Elephant genes may provide link to defeating cancer

Researchers hope their findings could one day lead to new cancer- fighting therapies in people.

The elephant’s low cancer rate is particularly interesting because, all things being equal, elephants should get more cancer than we do. The intensive activity of the gene kills a large number of cancer cells in elephants that allows them to overcome the disease. Researchers found after showing them to radiation that in those who had the Li-Fraumeni syndrome, just 2.7 percent of the cells died, while in those who did not have the syndrome, 7.2 percent of the cells were killed. Without the genes, the animals would rarely live to their typical old age of 50 to 70 years.

Scientists found elephants have at least 40 extra genes that stop tumors long before they form.

Humans, in comparison, have only two genes of that type.

Dr. Joshua Schiffman, pediatric oncologist at Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah School of Medicine, and Primary Children’s Hospital, and co-senior author of the study said, “Nature has already figured out how to prevent cancer”.

“Elephants may have a more robust mechanism for killing damaged cells that are at risk for becoming cancerous”. Center for Elephant Conservation worked on the study. The study was published October. 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Elephants can be a subject for cancer research.

“It’s up to us to learn how different animals tackle the problem so we can adapt those strategies to prevent cancer in people”, he finally said.

“By all logical reasoning, elephants should be developing a tremendous amount of cancer, and should be extinct by now due to such a high risk for cancer”, Schiffman added.

The p53 gene makes elephants much more unwilling to melanoma compared to any other creatures, and so if more clinical trials would confirmed…