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Elephants Rarely Get Cancer, Now We Know Why (2015)
- datavirtue 7y agoBecause they aren't stuffing thier necks with sugar, pounds of meat, and dairy? Perhaps the reason they aren't ruining our climate either.
- pazimzadeh 7y agoLiterally no.
- otabdeveloper4 7y agoWell, it's either "pounds of meat and dairy" or "sugar", you need one or the other because humans can't feed on sunlight yet.
- spockz 7y agoIt apparently is because Elephants are better at cleaning up cancer cells. Presumably, because they have more copies of the “P53 gene”.
- ulrikrasmussen 7y agoNo. Because they have more copies of a gene for killing cancer cells. The article makes no mention of dietary reasons.
- pmoriarty 7y ago"Mouse cells given extra copies of the p53 gene seemed to develop some cancer resistance, he said." I wonder if they could try putting it in to tasmanian devils, which have suffered enormous cancer rates recently.
- duskwuff 7y agoThe cancers you're thinking of in Tasmanian Devils are the result of a transmissible (!) tumor. The cancerous cells aren't the result of mutations within the animal's body, but instead are introduced into it from another infected animal. As such, genetic therapies are unlikely to have an effect.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoAs such, genetic therapies are unlikely to have an effect. Can you back that up somehow? That doesn't sound at all right to me. Edit: For the upvote, downvote brigade -- with zero reply so far, but this comment has gone to zero and back to one umpteen times already -- I'm genuinely curious. This isn't some kind of gotcha question. I have a genetic disorder. I have umpteen relatives who have had cancer. I actually have a serious vested interest in better understanding how this stuff works.
- Sniffnoy 7y agoWe're talking about genetic therapies that would make cells less prone to mutating into cancerous cells. This would have no effect on cells that are already cancerous, introduced from an outside source.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoI read the article. It says this gene actively promotes apoptosis -- cell death -- in defective cells. I mean, I guess it would depend on how you are introducing the gene. How many cells it is getting into. But if it causes defective cells to suicide, why would it matter where the defect is coming from? I don't think we really have a good handle on what causes cancer. I suspect more cancer is due to some infectious agent than is generally believed and we know genetic variations have significant impact on the immune system and its ability to function at all.
- ganzuul 7y agoDo other large mammals have similar cancer resistance? How many cells does a blue whale have?
- Jun8 7y agoAble to answer this since I just read an article on this in the Economist (https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/06/29/in-fighting-cancer-look-to-what-other-animals-do https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/06/29/...): It seems whale genes have evolved to supress cancer. These include ATR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataxia_telangiectasia_and_Rad3_related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataxia_telangiectasia_and_Rad3...) that senses DNA damade, AMER1 (https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/AMER1 https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/AMER1), which stifles cell growth, and RECK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RECK), which suppresses metastatis. These genes are also found in humans but the hope is that studying genes from animals like elephants and whales we can find ones that we don't have.
- cma 7y agoI always thought it might be because with a larger volume of blood, their adaptive immune system could contain more permutations of antibodies, allowing them to detect more cancers.
- gigatexal 7y agoCould we use CRISPR to copy this gene more times in humans then?
- bransonf 7y agoYea, we probably don’t want to do that. Over-expression has a tendency to compete with other regulatory genes, enabling the reverse of what we’d aim to achieve. [0]http://m.cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/2/2/a001107.full http://m.cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/2/2/a001107.full [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18812169/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18812169/
- Merrill 7y agop53: Regular or super? Increased p53 expression under the endogenous promoter protects “super p53” mice from tumorigenesis without the undesirable effects of premature aging. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1535610802002167 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S153561080... >Garcia-Cao and collaborators report the generation of novel transgenic mice, called “super p53.” The super p53 mice express wild-type endogenous p53, and also carry one or two extra copies of a normal p53 gene, inserted as transgenes in the form of large genomic fragments of 130 to 175 kilobases. Because the additional p53 gene is expressed from its own promoter, the transgenically expressed p53 seems to be regulated in the same fashion as endogenous p53.
- dang 7y agoPrevious elephant cancer threads: 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14698886 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10364196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10364196
- zeristor 7y agoNext one due in 2021
- chubot 7y agoDidn't early humans also rarely get cancer? My understanding is that cancer is one of those things you die from if you don't die at child birth, get eaten by predators, or get the flu, polio, malaria, the plague, etc. That is, the reason cancer is such a big deal in modern times is because other causes of death have been controlled. I don't know much about elephants but I imagine cancer is still low on their list of things to worry about (humans are probably a lot higher up) If they started living a lot longer, it would probably show up more. People under 40-50 also rarely get cancer. Although I'm sure the human environment has produced some more causes of it that make those rates higher than they used to be.
- joebaf 7y agoStill, we have pediatric cancers that are not caused by lifestyle. I wonder what's the ratio for small elephants. Are the also more protected ?
- usrusr 7y agoBut how often would those be encountered in an average city? Because that's about the size of the total elephant population and if a handful of individuals got a rare cancer, chances that biologists would learn of it are still slim.
- sl1ck731 7y agoI believe I've read this verbiage around cancer in pets, such as domestic cats living far longer than "intended".
