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Closer to solving the Tasmanian Devil cancer mystery

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As we’ve reported on before, Tasmanian devils could be wiped out by a rare – and mysterious – form of cancer. Scientists have now made progress in solving that mystery, and host Jeb Sharp speaks with one of them.

• Listen to the previous story
• Breakthrough in Tasmanian devil facial cancer fight

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JEB SHARP:  Now an update on a story we brought you earlier this year.  It’s about Tasmanian Devils.  Yes, they are real animals, not just cartoon characters. They are only found on the Australian island of Tasmania and Tasmanian Devils could be facing extinction because of a mysterious form of cancer.  The news today is that an international team of scientists has made some important progress in understanding the disease.  Greg Hannon is on the team.  He’s with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York.  Dr. Hannon, remind us what’s made this particular form of cancer, this Devil Facial Tumor, so baffling.  I gather it’s a rare and infectious form of cancer that spreads from one animal to another.

GREG HANNON:  Right.  It’s virtually unique amongst tumors.  As I’m sure everybody’s aware, tumors arise from a series of mutations that occur in our own cells.  These mutations convert a normal cell into a cell that’s capable of forming a tumor.  And what seems to have happened in Devils is that probably a very similar process took place some time in the fairly recent past that created a tumor cell within an individual animal but that tumor cell somehow acquired an ability not only to metastasize within the body of that individual animal, but also to move from animal to animal, in essence metastasizing throughout the population of Devils.

SHARP:  So help us understand exactly what you’ve discovered in this particular chapter of the research.

HANNON:  What we’ve done is to apply some very new tools of molecular biology, something called Next Generation Sequencing that lets you determine vast amounts of DNA sequence.  And we use this to look into the genetics of this tumor, particularly the type of messenger RNA’s and small RNA’s that it expresses and these kinds of molecules are highly characteristic.  They’re essentially, their profile conform is signature of a particular type of cell within the body and what we’ve managed to do is to essentially decipher that signature for the tumor, compare it to what has been discovered essentially throughout the community of biologists and then using that comparative data we were able to track the origin of this tumor down to a particular kind of cell called a Schwann cell.

SHARP:  And how does tracking it down to that particular kind of cell, the Schwann cell, help you think about controlling the disease and saving Tasmanian Devils from possible extinction?

HANNON:  Well a very immediate impact is that we can now try to devise tests so that we can distinguish this Devil Facial Tumor Disease, essentially allowing us to diagnose this tumor.

SHARP:  Greg Hannon is a cancer researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.  His new research on Devil Facial Tumor Disease is being published tomorrow in the Journal of Science. Thanks very much.

HANNON:  Thank you.

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