It’s not uncommon for an owner to request bleeding edge treatment options when a pet’s been diagnosed with cancer. That’s when highly motivated clients with means will do anything to make life more comfortable for their pet—even if it means traveling to another city to participate in [often expensive] clinical trials.

Problem is, most vets aren’t clued into the cottage-y, oncology network within vet schools and other so-called, tertiary care centers. This high-level research goes on daily under our private-practice radars. And despite our clients’ potential willingness to participate in an endeavor that might help their pets—and which will almost certainly benefit other pets—we have no ability to offer this option without extensive research into each cancers’ current research.

One vet at the University of Missouri has undertaken to shift this paradigm by offering owners and vets a nationwide window to ongoing clinical trials in one online destination. Dr.Kimberly Selting has created the tool we’ve always wanted but never imagined—an online database to streamline the arduous, hit-or-miss process of locating trials that might meet our patients’ needs.

Parents and vets can search her database for clinical trials. Beyond the obvious information, she offers a resource replete with details you might not expect. Cost, time commitment, purpose and qualification criteria can all be found here, thereby streamlining an otherwise insufferable search.

Kudos to Dr. Selting. It’s efficient, creative work like hers that leads to real change in how our pets are treated. Oncologists spend so much time at meetings, in lectures and the research lab that it’s hard to imagine how they’d have time, energy or inspiration to accomplish a project like hers. This work alone is more beneficial to pet healthcare than any one scientific breakthrough.

I want to be like her when I grow up.

Check out her database at: https://cvmsecure.missouri.edu/test/seltingk/viewStudies.aspx.

Now all she needs is a catchy domain name.