A developing treatment for bone cancer is in the works at the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova , a researcher at USask, is using the knowledge and expertise she gained from Opus, a new startup incubator on campus, to create an ionizing radiation drug specifically for bone cancer.

She says the disease has a 30 per cent mortality rate with children, and an over 90 per cent mortality rate with dogs, numbers which are both unacceptable.

Dadachova adds that her new treatment, if successful, will give humans and animals an alternative to disfiguring amputations.

She says her first order of business will be a clinical trial treating domestic dogs, which she hopes will begin early this summer.

If successful, she says she will be able to move forward with beginning clinical trials on humans.