Dr. Timothy Fan of the University of Illinois has been named one of eight semifinalists for the inaugural Canine Health Discovery of the Year Award by the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation (AKC CHF), recognition that highlights a translational research effort bridging veterinary and human oncology. Coverage from Dailyillini has highlighted this story.

The nomination recognizes Fan’s work developing intratumoral cytokine therapy—an approach that, according to reporting from the University of Illinois, proved safe and effective in dogs with naturally occurring cancers and paralleled promising data from early human clinical trials. That parallel between veterinary clinical outcomes and human phase one results is central to the project’s submission to the AKC CHF award.

The AKC CHF announced its list of semifinalists on Oct. 14, 2025, selecting Fan’s project from a competitive field of discoveries intended to advance canine health and translational medicine, as reported by The Daily Illini. The University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine publicized the semifinalist designation in an Oct. 22, 2025, news release on vetmed.illinois.edu and amplified the news through a campus social post on Facebook that reached university and alumni communities. Reporting by Illinois Edu offers additional detail on this case.

Fan’s research team completed the veterinary clinical portion of the program in March 2023, when studies in dogs with naturally occurring tumors concluded. Those preclinical and veterinary clinical results formed the backbone of the AKC CHF submission. In addition to the canine work, human data from a phase one clinical trial were published in September 2023; that publication provided the early human outcomes that mirror the veterinary findings and strengthened the translational case made to the award committee.

The intratumoral strategy depends on engineered cytokines—immune-signaling proteins modified to enhance activity at tumor sites. The engineered molecules used in Fan’s program were developed in collaboration with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including work by engineer Dane Wittrup. “Cytokines are proteins that are released by your immune cells, and their principal function is to increase your immune cell activity,” Fan explained, summarizing the biological mechanism that underpins the intratumoral treatment.

Members of Fan’s laboratory who helped carry the preclinical and veterinary clinical components of the program included graduate student Matheus Moreno Passos Barbosa, among others in the research group. The project brought together laboratory engineering and clinical veterinary medicine to test the safety and activity of a local, intratumoral immunotherapy in companion animals with naturally occurring cancer—an approach designed to both benefit canine patients and inform human oncology. As covered by Facebook, readers can explore more context around the event.

Dr. Anne Barger, head of the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois, framed Fan’s work in human terms: “The impact that he’s having on not only patients, but people as well, is incredible.” Her remarks echo the translational intent of the study—using findings from dogs to help guide new therapies for people while directly improving outcomes for veterinary patients.

AKC CHF leadership highlighted the potential of Fan’s approach to create new therapeutic options for dogs with cancer. Dr. Stephanie Montgomery, CEO of the American Kennel Club Canine Health Foundation, said the treatment “is really leading the way forward for new hope for people who have dogs with cancer,” emphasizing both the immediate veterinary relevance and the broader implications for translational research.

For Fan and his team, the semifinalist recognition is an external validation of years of collaborative work across disciplines. Fan tempered expectations about the award outcome, acknowledging the competitive field: “Certainly it would be great to get to the Final Four and then the finals, but you know, there’s a lot of competition there.” Even so, he emphasized the significance of the scientific continuity from canine studies to human clinical data, calling it “a nice parallel story to show that the same technology used in dogs was ultimately very successful in a phase one clinical trial of people.”

The Canine Health Discovery program was created to spotlight discoveries that can make meaningful advances in canine health, and the AKC CHF’s semifinalist list serves to elevate projects with strong scientific rigor and translational promise. Fan’s nomination places his group’s intratumoral cytokine therapy among a short list of innovations that the foundation believes could shape future standards of care for dogs with cancer and inform human therapies.

University officials, research collaborators and students have used the semifinalist announcement as an opportunity to underscore the partnership-driven nature of the work—bringing together veterinary clinicians, graduate students, engineers and external collaborators to move a concept from laboratory development to clinical application in pets and people. The University of Illinois news release and subsequent social media posts have highlighted those collaborative threads as central to the project’s progress and its recognition by the AKC CHF.

As the award process moves forward, Fan and his colleagues will watch to see whether their project advances from semifinalist status to the Final Four and ultimately to the top honor. Regardless of the award outcome, the trajectory of the program—from engineered cytokines and completed canine studies in March 2023 to published human phase one results in September 2023 and national recognition in October 2025—marks a notable sequence of milestones for translational oncology emerging from veterinary medicine.

Source

Original reporting: view the original article. Additional reporting and institutional releases: The Daily Illini, vetmed.illinois.edu, University of Illinois social media posts.