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    Contagious Cancer: Genome Study Reveals How Tasmanian Devil Cancer Has Spread

    By Katherine Harmon | Scientific American – Fri, Feb 17, 2012
    tasmanian deviltasmanian_devil_cancer_genome

    Image courtesy of Save the Tasmanian Devil Program

    A killer cancer that is threatening to wipe Tasmanian devils off the map for good has been spreading from an original infected female 15 years ago via live cancer cells, according to evidence from genome sequences of the cancer and the animal, published online Thursday in Cell. Finding out how this happened could help save this species from extinction and it could also prepare researchers for the unlikely event that a contagious cancer ever appeared in humans.

    The facial cancer, which is spread through bites, has plagued this animal’s precarious population for more than a decade. Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) are the largest surviving carnivorous marsupials and live on Australia’s island state Tasmania. [Read more about this scourge in "The Devil's Cancer," from Scientific American's June 2011 issue.] All of the tumors afflicting the animals today contain cells from one original devil, genetic sequences show. “I call her the immortal devil,” Elizabeth Murchison, a researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and co-author of the new paper, said in a prepared statement. “Her cells are living on long after she died.”

    An earlier version of the Tasmanian devil genome was published last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and revealed some secrets about why the cancer hasn’t killed off the species already. One of the two devils sequenced, named Cedric, showed resistance to at least two strains of the cancer, although he later succumbed to a third.

    “The Tasmanian devil cancer is the only cancer that is threatening an entire species with extinction,” Murchison said. After the first tumor appears on the doomed animals face, it will likely die within three months.

    But by turning to genetics, researchers and conservationists hope to be able to find clues to at least slow the cancer’s spread. The researchers studied tumors from 104 tumors collected from Tasmanian devils from various locations on the island and found that there were separate geographic groups of cancer types but that all of them contained cells from the original female. “Sequencing the genome of this cancer has allowed us to catalogue the mutations that caused this cancer to arise and to persist,” Murchison said. More detailed genetic details could point the way to targeted cancer drugs. It might also suggest how the cancer is able to sneak past the immune system and start its explosive growth so quickly.

    “Tracing the evolutionary history and spread of this cancer helps us to understand not only what caused this disease but also to predict how it might behave in the future,” David Bentley, chief scientist at Illumina Cambridge, Ltd. and study co-author, said in a prepared statement.

    The Tasmanian devil’s cancer has more than 17,000 mutations. “This is fewer mutations that are found in some human cancers and indicates that cancers do not need to be extremely unstable in order to become contagious,” Bentley said. Only one other type of contagious cancer is known a venereal tumor that infects dogs and wolves. The next step is “to use the genome sequence to understand more about how this cancer became transmissible,” Michael Stratton, director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and study co-author, said in a prepared statement. “Cancers that transmit through populations are obviously incredibly rare, he said, but we should use the Tasmanian devil example to be prepared in the extremely unlikely event that such an epidemic ever occurs in humans.”

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    Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
    © 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

     