- davidgerard 7y agoPet rats ("fancy rats") were largely separated fron the wild gene pool about 150 years ago. They can live to three years or more, and are quite prone to benign tumours. (source: wife used to be a fancy-rat breeder)
- londons_explore 7y agoPrehistoric human lifetime is very hard to estimate, but I have heard reports that while infant mortality was high, actual lifetimes could still reach 70+ years
- computator 7y ago> He hopes to have a clinical trial within the next three to five years. It's been just over 4 years since that article. I wonder what has happened since.
- mikehotel 7y agoAn old video [1] in response to this old article may indicate another reason why elephants dont get cancer, and provide easier way to replicate those results than gene therapy or splicing. Hint: go vegan. [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die-from-cancer/#transcript https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die-from-cancer/...
- D-Coder 7y agoDo human vegans get less cancer? (Honest question.)
- mikehotel 7y agoThere are studies on this, however they are controversial since diet is not easy to control amongst study subjects. Also, there are vested interests keeping public opinion divided on this matter. One study from 2014: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565018/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565018/ This compared non-vegetarians with multiple types of vegetarian diets. > Conclusion: Vegetarian diets seem to confer protection against cancer. > Impact: Vegan diet seems to confer lower risk for overall and female-specific cancer compared to other dietary patterns. The lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets seem to confer protection from cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. A more recent perspective on the topic of diet as a cancer risk: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2017.1339094 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2017.1... > Abstract: The role that nutrition plays in cancer development and treatment has received considerable attention in recent decades, but it still engenders considerable controversy. Within the cancer research and especially the clinical community, for example, nutritional factors are considered to play, at best, a secondary role. The role of nutrition in cancer development was noted by authorities as far back as the early 1800s, generally under the theory that cancer is "constitutional" in its origin, implying a complex, multifactorial, multistage etiology. Opponents of this idea insisted, rather vigorously, that cancer is a local unifactorial disease, best treated through surgery, with little attention paid to the etiology and possible prevention of cancer. This "local" theory, developed during the late 1700s and early 1800s, gradually included, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, chemotherapy and radiotherapy as treatment modalities, which now remain, along with surgery, as the basis of present-day cancer treatment. This highly reductionist paradigm left in its wake unfortunate consequences for the present day, which is the subject of this perspective. (I am citing the second publication only in defense of my original comment, for future reference. In retrospect, when discussing health benefits of diet, I should have used the term whole food plant based diet instead of vegan to avoid the baggage that term carries.)
- sek 7y agoJust a hypothesis I thought of: A lot of cancer cells are developed because of constant background radiation, if you get older you just were exposed to more of it. Elephants have a much higher volume to be affected by it, so just from an evolutionary perspective they had to develop a better resistance. The ones who got cancer early couldn't reproduce as well. Does that make sense? Or does the article say exactly that?
- dlwdlw 7y agoDo humans happen to get more cancer than other animals? There’s this weird idea, I forget the source, that a less efficient cell garbage collection mutation allowed increased brain development, connections, etc... but at the cost of increased cancer, depression, ego, etc...
- herf 7y agoPulled from the comments (which are remarkably smart): "Upregulated p53 activity in humans is implicated in Huntington's disease. Which makes sense, since the symptoms involve early death of brain cells. So this isn't a panacea in itself. But as we learn more of the gene regulatory networks involved, we may be able to develop something much more fine-tuned that has the benefits without the costs." - Suzanne Sadedin
- mkonecny 7y ago> The work has already given him a new tool when he talks with his patients. > “When I have a patient in front of me diagnosed with the syndrome, they will almost certainly get cancer,” he said. “But in that moment I’m able to tell them elephants don’t get cancer and we are working with the zoo and the circus to learn from elephants so one day you never have to get cancer.” This seems a bit unethical to raise hope for a cure that statistically has a very low chance of passing clinical trials
- RickJWagner 7y agoBecause they can't open cigarette packages?
- nonbel 7y agoThis is a MUCH better explanation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25459141 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25459141 Killing off the misbehaving cells is an obvious solution but this must also shorten the organisms lifespan via organ failure. You only get so many divisions from the zygote before a cell line must be killed off, put into senescence, or it starts malfunctioning due to accumulated mutations (~60). A good solution produces as many differentiated functional cells as possible while minimizing divisions from the zygote. Really, this article shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how our bodies work.
- eloff 7y agoSo just waving away the insane technology leaps required, if we had a digital copy of our DNA we could theoretically create pristine new stem cells and inject them into our bodies as needed to replace aging cells. You might make such a master copy at birth, or more likely in such a world, you're conceived from the master copy which your parents carefully edited before deciding to have you. Fundamentally we could live a really long time in the far future, which is maybe closer to us today than we are to 0 A.D.
- nonbel 7y agoThe "master copy" would be at conception. Even after a few divisions it is unlikely any of the cells carry the exact same DNA. And just because you made it from zygote to birth does not mean your master copy was "pristine". But yeah, if you could somehow replace your tissue stem cells in situ with ones that are closer to the original state it would generally allow your body to continue functioning for much longer. I mean some of those mutations could be beneficial to your particular environment too, but in general... Yeah.
- neetdeth 7y agoYou don’t have any single non-degraded copy but you do have billions of degraded copies. Assuming errors are non-correlated, one ought to be able to reconstruct the original sequence given enough of them. The idea would be to use some far-future technology to enable a kind of DNA repair that cells themselves can’t do, using non-local information from other cells in the organism.