Hint at cure for Tasmanian devils' cancer plague

Fierce as they are, Tasmanian devils cannot beat a contagious cancer that threatens to wipe them out.

The furry black animals spread a fast-killing cancer when they bite each other's faces. Since the disease's discovery in 1996, their numbers have plummeted by 70 per cent. There is no treatment and little hope of finding one until scientists better understand what is fuelling this bizarre "devil facial tumour disease".

An international research team looked at the cancer's genes and discovered that it apparently first arose in cells that protect the animals' nerves which has led to development of a test to help diagnose this tumour.

Next, scientists are hunting the mutations that turned these cells rogue, work they hope could one day lead to a vaccine to protect the remaining Tasmanian devils because they're dying very quickly. They die within 3 months due to malnutrition and organ failure.

The devils, known for powerful jaws, fierce screeches and voracious consumption of prey are the world's largest marsupial carnivores. They do not exist in the wild outside Tasmania.
What triggered this cancer, which causes tumours that grow so large on the face and neck that the animals eventually can't eat?

Tasmanian devils, for unknown reasons, are prone to various types of cancer. This tumour's genetic signature suggests that probably no more than 20 years ago, mutations built up in some animals' Schwann cells - cells that produce the insulation, called myelin, crucial for nerves - until the first devil fell ill with this new type.

Those mutations went far beyond a typical cancer. When one sick animal bites another, it transplants living cancer cells that form a copy of the first animal's tumour.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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