Let me tell you a true story.  In 2003,  the National Institute of Health (NIH) alone with biomedical and veterinary researchers around the globe, started the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A team led by Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, Ph.D., of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Mass., and Agencourt Bioscience Corp., Beverly, Mass., successfully assembled the genome of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris). The breed of dog sequenced was the boxer, which was chosen after analyses of 60 dog breeds found it was one of the breeds with the least amount of variation in its genome and therefore likely to provide the most reliable reference genome sequence.  They spent $30 million USD doing this.

Now if you read that closely what was started was the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Yet they used a dog for sequencing or mapping the genome sequence.

So you might ask why did they use a dog in a Genome Research project for humans? 

Well one of the reasons is that they believe the cures for most cancer in humans will come from cancer research in dogs.  Because dogs get cancer like humans.  Before this, when working with mice and such, they would insert under the skin a certain cancer tumor and then try to treat it.  But with dogs, they get cancer in the same places as people.  They get lung cancer, breast cancer, prostrate and others.  So when researchers work with treating dogs that have cancer, 90% of that research will translate (also work on) to people.

So the reason the NIH was willing to spend $30 million to map the genome of the dog as part of the National Human Genome Research is WHY I can say confidently that this treatment will work on both dogs and people.  And remember, that it has already been working successfully on people since 2009.

Gary

You can read all about it at this link https://www.genome.gov/12511476/2004-advisory-dog-genome-assembled