Torigen Vaccine......

This picture was from when Sammy was just a wee pup at a few months old. Oh these boys!

Here is some general information on both Immunotherapy for people and the Torigen Vaccine for dogs. If you have the time, I would HIGHLY recommend reading through the "Facts of the Day" regarding Immunotherapy on the link below. I believe there are 30 days (not long reads) and they are FULL of great information about cancer research, treatment options, etc. Very very enlightening on the research and strides being made by using this type of treatment.

Click here to read the "Immunotherapy Facts of the Day":
https://www.cancerresearch.org/join-the-cause/cancer-immunotherapy-month/30-facts/01?fbclid=IwAR350vBFKQlmtYE4VLM5R57cDPNx1zesRm7of8ZlrFP7JuumUCEOVmdoPqI


Torigen is an Immunotherapy vaccine that is in the next stage of research. There were 10 years of research done with rodents with positive results so the company has moved onto a canine vaccine that is being administered to dogs. They have hopes that within 5 years, they will be able to use this vaccine in people, so the research being done now, and the treatment Max is getting, is being used not only for him, but for the greater good of mankind.

We feel very blessed that he can partake in this study to possibly help other dogs and people in the future!

Here is information straight from the Torigen website (word for word). I can't say it any better than them, so here is their explanation of what exactly Torigen is:

"Immunotherapies are growing traction in both the human and veterinary market as a sole, or adjunct treatment to chemotherapy and/or radiation. With over 10 years of supporting pre-clinical research, our treatment is a whole cell tissue vaccine. Treatments like these allow for a variety of tumor associated antigens to be presented to the immune system. This abundant choice of antigens may increase the likelihood of a successful response.

Immunotherapeutic approaches to cancer are emerging that will complement surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy by generating specific adaptive immunity to both tumor cells and altered host tissues. Tumors evade normal immune surveillance mechanisms through a variety of means. Some of these include interfering with dendritic cell antigen presentation, down regulation of cytokines that can destroy tumor cells, stimulation of regulatory (suppressor) T cells, and by altering host tissue to further mask it from the immune system. Our goal at Torigen is to develop innovative veterinary cancer treatments that allow for the body to recognize tumor-associated antigens as foreign and overcome immune senescence. "

What this basically is saying: By removing a portion of the cancerous tumor, they can make a vaccine with it, placing the cancer back into a shot form (along with a bunch of other good stuff) and then introducing the cancer back into the dog through 3 different shots (1 shot per week for 3 weeks). The body should identify these tumor cells as "foreign or bad strangers" and hunt them down and kill them. The dog's immune system will then continue to hunt down any other "foreign or bad strangers" (aka cancer cells) and kill them.

The hopes are that along with other traditional treatments, such as chemo & radiation, it will give the dogs a better chance of survival, remission, or extending their lives and improving quality of life for longer.

Since this is just in a testing and research stage, there is no way to know for sure which treatment is going to help the most. They can't even give us a "Torigen has put _________ dogs into remission." This research is still on going and it's such a new vaccine for dogs, that this information just isn't available yet. There are only between 250-500 dogs that have been given this vaccine world wide so far, so we feel very blessed Max can be one of them.

Things to know:
-Not all vets have access to this vaccine. I am not sure which specialists have access and how they are granted access, but if your vet or specialist doesn't have access, maybe you can see if they can reach out to Torigen to see which affiliates they have.

-Cost of treatment: $1500 total for all 3 shots. This is a one and done charge and once the 3 shots have been given, he will be done with this portion of his treatment.

-There is evidence that dogs with cancer (of course all cancers are different and including stages of cancer) that couple treatments together (Immunotherapy, Chemo, Radiation) are showing signs of success in regards to slowing down progression of tumors and/or stabilizing the cancer all together.

For us, we wanted to do everything we could to help our Maxie. He is our fur child and he still has 1/3 of his life left. We want to keep in mind his quality of life as well, but if we can stabilize his cancer to extend his life while keeping his quality of life at the forefront, that is what we are trying to do.

-Administering the Torigen shot each week was super easy. We drove to the specialist that has the vaccine (the vaccine is made each week at a lab in Connecticut and then sent to our specialists office) and they give him the shot near his boy part area. We then sit in a room for 45 minutes to watch for any adverse affects (seizures, fever, fainting, etc). After 45 minutes, they check his heart rate and body temperature and if everything looks good, we can go home! The only side affect we noticed was a small red mark where they gave him his shot and the next day he was a little tired. Other than that, he had no side affects.

-One good thing to know about Immunotherapy is that it builds up the dog's immune system to fight off the cancer cells. If you are coupling this type of treatment with Chemotherapy & Radiation, know that those types of treatment can have the adverse affects on the immune system. Chemo (and some radiation) will impact your immune system negatively and will suppress the immune system. We purposefully did the Immunotherapy FIRST so that Max's immune system would be built up prior to starting chemo & radiation. We spoke with Max's oncologists, and it wouldn't help him to do all 3 treatments at the same time, bc we would be undoing or hurting what the immunotherapy was meant to do, so we waited 3 weeks for his Immunotherapy treatments to be over with before we started chemo/radiation.