Treatment of a feline cutaneous mast cell tumour using imatinib mesylate as a neoadjuvant tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapeutic agent

Abstract

A two-year-old spayed female American shorthair cat presented with a rough, circular, exophytic mass on the genital area. The clinical findings and histopathological examination revealed that the mass contained neoplastic mast cells and, thus, was diagnosed as a mast cell tumour. The anatomical location of the mass was not easily accessible for surgical intervention. We administered a targeted therapy using oral imatinib mesylate for eight weeks to reduce the size of the lesion and to facilitate the successful surgical removal. The tumour mass eventually reduced by 21% and was surgically excised. This is possibly the first study to use imatinib mesylate as a tumour reduction neoadjuvant to therapeutically address a feline cutaneous mast cell tumour located in a surgically inaccessible part of the body.