Treatment of transmissible venereal tumors in dogs with intratumoral interleukin-2 (IL-2). A pilot study.
To improve the treatment of transmissible venereal tumors (TVTs) in dogs with intratumoral injections of interleukin-2 (IL-2).We treated 13 dogs with 18 natural TVTs with IL-2. The tumors were treated with intratumoral application of 2×10(6) units IL-2.Three months after injection of IL-2, the tumors in 2/13 dogs had regressed completely, those in 1/13 had regressed partially, and 4/13 dogs had stable disease.Local IL-2 treatment of TVT is therapeutically effective, as indicated by complete regression (CR), partial regression (PR) and stable disease (SD) of the tumors of 7 out of 13 dogs. In addition, we observed that the intratumoral treatment with IL-2 did not cause any toxic side-effects.