    15 comments

    • lisa
      lisa  •  2 mths ago
      and margerine is more like car oil than food. put it outside and ill bet you will find the animals and bugs dont use it as a food source. but as brillant intellects as a race we will.
      viruses and bacteria can hurt our bodies but also chemicals.
    • lisa
      lisa  •  2 mths ago
      did you know the US govt has been known in past to break light bulbs full of diff diseases in the NYC subway and tracked their spread. if you think the govt as a whole trully cares for people your out of your mind. they have known cancer spreads, it is the diff on how diff bodies interact with the diseases. your immune response.
    • lisa
      lisa  •  2 mths ago
      hello people, isnt the female pap vaccine already saying that cancer can be spread thru a virus? and there has been proof that is not only can protect against cervical cancer but throat, in men too. theres a vaccine for a virus and viruses spread and that virus is linked already linked to risk of cancer
    • Milton Stapler
      Milton Stapler  •  3 mths ago
      You only know what you are told, and most of the time... It isn't the truth. Contagious cancer, I've alway that there was such of thing. Now, we're seeing it in nature. Won't be long before it is published in some medical journal of the first human cases, unless of course, it already has.
      • Milton Stapler
        Milton Stapler 3 mths ago
        *thought-- I better start proof reading before I hit post haha.
    • ME
      ME  •  3 mths ago
      Well, they already think HPV, a contagion, causes cancer... They have a vaccine to prevent the spread of 4 types (of the 140+ types) of HPV. They market it by saying it prevents cancer... And if you don't give this to your kid you're setting them up to get cancer. So does the trail lead to a contagious cancer in humans?
    • Sally
      Sally  •  3 mths ago
      Usually the creatures of succeeding generations become stronger if new genetic lines are introduced into the population. The problem with the tasmanian devil is that diversity in its genetic line is weak; that makes it weak to survive long term. Even if the scientists found a temporary "fix" for the carcinoma, I don't hold out much hope for the species as a whole because of its weak genetic line.
    • fickle fate
      fickle fate  •  Suisun City, California  •  3 mths ago
      scary
    • J
      J  •  3 mths ago
      Dang, Bugs Bunny and his evil pranks!
    • B
      B  •  3 mths ago
      Contagious cancer? That is like a wet dream for the sociopaths at the top of the food chain. Their 'scientists' are hard at work trying to add this one to their bag of tricks.
      • lisa
        lisa 2 mths ago
        or hide the fact they knew already. our government shattered light bulbs of diff diseases in nyc subways and traced the spread. just saying our govt certainly doesnt tell us everything and frankly doesnt truly care for the little people, just knows it needs them.
      • B
        B 2 mths ago
        absolutely Lisa!
    • Protostar
      Protostar  •  3 mths ago
      Considering all of my freinds who work in health care who have contracted cancer, I have long thought that there is a correlation and that cancer is transmittable and contagious---just because the scientists say it isn't doesn't make it so, there are other illnesses that are contagious, maybe Parkinson's and various neurological disorders---we are not as smart as we think we are, I have buried too many nurses and doctors to think otherwise. The health professions are always at risk of infection, maybe reduced immune systems contribute to higher rates of cancer. Wait until HIV becomes airborne---Yikes
      • Dimitri
        Dimitri 3 mths ago
        Did you ever imagine that the tragedies you describe are designed to happen.
      • Cheep-O
        Cheep-O 3 mths ago
        Could be stress or exposure to chemicals?
      • kathleen
        kathleen 3 mths ago
        There is pretty much a general consensus among researchers/endocrinologists that diabetes 1 is caused by a virus to which some people are genetically susceptible.
    • terryt
      terryt  •  Dunkirk, New York  •  3 mths ago
      Interesting a tumor that acts like a virus...Might be some connection between Kaposi's sarcoma and Hiv..Does make you wonder about a single common ancestor it is unlikely to be immune to one gene line while being affected by another,,there is something in common with all of them,,I would be sequencing mitochodrial dna,and rna to see what fits and what doesn't
    • Orlando R
      Orlando R  •  New York, New York  •  3 mths ago
      Fear mongering for research funds, like there isn't viable treatment already. I don't know about you?. But I!, do not want to live forever. Compassion ad suffering aside. Stay alert, educate yourself. Live and love within your means!...?
    • 800 Pound Gorilla
      800 Pound Gorilla  •  Charlotte, North Carolina  •  3 mths ago
      Eye opening to say the least.
    • Dimitri
      Dimitri  •  Orleans, Massachusetts  •  3 mths ago
      Sanger Institute???? Sounds like an outgrowth of that Margaret Sanger of eugenics, birth control, population control by depopulation fame. So why are they interested in an animal borne contagious killer cancer? Could they be dreaming of releasing a human version so as to expedite their elitist goal of a 500 million person population? And of course the Wellcome Trust is the drug manufacturer end of the equation (remember them before they became GSK?). It's the old problem, reaction, solution: play up overpopulation, develop a mortal disease and start an epidemic with it, serve up the cure (in the form of a debilitating medication). Been there. Seen that. The Tasmanian Devils were the guinea pigs for this bio-warfare against man. (Shades of AIDS, polio, H1N1, hantavirus, Lyme disease, and the rest of them.)
      • Brian J
        Brian J 3 mths ago
        Are you TRYING to make Sanger's case stronger?
      • Eileen S
        Eileen S 3 mths ago
        Calm down. It's named for Fred Sanger, a genetics researcher. No relation, I'm guessing.
    • Sam
      Sam  •  3 mths ago
      I have always wondered if some types of cancers have a contagious element to them. I still wonder about non hogkins lymphoma.
     Post a comment
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