Sarcoma Predisposition in Dogs with a Comparative View to Human Orthologous Disease

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Sarcomas are tumors arising from soft tissue or bone that occur in both humans and dogs with varying frequency. Recently hereditary risk factors related to sarcoma development have been investigated in both species. This review highlights some of the recent findings relating to hereditary risk factors for sarcoma development in humans, and summarizes recent studies investigating hereditary risk factors for sarcoma development in dogs. ABSTRACT: Sarcomas are malignant tumors arising from the embryonic mesodermal cell lineage. This group of cancers covers a heterogenous set of solid tumors arising from soft tissues or bone. Many features such as histology, biological behavior and molecular characteristics are shared between sarcomas in humans and dogs, suggesting that human sarcoma research can be informative for canine disease, and that dogs with sarcomas can serve as relevant translational cancer models, to aid in the understanding of human disease and cancer biology. In the present paper, risk factors for the development of sarcoma in dogs are reviewed, with a particular focus on recent advances in clinical genetics, and on the identification of simple and complex genetic risk factors with a comparison with what has been found in human orthologous disease.