The study is published alongside an independent study of a transmissible cancer in cockles in Europe conducted by Jose Tubio, Ph.D., Adrian Baez-Ortega, Ph.D., and others at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Together, these two studies enable scientists to learn what is different about individual transmissible cancers and what mechanisms they have in common, providing new information critical to understanding how cancer evolves.
Dr. Michael Metzger commented on the significance of these findings, stating, “This work offers us a window into the evolution of these amazingly long-lived cancers and changes our understanding of how cancer cells can survive to continue to infect their hosts despite massive genomic rearrangement and mutation.”
The genomic analysis of cancer in clams advances current knowledge of cancer biology and underscores the importance of studying contagious cancers in their natural settings.
Dr. Metzger added, “By understanding how these cancers evolve, and how the clams themselves evolve in response to these infectious cancers, we hope to gain insights that could help us develop novel strategies for blocking cancer in humans and other species. It’s a natural experiment that provides a unique opportunity to give us insight into cancer that we could not get anywhere else.”
About PNRI:
Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) is a nonprofit biomedical research institute, where scientists are using innovative approaches in genetics and genomics to tackle some of the most difficult problems in science and medicine. The institute was founded 67 years ago in Seattle, Washington, as a place where scientists were free to pursue discoveries that promised the highest chance of improving human health. The goal was at the beginning, and remains today, to conduct foundational science leading to impactful medical innovations. To learn more, visit https://pnri.org.
Media Contact
Louise Maxwell, Pacific Northwest Research Institute, 206-568-1479, [email protected], https://pnri.org
SOURCE Pacific Northwest Research Institute
