About 4 million dogs are diagnosed with cancer each year in the U.S. Most of the cancers they suffer from are the same that affect humans. Researchers are now enrolling man’s best friend into clinical trials to see if they can find cancer treatments that will benefit both humans and canines alike.

According to CBS News, this technique is called comparative oncology and is being funded in part by the White House’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Scientists from the National Institutes of Health recently collected DNA samples from a dog show to launch their investigation.

“Dogs live in our world. They get the same diseases we do. They eat our food,” says Elaine Ostrander, Ph.D., a senior geneticist at NIH. “They’re exposed to the same environmental pollutants. But they also have all the same genes that we do. And they have mutations in those genes that make them susceptible to everything you and I get — whether it’s diabetes or cancer or neuromuscular diseases. Everything humans get, dogs get.”

Ostrander said it is easier to study genes in dogs because they have been bred over the past 200 years to have distinct features such as noses, tails, and specific sizes. She says that means there are a smaller number of genes responsible for most of the major differences that are easier to ferret out.

Since some breeds of dogs get cancer more frequently than others, it’s easier for researchers to locate the genes responsible for the disease. Bladder cancer is 20 times more common in Scottish terriers, for example, than the average mixed breed dog, says CBS News. This makes it easier, says Ostrander, to pinpoint the genetic culprit.

In one somewhat miraculous case, a child, Krystie Gomez, with a rare, aggressive, and malignant form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma received an experimental immunotherapy treatment based on canine research. Veterinarian Nicola Mason of the University of Pennsylvania discovered that a genetically modified form of the bacteria listeria that contains a specific protein called HER2 helped dogs fight osteosarcoma. The modified listeria awakened their immune systems and triggered killer immune cells to scan the body and destroy cancer cells.

Sandy, a 9-year-old golden retriever, joined a nationwide trial in 2018. She had her front leg amputated because of osteosarcoma, which attacks 10,000 dogs each year. She was injected with the modified listeria and exhibited a strong immune response from the therapy. The dog is still alive today with no sign of cancer, says Mason. Her life expectancy with the standard care of amputation and chemotherapy would have been a year.

Other results from the first listeria trial in dogs showed that it “significantly increased duration of survival time” and was “tolerated” by the participants. Those results were submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.

According to CBS News, last year the FDA approved a phase II clinical trial using modified listeria to treat young adults and children. Gomez, whose cancer had spread to her lungs, was treated with the immunotherapy. Despite the side effects of nausea and headaches, her immune system seemed to respond. Gomez is now in her freshman year in high school and had no signs of cancer in her last scan.

The National Cancer Institute is spending more than $20 million to analyze cancer samples from pet dogs across the nation and overseeing comparative oncology trials to improve cancer treatment in both humans and dogs. The goal of these trials, offered by veterinary medical schools around the country, is to find new treatments that preserve dogs’ quality of life and maximize their time with their families. They will also provide insight into how the treatments and approaches being studied in dogs may be translated to help people with cancer.