Everyone knows dogs are a man’s best friend. But a recent study argues that, at least for dogs struggling with bone cancer, their best friends might be dug-laden nanoparticles.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study featured engineers from the University of Illinois in Champaign partnering with a veterinarian to test a bone cancer drug delivery system.

The nanoparticles can deliver drugs to specific tissues in the body. The researchers, by focusing on dogs between 88 and 132 lbs. who were diagnosed with bone cancer, wanted to show proof of concept in mammals larger than mice.

The particles headed directly toward tumor sites, thanks to a coating of the drug pamidronate, which preferentially binds to degraded sites in bone.

"We wanted to see if we could evaluate these drug-delivery strategies, not only in a mouse model, but also at a scale that would mimic what a person would get," said Timothy Fan, DVM, PhD, the veterinarian who led the study. "The amount of nanoparticle that we ended up giving to these dogs was a thousand-fold greater in quantity than what we would typically give a mouse."

Researchers cautioned the jump from dog to human is a long one. The dogs in this study were often at an advanced stage of the disease, while bone cancer is usually diagnosed relatively early in humans. Still, the team pushed for further study of nanoparticles’ ability to deliver cancer-fighting drugs.