“From an evolutionary biology perspective, it’s totally fascinating,” Joshua Schiffman, a pediatric oncologist at the University of Utah, said a few years ago. But he wasn’t referring to children of any kind, he was talking about elephants. Of the incredible ability of elephants to not get cancer, in fact.
against the odds And if you think about it, to the extent that cancer has a lot to do with genetic errors derived from cell renewal, animals with more cells should present more cases of cancer (if only for pure statistics). But this, which is true in most cases, is not true for elephants.
What we can learn from elephants. While cancer mortality in humans can reach 25%, in elephants it does not reach 5%. And so, for years, scientists have scrutinized the habits, physiology and genomes of these giants to try to find the key that will allow us to improve our way of combating one of the most important public health problems of the next century. . With some success, to tell the truth.
However, it has not been until now that we have found a satisfactory genetic explanation for the resistance of elephants to cancer and, in fact, they have found it here in Spain, at the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (IBB -UAB). It seems that the key lies in the molecular interactions of the p53 protein.
20 times. As I said, the replication of cells that occurs in the body (and that allows it to remain functional decade after decade) has the negative side that genetic errors accumulate and, ultimately, the risk of cancer increases. What is it that defends the elephant from these mistakes? According to the IBB-AUB team, the key would be in the 20 copies of the p53 gene that, unlike the only copy that humans have, pachyderms have.
Not for nothing is the p53 gene called the ‘guardian of the genome’. The p53 protein is activated when DNA is damaged and stops the replication of genetic material to repair “corrupt” copies. In the healthy copies, the MDM2 protein turns off the p53 protein. As we can see, the interaction of both proteins is essential for everything to work.
But not 20 exactly the same copies, of course.. It is true that elephants have 20 copies of this gene, but each one is structurally different and this exponentially expands the regenerative capacity of the animal. The news is that using biochemical analysis and computer simulations, researchers have discovered key differences between elephants and humans.
A very interesting path. There is still a lot of work. But “better understanding of how these molecules are activated and when this can lead to greater sensitivity and response against carcinogenic conditions” is excellent news for the development of targeted drug therapies in humans. Cross our fingers.
Image | Geran de Klerk
