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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  This is The World.  An unusual and tragic medical report from Japan could shed light on the biology of cancer.  A 28-year-old Japanese woman apparently transmitted leukemia to her child when the baby was in her womb.  Scientists say it’s the first conclusive evidence of cancer being passed from pregnant mother to fetus.  The genetic analysis that confirmed this phenomenon was conducted by researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research in Great Britain.  Doctor Anthony Ford was part of that team.  This news is sure to scare a lot of women, Dr. Ford.  I have to ask you first, does this mean it’s unwise for women who have cancer to get pregnant?

DR. ANTHONY FORD:  Absolutely not.  I think in this case, it’s quite unusual and very rare.  Similar cases have been reported only about 20 to 30 times in the last 200 years.  What’s unique about this case is that we now understand how the clones that would normally be prevented from passing to the baby via the placental barrier, how these clones have actually got across by changing their compatibility so that they look like the baby’s own cells and then do not get destroyed by the baby’s immune system.

WERMAN:  But normally, a baby’s immune system would protect it from leukemia or cancer?

FORD:  That’s right.  Perhaps one or two cells may get across, but they would normally be seen as foreign by the baby’s own immune system.  But this malignant clone has managed to escape that surveillance.

WERMAN:  Well, tell us about this specific case.  How did this Japanese woman and her baby come to your attention?

FORD:  It started with a visit to the hospital in Tokyo by the father and his daughter, and she was admitted because of a massive tumor on her cheek.  The father told them that his wife and the child’s mother had died about six or so weeks after giving birth from leukemia.  And then after a biopsy of the tumor, the clinicians in Japan realized that it was actually a leukemia lymphoma that was in the cheek, and not a solid tumor that they were expecting.  And so then they had the idea, in collaboration with us, to backtrack and try and identify where those leukemic cells had come from, using a technique that we had used before.  And we were able to show that the cells that caused the leukemia and the cells that caused the tumor in child were actually identical.

WERMAN:  What happened to the girl with the tumor in her cheek?

FORD:  She’s been treated and she’s now, I think, nearly two years old, and hopefully is going to be fine for the future, which is a nice result.

WERMAN:  Why do you think this doesn’t happen more often?  I mean, a fetus does share a blood supply with its mother, right?

FORD:  Well, I think that the placenta obviously forms an effective barrier to the mother’s cells anyway, otherwise the mother’s own immune system would reject the foreign baby.  So obviously the baby’s own immune system, although it’s immature, can be expected to recognize and destroy any invasive cancer cells.  This is a case that shows us that this system normally works very well, unless there’s a specific change in the cells themselves.

WERMAN:  I mean, given it’s so rare, I’m wondering if by studying how, you know, babies, infants in the womb are usually protected, how their immune systems usually protect them, are there things you could deduce or investigate further that might lead us to understand better other forms of cancer?

FORD:   Yes, I think obviously if we can try to determine how the immune system actually does prevent these cells from growing and expanding in the child, then it may give us some clues to how we can prevent cancers in the future.  But I think that’s a long time off yet.

WERMAN:  Dr. Anthony Ford, a scientist with the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK.  He co-authored a study about a case of mother to child transmission of cancer.  The study appears in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Dr. Ford, thanks very much for your time.

FORD:  Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH, Boston. An international team of scientists has made a discovery that may change our understanding of the history and future of the AIDS pandemic. Scientists have long believed that the AIDS virus, HIV, evolved from a related virus that infects monkeys and chimpanzees. It’s called SIV for Simian Immunodeficiency Virus. Researchers had thought that SIV was relatively harmless, but it now turns out that infected chimpanzees in Africa are coming down with what is, in essence, AIDS. The research was done at Gombe National Park in Tanzania. That’s where Jane Goodall conducted her pioneering work with chimps. Dr. Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama at Birmingham headed the current study. Her team followed the chimps for 10 years to see how those infected with SIV fared.

BEATRICE HAHN: When we compared the two groups infected and the uninfected chimps in Gombe, we realized the mortality in the infected group was significantly increased.

LISA MULLINS: Why is that so surprising though, because we know that mortality among humans with HIV, who eventually develop AIDS, that the mortality will be increased, they’ll die from the disease very often. Why is it so surprising that Simian’s who have SIV will eventually become sick?

BEATRICE HAHN: It’s surprising because we assumed the opposite. We assumed that chimpanzees worked just like these other primate species, for which we had data that they don’t get sick. We found that infected chimps were 10 to 16 times more likely to die in any given year than uninfected ones.

LISA MULLINS: So how does this new finding then, promote any kind of change in our understanding, and perhaps even treatment of HIV in humans.

BEATRICE HAHN: It provides an opportunity. It lets you look at HIV one infection in humans from a different angle. Obviously, chimps have it too, but they don’t have it quite as bad as humans, there must be a difference. Chimpanzees must have evolved a different way to deal with their infection. Although at the end, some of them also dies prematurely or of AIDS. And, to just compare and contrast that will give us new insight in how HIV works in people.

LISA MULLINS: I suppose when you unveil information like this, especially when it contradicts earlier research that you personally had done, it must be, in many ways, heartening, because you have unraveled something that had been so difficult, that may in fact help humans eventually in terms of the treatment or the infection rate anyway, of HIV and AIDS. On the other hand, is it for you good news or bad news that chimps themselves are not resistant to AIDS, and that they do die from it just as humans do?

BEATRICE HAHN: It’s good news and bad news. [LAUGHS] It’s potentially bad news for chimpanzees because it’s still another factor that does them in. The good news is, it gives us new avenues to combat HIV one. There’s a great interest right now to look at genetic determinance in people that modulate how the disease comes about or doesn’t come about. There are people who progress very rapidly, and there are people who don’t progress at all. And people want to know what are the genetic determinance in the host that are responsible for that. And finally, perhaps chimps mount different types of immune responses. Perhaps more efficient neutralizing antibody responses that we could then utilize to make better vaccines for humans.

LISA MULLINS: I imagine it also would help out withy a job of conserving chimps. There are so many chimp populations that are now endangered.

BEATRICE HAHN: I would hope so. I know these chimps like the back of my hand. You get to know them, you get to know their life histories, you know what they do. I need to know this information in order to factor it into my virus research. And it’s extremely interesting, and somewhat gratifying, and you get attached to them. And every time we identify a new individual that has become infected, it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. You [INDISCERNIBLE], oh my god, why this chimp? And then you say, okay, now we have to study it and factor in all the particular things we know about this particular individual.

LISA MULLINS: By the way, did that happen with one chimp recently, that you said, why this one?

BEATRICE HAHN: Yes.

LISA MULLINS: Which one?

BEATRICE HAHN: It did. I will not disclose the identity of my chimps.

LISA MULLINS: You won’t disclose the identity of your chimps?

BEATRICE HAHN: No.

LISA MULLINS: How come?

BEATRICE HAHN: It’s a sensitive subject, just like in people.

LISA MULLINS: [LAUGHS] Really?

BEATRICE HAHN: Well, it’s our choice. We obviously know these chimps, and Jane, you know, has given them names to make them more personal to humans. There’s an important and interesting psychology going on here. I fully subscribe to that, but on the same hand, when you disclose an infected individual, you open that individual up to potential harm, and we don’t wanna do this.

LISA MULLINS: It’s really interesting research, we appreciate you talking to us. Beatrice Hahn’s study of an AIDS like illness in African chimpanzees appears in this week’s issue of The Journal Nature. Dr. Hahn joined us from the studios of WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama. Thank you.

BEATRICE HAHN: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.