Tuesday, October 17, 2017
The Other Viral Pathogen: Cancer
We may have learned about the contagious cancers of Tasmanian devils and the parvovirus plaguing sea stars, but a bridge between the two may have been found in clams. About a year ago, researchers found free-floating infectious cancer cells that could be linked to clams. The discovery came as a surprise and instantly led to speculation of what could give rise to such a pathogen.
One hypothesis (which is the only relevant one to this class) posits that ~viruses~ may be the cause of these infectious cancers, but how they do it is still under investigation. Viruses that cause tumors do so by altering regulation if gene expression in host cells. Doing so ensures that viral genes are expressed, but it comes at a price to its host whose cells may begin to divide uncontrollably without regulation. This much has been characterized, but the jump from malignancy in the body to transmissible cancer has yet to be explained.
The next consideration people made after this discovery was whether or not such a pathogen could arise in the human population. The article cited a study in which hamsters with cancer were able to transmit their cancer cells to healthy hamsters via mosquitos. With that in mind, the focus is more on using infectious cancer as a model to shed light on metastasis, but it may also develop ways of understanding pathogenic cancer such that it can be prevented in humans.
-Andrew
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/science/contagious-cancer-clams.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FViruses
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17487374
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