What does the Toedebusch Lab do? Many things. We are interested in brain tumors, first and foremost. Human brain tumors (glioblastoma) are uniformly fatal with 5-year survival at ~5%. These data have not improved for decades. There is an urgent need for novel therapeutic strategies and translational models to study this disease.
We harness the companion dog as a comparable and translatable model for spontaneously occurring brain tumors. Our pet dogs get brain tumors, in a similar manner that we humans do. Our work is identifying and documenting the myriad ways that the dog is (dis)similar to human disease. Not only are we working on cures for dog glioma, but we are able to use what we learn in the dog and translate/compare it with human disease.