Thread: Transmissible Cancers

What is the mechanism of transmission if not via virus?

From the first link it looks like parasites, and sexual transmission. I guess as long as those cells survive in the environment that it's in (inside the misquote sperm or whatever) it can spread in the new host just like a virus. We've all heard about how how metastastasize, but this is a whole nother level.

Oh ok. I thought it was going to be some crazy new infectious protein etc. thing like prions.

edit: actually nevermind. I just read this "The tumor cells are themselves the infectious agents, and the tumors that form are not genetically related to the host dog.[1] Although the genome of CTVT is derived from a canid (probably a dog, wolf or coyote), it is now essentially living as a unicellular, asexually reproducing (but sexually transmitted) pathogen."

It says that it is a parasitic cancer, not that it is transmitted via parasites. But yeah. This is bizarre.

I was referring to transmissible cancers in general Nina.

To me, the interesting thing about this is that a malfunctioning piece of an organism essentially falls off and takes up residence in a new organism. It's like unicellular organism evolved from a dog.

Originally Posted by Aquanina

What is the mechanism of transmission if not via virus?

Teleporting DNA

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

To me, the interesting thing about this is that a malfunctioning piece of an organism essentially falls off and takes up residence in a new organism. It's like unicellular organism evolved from a dog.

The modern view of cancer is not that it's a malfunctioning piece of organism. Development of a cancer is an evolutionary process, sort of "evolution of defection". It's a natural outcome of conflict of interests that exists between the organism and individual cells. In a way, it is considered a lifeform on its own.

You can take cancerous tissue of one person and transplant it to any immunodeficient person, and it would infect the host. You can also do this across species, transplanting human tumors to nude (immunodeficient) mice is a typical cancer research methodology.

And here's the example that gives me the creeps:
HeLa cells.. It's an immortal cancer cell line taken out of Henrietta Lacks in 1951. and it's been used in thousands of labs around the world. They got so well adapted to laboratory conditions that many labs have problems, as they contaminate other cell cultures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa#Contamination)
Today, it's considered to be a separate species - Helacyton gartleri