Katherine Yang, V25 Presents Research on Canine Osteosarcoma at ACTS Conference

Researching canine osteosarcoma in the Student Summer Research Program at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University presented a unique opportunity for Katherine Yang, V25 (she/her) to pursue her interest in advancing both veterinary and human medicine. Less than a year later, she was sharing her findings with the greater medical community at the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) Conference. 

The ACTS conference centers on human research, and for the first time, veterinary students were invited to present on the translational value of veterinary research to human research. Yang was selected to represent the veterinary community at the conference this past April in Las Vegas, Nevada, along with two other students from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  

Yang presented a research poster and delivered an abstract presentation on her project. Her poster was selected as one of the top 50 in the conference. 

Dozens of clinical trials currently running at Cummings School investigate new treatments for cancers, kidney disease, heart disease, arthritis, and neurological conditions. The one that caught Yang’s attention focuses on a new combination of immunotherapy medications to treat osteosarcoma, or bone cancer, in dogs by stimulating the immune system to fight cancer cells.  

Heather Gardner, D.V.M., Ph.D., DACVIM (oncology), assistant professor in the Departments of Clinical Sciences and Comparative Pathology, and Cheryl London, D.V.M., Ph.D., DACVIM (oncology), Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education and Anne Engen and Dusty Professor in Comparative Oncology, and research professor in Immunology in the Department of Clinical Sciences at Cummings School, helped lead clinical trials in dogs with osteosarcoma. Funded by the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative and undertaken in collaboration with Dr. Steve Dow at Colorado State University, this study showed that a novel combination of immunotherapy drugs had some effectiveness in dogs with tumors spread to the lungs.  

Yang was accepted to Cummings School’s Student Summer Research Program last year and has since been analyzing data from these trials. About 50,000 dogs a year develop osteosarcoma, most commonly in breeds with large bone structures, like Great Danes and Bernese Mountain dogs. In comparison, osteosarcoma is relatively rare in humans, with about 1,000 cases a year, making it more challenging to study. Because the pathogenesis is similar across both species, osteosarcoma in dogs is often used to study the human disease. Yang explains that in the last few years, macrophages have been recognized as playing a significant role in the immune microenvironment of several different kinds of cancers, including osteosarcoma.

In close collaboration with Drs. Gardner and London, Yang’s research focuses on understanding how tumor-associated macrophage characteristics change throughout the course of the disease and how they impact the osteosarcoma cancer cells, both in the primary tumor and in sites of tumor spread. Ultimately, this work aims to better understand how cancer treatments targeting macrophages can help improve outcomes for dogs and kids with osteosarcoma, as well as other cancers.

“There are parallels between canine disease and human disease—at a molecular level, how the cancer plays into the immune microenvironment. Cancer biologies are also similar across the two species,” says Yang. “We draw our information from canine data because it’s a more common cancer in dogs than humans, and hopefully, we can find drugs that can be taken to the next level and studied in human clinical trials. That is my end goal.” 

Yang grouped the data from a subset of the dogs in the clinical trial by their outcomes and then analyzed the differences between the dogs’ immune environments, the gene signatures from the macrophages, and how the macrophages interact with the cancer cells. She is studying how the immunotherapy drugs used in the recently completed clinical trials altered macrophages and their associated gene expression.   

Yang created a poster of her work and presented it at the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Symposium in Puerto Rico last August.  The Clinical Translational Science Award (COHA) One Health Alliance sponsored an opportunity for 2023 Veterinary Summer Scholar students with One Health-related summer projects to attend the 2024 Association for Clinical and Translational Science annual meeting.  She then submitted an abstract and was selected along with the two other veterinary students to present at the ACTS Conference.  

“I was pretty excited to be selected,” says Yang. “The value of veterinary medicine in human medicine is what I’m passionate about. Collaboration between these two fields is important because veterinary medicine plays a huge part in research. Drugs that get studied always start with animals before transitioning into human clinical trials.” 

At ACTS, Yang delivered an abstract presentation of her work to an audience of physician-scientists, Ph.D.s, and judges and was honored to have her poster chosen as one of the top 50 at the conference.  

Before she arrived at Cummings School, Yang wrote down her goals. “I’ve been ticking them off since I’ve been here. Tufts has provided me with so many opportunities; there’s room to grow. If you want to do something, you are able to. You just need to find the right connections.”  

Yang is continuing her research while balancing her studies and clinical rotations. She plans to write up a manuscript of her research and publish it. 

“This is the type of work that I’m very passionate about—finding drug targets in animals that translates to humans,” Yang says. “There are knowledge gaps in human medicine that veterinary medicine can fill, and gaps in veterinary knowledge that human medicine can fill. There’s a synergistic pattern. This is the type of work I’d like to do in the future, to combine the realms of these two fields and make it better.”