Development of an Animal Cancer Registry for the Marche Region as a Tool for Preventive Health Care

Cancer registries are a key feature of any epidemiological study or prevention and control strategy. Moreover, companion animal tumor registries are intended to assist in different aspects of research on tumor development, pathogenesis, genetics and treatment. Traditionally, comparative cancer research is based on murine models, which lack many features that define human cancer, including growth over longer time periods, genomic instability, function of the immune system and a significant heterogeneity of tumor cells and tumor microenvironments. To fill this gap, spontaneous tumors in dogs and cats reflect more features of human cancer. Furthermore, sharing the living environment with humans, they are exposed to similar risk factors, therefore acting as sentinels for recognition of environmental factors implicated in oncogenesis. Comparison of data from canine tumor registries has recently gained increasing interest in the context of the ‘One Medicine-One Oncology’ concept, part of the ‘One Health Initiative’. The One Health concept is a worldwide strategy for expanding collaborations and communications of multiple disciplines in all aspects of health care for humans, animals and the environment. It is believed that an achieved synergism will improve public health, scientific knowledge as well as biomedical research. To learn more about tumors in companion animals, such as cancer development and risks, knowledge on the occurrence of tumors in pets needs to be expanded because statistics on the incidence of cancer in pet animals are very rare. As part of ‘One Health curriculum’ of the School of Advanced Studies of the University of Camerino, this thesis was based on establishment of a canine cancer registry of the Marche region, so far lacking, focused on extensive data collection and interpretation about spontaneous tumors occurring in dogs living in the Marche region as a tool for preventive health care. Tumors were classified according to the tumor type, malignancy and physical location following the guidelines of the International Classification of Oncology for Humans (ICD-O), which subsequently allows comparisons with human cancer registries. Being a newborn cancer registry, the collected data were still insufficient to carry out an adequate statistical analysis, therefore a descriptive examination of the first available data was performed, pending further implementation in order to have a more truthful panorama of the oncological cases of dogs of the Marche region. Moreover, this dissertation describes a similar study carried out in Cuba. The aim was to collect data from a country with socio-economical, cultural and climatically characteristics completely different from ours, and to investigate ‘if’ and ‘how’ these differences could influence tumors onset in canine population. In the same manner of canine cancer registry of the Marche region, data collected of the city of Havana were analyzed as descriptive statistic and represent a groundwork to implement further.