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Contagious Cancer Found in Dogs
Dan East writes "Scientists in England have gathered definitive evidence that a kind of cancer in dogs, known as Sticker's sarcoma, is contagious. It is spread by tumor cells getting passed from dog to dog through sex or from animals biting or licking each other. Robin Weiss and his colleagues did genetic studies on the tumor cells from 40 dogs with Sticker's sarcoma, collected from five continents, which showed that all the tumor cells are clones of each other. The parent cell probably arose in a domesticated dog of Asian origin — perhaps a husky — hundreds of years ago, and perhaps more than 1,000 years ago. A similarly transmissible cancer has recently been discovered spreading through populations of Tasmanian devils."
Great! Now I have to give my dogs a talking-to about using protection before they go to the doggie park!
I wonder if they will start having puppy prophylactics in a candy dish at pet-smart.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV#Cancer
Make sure to use protection, Slashdotters!
oh wait....
Execute? [Y/N] _
"We had a chance with aids, but we blew it."
You can say that again.
Where were you when the voynix came?
unfortunately this kind of cancer is not new, here in Australia, the Tasmanian devil are diying and will soon disapear. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/02 27_060227_tasmanian.html
So, all tumor cells are clones of each other and not related to the dog. How is this cancer? Isn't it just a regular pathogen then?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I'm not a dog...
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
And it doesn't seem that human to human cancer transmission is impossible, too. This could be the next big thing once we've cured AIDS.
How common is Sticker's sarcoma, though? We have a dog, and although she's not getting to fuck like a rabbit, dogs often lick each other and sometimes bite.
Your dog doesn't want as much steak.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
A 9 year old Border Collie with an aggressive tumor in her front leg. This happened two weeks ago. She spent a lot of time playing with other dogs in the park. I'd hate to think that me wanting my dog to have some fun is what killed her. I'd hate to have to wonder and worry about this with my next dog.
I believe it was John Carpenter's masterpiece, The Thing. Dog eats alien, dog transforms into bloated mass of cells, Thing eats humans.
Perhaps this will turn out to be a partial explanation for the "cancer clusters" you read about every now and then. Varka
Poor things, hopefully it doesn't halt their ability to spin around really really fast.
Task Mangler
... in the sense that these are not the dogs' own cells. This is much more like the dog being a petri dish for a parasitic cell that's being physically passed along, almost like bacteria. The cells just set up shop in the new dog's tissues.
Slightly annoying, in TFA, is the notion that "DNA will try anything to reproduce itself." That might want to read more like "just about everything happens to DNA as it's cloned, and sometimes the mutations work better, and sometimes they fail." There's nothing worse than anthropomorphizing your description of cellular mechanics.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
My understanding was that normal cancers survive in the body because they're part of its own tissue, and are recognized by the immune system as normal body cells. If, as the article says, this sarcoma really is transmitted via the cancer cells themselves (as opposed to an infectious cancer-causing agent like a virus), then shouldn't the infected dog's immune system recognize the cells as coming from another dog and attack them?
Tasmanian Devils are being wiped out by a transmissable cancer called Devil Facial Tumor Disease, its a pretty hideous disease that eventually causes the animals to starve to death as they are unable to eat. It is transmitted when Tasmanian Devils fight each other. It is estimated 100% fatal within 12-18 months, it is estimated that over half of all remaining Tasmanian Devils in the wild have it, and it has decimated their population.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
For that matter, how the hell are these foreign cells growing **whole tumours** in the host without the host's immune system going into complete overdrive?
I mean, it's hard to even transplant a finger in a human without using huge amounts of anti-rejection drugs. How is there a tumor growing inside the dog, with cells that must have a totally different DNA and chromosone pattern? Why is the dog's host system not attacking it?
I mean, part of the whole problem with cancer is that the cells are in fact your own cells, so your body never attacks the infection. But if the cancer is directly contagious than this is not the case at all.
...not to lick your dog's backside.
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
Weird..... these cancer cells have evolved an ability not only to metastasized to different parts of a dog's body but to other dogs too. At this point I really don't think we should call them cancer cells anymore..... they are a new type of free living organism.... like a parasite. I wonder why they are restricted to only infecting other dogs? Does interspecies transmission produce too much of an immune response in a different host?
FTA:
..the cells are not genetically related to the dogs they are in -- proof that they did not arise from the dogs' own cells.
