This article is written by Justin Louis and published in dvm360.
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Author(s)Justin Louis, Content Producer
Fact checked by: Yasmeen Qahwash
A new cost analysis finds that matching relapsed lymphoma treatment to a personalized drug-response test was associated with longer disease control and a lower estimated daily treatment cost in dogs.
For dogs whose B-cell lymphoma had returned after chemotherapy, treatment that more closely matched a personalized drug-response prediction was associated with more time before the cancer worsened. It was also associated with a lower estimated treatment cost per day. The findings come from a new cost analysis presented at the 2026 Veterinary Cancer Society Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.¹
Precision medicine company ImpriMed conducted the analysis. It examined data from a clinical study published in 2024 in Frontiers in Oncology² and compared treatment costs with patient outcomes.¹
"Precision medicine should help veterinarians make informed decisions for each patient and help families understand the value of continued care," Sungwon Lim, PhD, CEO and cofounder of ImpriMed, said in the announcement.¹ "These findings connect personalized treatment selection with longer disease control and show why treatment costs should be considered alongside patient outcomes."
When a dog's lymphoma relapses, veterinarians and families choosing the next treatment have to balance its potential benefit against the financial commitment. The analysis looked at both how long treatment was associated with keeping the disease under control and what that care cost over time.¹
The analysis centers on ImpriMed's Personalized Prediction Profile (PPP). The test exposes a dog's live cancer cells to cancer-targeting drugs in the laboratory. Artificial intelligence combines those results with other information from the tumor profile and treatment outcomes from previous patients to predict which drugs are most likely to be effective. Veterinarians use the predictions together with their own clinical judgment to choose a treatment.¹
Researchers reviewed data from 60 dogs with relapsed B-cell lymphoma. They split the dogs into 2 groups based on how closely the drugs each dog received matched its PPP predictions.¹
In the more closely matched group, dogs had a median of 49 days without their cancer progressing. In the less closely matched group, the median was 21 days. That's about 2.3 times as long, or approximately 4 more weeks.¹
The estimated treatment cost per day without progression was $117.09 in the more closely matched group vs $188.53 in the less closely matched group. That's a difference of $71.44, or 38%. The estimates included chemotherapy drugs and the PPP report.¹
Total estimated treatment costs, including the PPP, were higher in the more closely matched group. According to the company, that's because those dogs lived longer and stayed on treatment longer.¹
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