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201609Jan15:08

Sec­ond con­ta­gious form of can­cer found in Tas­man­ian devils

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 09 Jan­u­ary 2016 | mod­i­fied 09 Jan­u­ary 2016
Archived

Tasmanian devil dftdTrans­mis­si­ble can­cers — can­cers which can spread between indi­vid­u­als by the trans­fer of liv­ing can­cer cells — are believed to arise extremely rarely in nature. One of the few known trans­mis­si­ble can­cers causes facial tumours in Tas­man­ian dev­ils, and is threat­en­ing this species with extinc­tion. Today, sci­en­tists report the dis­cov­ery of a sec­ond trans­mis­si­ble can­cer in Tas­man­ian devils.

The dis­cov­ery, pub­lished in the jour­nal Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ence, calls into ques­tion our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the processes that drive can­cers to become transmissible.

Tas­man­ian dev­ils are iconic mar­su­pial car­ni­vores that are only found in the wild on the Aus­tralian island state of Tas­ma­nia. The size of a small dog, the ani­mals have a rep­u­ta­tion for feroc­ity as they fre­quently bite each other dur­ing mat­ing and feed­ing interactions.

In 1996, researchers observed Tas­man­ian dev­ils in the north-​east of the island with tumours affect­ing the face and mouth; soon it was dis­cov­ered that these tumours were con­ta­gious between dev­ils, spread by bit­ing. The can­cer spreads rapidly through­out the animal’s body and the dis­ease usu­ally causes the death of affected ani­mals within months of the appear­ance of symp­toms. The can­cer has since spread through most of Tas­ma­nia and has trig­gered wide­spread devil pop­u­la­tion declines. The species was listed as endan­gered by the Inter­na­tional Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threat­ened Species in 2008.

To date, only two other forms of trans­mis­si­ble can­cer have been observed in nature: in dogs and in soft-​shell clams. Can­cer nor­mally occurs when cells in the body start to pro­lif­er­ate uncon­trol­lably; occa­sion­ally, can­cers can spread and invade the body in a process known as ‘metas­ta­sis’; how­ever, can­cers do not nor­mally sur­vive beyond the body of the host from whose cells they orig­i­nally derived. Trans­mis­si­ble can­cers, how­ever, arise when can­cer cells gain the abil­ity to spread beyond the body of the host that first spawned them, by trans­mis­sion of can­cer cells to new hosts.

Now, a team led by researchers from the Uni­ver­sity of Tas­ma­nia, Aus­tralia, and the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge, UK, has iden­ti­fied a sec­ond, genet­i­cally dis­tinct trans­mis­si­ble can­cer in Tas­ma­nia devils.

The poten­tial for new trans­mis­si­ble can­cers to emerge in this species has impor­tant impli­ca­tions for Tas­man­ian devil con­ser­va­tion programmes
Pro­fes­sor Gre­gory Woods, joint senior author, Men­zies Insti­tute for Med­ical Research, Uni­ver­sity of Tasmania »


The sec­ond can­cer causes tumours on the face that are out­wardly indis­tin­guish­able from the previously-​discovered can­cer,” said first author Dr Ruth Pye from the Men­zies Insti­tute for Med­ical Research at the Uni­ver­sity of Tas­ma­nia. “So far it has been detected in eight dev­ils in the south-​east of Tasmania.”

Until now, we’ve always thought that trans­mis­si­ble can­cers arise extremely rarely in nature,” says Dr Eliz­a­beth Murchi­son from the Depart­ment of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge, a senior author on the study, “but this new dis­cov­ery makes us ques­tion this belief.

Pre­vi­ously, we thought that Tas­man­ian dev­ils were extremely unlucky to have fallen vic­tim to a sin­gle run­away can­cer that emerged from one indi­vid­ual devil and spread through the devil pop­u­la­tion by bit­ing. How­ever, now that we have dis­cov­ered that this has hap­pened a sec­ond time, it makes us won­der if Tas­man­ian dev­ils might be par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to devel­op­ing this type of dis­ease, or that trans­mis­si­ble can­cers may not be as rare in nature as we pre­vi­ously thought.”

Pro­fes­sor Gre­gory Woods, joint senior author from the Men­zies Insti­tute for Med­ical Research at the Uni­ver­sity of Tas­ma­nia, adds: “It’s pos­si­ble that in the Tas­man­ian wilder­ness there are more trans­mis­si­ble can­cers in Tas­man­ian dev­ils that have not yet been dis­cov­ered. The poten­tial for new trans­mis­si­ble can­cers to emerge in this species has impor­tant impli­ca­tions for Tas­man­ian devil con­ser­va­tion programmes.”

The dis­cov­ery of the sec­ond trans­mis­si­ble can­cer began in 2014, when a devil with facial tumours was found in south-​east Tas­ma­nia. Although this animal’s tumours were out­wardly very sim­i­lar to those caused by the first-​described Tas­man­ian devil trans­mis­si­ble can­cer, the sci­en­tists found that this devil’s can­cer car­ried dif­fer­ent chro­mo­so­mal rearrange­ments and was genet­i­cally dis­tinct. Since then, eight addi­tional ani­mals have been found with the new can­cer in the same area of south-​east Tasmania.

The research was pri­mar­ily sup­ported the Well­come Trust and the Aus­tralian Research Coun­cil, with addi­tional sup­port pro­vided by Dr Eric Guiler Tas­man­ian Devil Research Grants and by the Save the Tas­man­ian Devil Pro­gram.


For more infor­ma­tion about the research into Tas­man­ian dev­ils, see T is for Tas­man­ian Devil, part of the Cam­bridge Ani­mal Alpha­bet series.


(Source: Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge news release, 28.12.2015)


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