With an army of tumor-fighting proteins in their genes, elephants could hold the key to a cure canceraccording to new research.
The tumor-fighting proteins they carry can destroy mutated cells, scientists say.
This could explain why the largest land animals on Earth are more than five times less likely to develop cancer than humans.
Harnessing the elephant’s genes could lead to a ‘one size fits all’ therapy for one of the world’s biggest killers.
“This intricate and intriguing study shows how many more elephants are than impressive size and how important it is that we not only preserve but study these distinctive animals in great detail,” said study co-author Professor Fritz Vollrath. , from the University of Oxford.
“After all, their genetics and physiology are all driven by evolutionary history and contemporary ecology, diet and behavior,”
Despite their five-ton body and longevity, elephants show high cancer resistance with a mortality rate of less than five percent, compared to up to 25 percent for humans.
It’s a phenomenon that has puzzled biologists for decades, as large creatures should be at greater risk of cancer as cells continue to divide throughout an organism’s life — each at the risk of producing a tumor.
But elephants inherit 40 versions of a gene called P53, 20 from each parent. Also called the ‘guardian of the genome’, he hunts and kills cells with defective DNA.
All other mammals have only two of this strong gene – one from each parent.
Biochemical analysis and computer simulations also showed that the 40 versions in elephants are structurally slightly different, providing a much wider range of anticancer activities.
“This is an exciting development for our understanding of how p53 contributes to preventing cancer development,” said another co-author, Professor Robin Fahraeus, of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research.
“In humans, the same p53 protein is responsible for deciding whether cells should stop proliferating or go into apoptosis (suicide), but how p53 makes this decision has been difficult to explain,”
“The existence of different p53 forms in elephants with different capacities to interact provides an exciting new approach to shed new light on tumor suppressor activity.”
The findings published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution shed new light on how p53 proteins are activated.
These proteins open the door to developing drugs that can increase sensitivity and response to cancer-causing environments.
The study’s lead author, Dr. Konstantinos Karakostis, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona said: ‘Conceptually, the accumulation of structurally modified p53 pools, which collectively or synergistically regulate responses to different stresses in the cell, represents an alternative mechanistic model of cell regulation of great potential significance for biomedical applications. .’
Elephants, prized for their ivory tusks, are critically endangered after being pushed to the brink of extinction by poachers.
Their numbers have declined significantly over the past century, with only about 400,000 remaining in Africa and an estimated 30,000 in Asia.
They were common on both continents a century ago. Elephants also face additional threats from habitat loss and global warming.
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