Editorial: Cancer in Domestic, Exotic and Wild Animals: New Horizons in Tumorigenesis, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Therapeutics through Comparative Oncology

Yasunaga Yoshikawa^1,2*Isabel Pires³Leonardo Leonardi⁴

• ¹School of Veterinary Medicine, Kitasato University, Towada, Japan
• ²Kitasato Daigaku Juigakubu Daigakuin Juigakukei Kenkyuka, Towada, Japan
• ³Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro Centro de Ciencia Animal e Veterinaria, Vila Real, Portugal
• ⁴Universita degli Studi di Perugia Dipartimento di Medicina Veterinaria, Perugia, Italy

pandas ( Ailuropoda melanoleuca ), Roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus), human, One Health Significant advances in understanding cancer biology have been made in recent years, leading to increasingly accurate and early diagnosis and specific and effective therapeutic treatments. Advances in the identification of increasingly sophisticated prognostic markers have enabled veterinarians to predict the course of many neoplastic diseases, improving the quality of clinical and therapeutic approaches and the rate of recovery for many animals affected by cancer. Supporting these scientific advances and the fundamental and exciting findings of recent years, biomolecular and comparative studies have also been conducted across multiple animal species, including humans. These studies have allowed for the biological and genetic characterization of numerous tumors, further strengthening the importance of scientific approaches aimed at a "One Health" assessment. The comparative study of cancer in different animal species, including domestic, exotic, and wild animals, can provide valuable information of various types and degrees, with considerable potential for improving diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic approaches. Recent studies have shown that even particularly tumor-resistant animals, such as naked mole rats, blind mole rats, elephants, and whales, have attracted increasing attention from researchers, with the aim of characterizing the most intimate mechanisms of disease resistance in these species and breeds (1). These cancer resistance mechanisms observed in these species could offer new strategic approaches for anticancer treatments in humans, as well as in domestic and exotic animals. Therefore, by examining both tumor-prone animals closest to humans, such as dogs and cats, and tumor-resistant species, comparative oncology explores the similarities and differences between human and animal cancers, contributing to the development of new diagnostic tools, therapies, and preventive strategies that advance both human and veterinary medicine.