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

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Author(s)
Storfer, Andrew
Hohenlohe, Paul A
Margres, Mark J
Patton, Austin
Fraik, Alexandra K
Lawrance, Matthew
Ricci, Lauren E
Stahlke, Amanda R
McCallum, Hamish I
Jones, Menna E
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
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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) ...
View more >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.
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View more >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.
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Journal Title
PLOS PATHOGENS
Volume
14
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© 2018 McCallum, et. al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Subject
Microbiology
Immunology
Medical microbiology