The devil is in the details: Genomics of transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils

Abstract

Cancer poses one of the greatest human health threats of our time. Fortunately, aside from a few rare cases of cancer transmission in immune-suppressed organ transplant recipients [1] or a small number of transmission events from mother to fetus [2], cancers are not spread from human to human. However, transmissible cancers have been detected in vertebrate and invertebrate animals, sometimes with devastating effects [3]. Four examples of transmissible cancers are now known: 1) canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) in dogs [4], 2) a tumor in a laboratory population of Syrian hamsters that is no longer cultured [3], 3) infectious neoplasias in at least four species of bivalve mollusks [5,6], and 4) two independently derived transmissible cancers (devil facial tumor disease [DFTD]) in Tasmanian devils [7–10] (Fig 1A and 1B). The etiologic agents of CTVT [4], the bivalve cancers [5], and DFTD [7] are the transplants (allografts) of the neoplastic cells themselves, but the etiologic agent is unknown for the hamster tumor.