarcoma based on repeated SOS testing.

Conclusion

The SOS test accurately detects hemangiosarcoma-associated cells in blood from dogs with active disease and can be used to categorize the risk of healthy dogs to develop hemangiosarcoma. The test has acceptable performance metrics, and combined with eBAT, can provide an actionable platform for early detection and strategic prevention of canine hemangiosarcoma.

Funding Information

This work was supported by grants CHF-02234-MOU and CHF-02806-MOU from the AKC Canine Health Foundation, by the Alvin and June Perlman Chair in Animal Oncology, and by generous individual donations to the Animal Cancer Care and Research Program of the University of Minnesota.