Collaborating for the Best Care
OVC is improving the quality of life for both animals and humans through leading-edge research and clinical trials. Your pet’s participation helps make it all possible.
We offer the highest standard of care for your pet. Veterinary clinical trials allow discovery of new and improved ways to prevent disease and diagnose or treat existing and future patients in all specialties of veterinary medicine.
Please use the menu at the top of this page and/or buttons below to learn more about the amazing research and pets helping to advance human and animal healthcare.
Veterinary clinical trials are research studies involving client-owned animals. These studies may try to identify the most effective therapies and practices for a given condition and/or increase our understanding of a disease process.
How to Participate in a Veterinary Clinical Trial: It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!
- Look for options – talk to your veterinarian about your interest in companion animal trials and they can help determine suitability for enrolling. Not every clinical trial will be right for you and your pet. Clinical trials may have certain eligibility (or inclusion) criteria that determine if your pet is a candidate. These may include specific illness or disease conditions, species, age, sex, the type and stage of a disease, previous treatment history, and any other medical conditions that your pet may have. We also have studies that recruit only healthy patients. Inclusion criteria can be found in each of the study listings here.
- Contact the Clinical Trials team / study organizers – if you have or know of a pet that may be a suitable candidate for a particular study at the Ontario Veterinary College or you wish to obtain more information regarding a study(s) please connect with our Clinical Trials team via the website (Contact Us) or by email.
- Get enrolled! – Veterinary clinical trials are voluntary, your pet cannot be enrolled into a trial without your knowledge or permission. The enrollment process includes informed study consent, recruitment materials, verbal instructions and further questions regarding your pet. The Clinical Trials team and study clinician will be available to support you through this process and answer any question you may have. Owners may withdraw their pet from a study at any time, even if study participation has not finished. The clinical care of your pet is not compromised regardless of study participation status, although financial incentives often require completion of the study protocol.
Impact on Human Health Research
Companion animals, including pet dogs and cats, share many diseases and disorders with humans, ranging from cancers to cardiac diseases to psychiatric disorders. Additionally, our pets have huge genetic diversity, and live in the same shared, complex environment with us. Therefore, naturally occurring diseases in companion animals present an almost perfect model—and a largely untapped opportunity—for the development of new disease treatments.
While some clinical trials are designed specifically to improve veterinary health, translational clinical trials are also designed as an intermediate step to inform the design of human clinical trials. OVC and the University of Guelph is a hub for translational research in Canada and has launched the first of its kind ‘Bench to Bedside Institute for Translational Health Research and Innovation.’
CONNECT WITH US
STAY UP TO DATE
Want to get regular updates about clinical trials happening at OVC and the most recent study results? Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter, sent straight to your inbox.