..all the tumor cells, no matter where they were collected, are clones of each other.
A cancer cell is usually an animal's or person's own cell..
If every cell of this cancer is a clone, and not the dog's own cells screwing up, then I'd say this is more like an infection. An alien organism has invaded the dog's body and then replicates. What's the difference (in terms of the vector) between this and a bacterial infection (also single-celled)?
teach your kids the dangers of red rocket
...then I'm leaving the planet. This was all predicted in the original Planet of the Apes movies...
Part of me feels very sorry for all these poor animals. Another Part of me is really itching to make witty comments about Nature's population controls and how humans will be next.
I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
The dog is on fire.
perception is reality
You may not relize this guys. But just like aids, it is mostly spready by homosexuals. (that was not meant to be homophobic. It was a refrence to the very exact thing they said about aids)
From the all mighty MissioN of Mass.
We created the problem with random careless breeding and irresponsible ownership, we have a responsibility to the animals at this point. Also, dogs are cool.
This is just great. This is worse that prions.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Well, if you repaired whatever damage occurred to turn the cells cancerous you could recover the original dog!
Try doing that with bacteria.
(I Am Not A Biologist, so this is quite likely a stupid idea)
I quit!
Makes me wonder if other forms of cancer might turn out to transmissible? Yikes.
Wouldn't it be ironic if some of the tendency of families to be more susceptible to the same form of cancer turns out to be related to the fact that family members often live together or go and visit when a relative has a serious cancer? Eweesh.
If you think AIDS has stigma - wait until some researcher finds a hint that some forms of human cancer may be transmissible through contact or otherwise.
What's up with all these nasty diseases coming from Asia?
I see that you have never owned a cat or dog. It can be a very rewarding experience, caring for something like that.
Having said that, I agree with your views about how some people seem to value the lives of animals over other human beings.
I saw a commercial once that truly sickened me. They were asking for donations to help save captive bears in an empoverished third world country! I couldn't believe that someone could ask for money to save bears, instead of helping the PEOPLE that couldn't afford enough food. The bears were being held captive to be put on display to earn donations from passers-by, and I thought, "How stupid can this donation organization be! Solve the people problem, and you also solve the bear problem!"
Animal rights groups sicken me sometimes.
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
oh like in China, where recently they've mandated extermination of all dogs in a 5km radius of some towns? People's pets being clubbed to death right in front of them. Even if they were vaccinated against rabies (the reason for the 'cull'). Try and 'cull' my dogs, and see what a Ping driver (golf club) to the teeth feels like.
The dogs said that it was a "Ruff" deal...
The Tasmanian Devils just spun around quickly, said something completely incomprehensible and blew a rasberry...
Summation 2
It's a dog infection. Dogs can get infected by dogs.
If you prefer to be less specific, it's an animal infection. The dogs get infected by animal cells.
Attack of the Clones =/
These tumor cells will grow in any dog. It would be interesting to see if they will infect closely related species. Will they grow in wolves, coyotes, jackals, etc.? Are there any breeds of dogs which are immune to these tumor cells? Will they grow in prey bitten by a dog, such as rabbits? One possible use for these tumor cells could be to determine how closely other species are related to dogs.
----------------
Steve Stites
ut the Grand Parent. The GP may be donating heavily to charities to help people, but you blast with only the knowledge you have from their post. Lighten up, you sound like you do think animals are more important than people. Nut case if you do.
A Readable Technical Discussion of Stickers Sarcoma and Canine TVT - 2004 to Congress.
Excerpt on Geographical Distribution from the latter: TVT is seldom or no more detected in North and Central Europe and in North America, mainly due to the population control of stray animals, the preventive pre-breeding examination and the effective treatment of clinical cases. With a few exceptions, TVT remains endemic in the rest of the world, obviously because of the uncontrolled population of stray dogs and the inadequacies of exerting effective treatments.
Wasn't this a David Cronenberg movie??
My neighbor's neutered dog was going at it with my siberian the other day.
Your post would make sense if people donating money to relieve poverty was mutually exclusive for people donating money for animals. Which it isn't. Don't let logic get in the way of your prejudice though.
p.s. Most bears have their gall-bladders milked and sold for quack medicines. They're far more valuable that way.
which is single-celled, asexual and an obligate parasite of dogs.
Tasmanian varmit is more like it.
Organ Rejection: It's a feature not a bug
I remember a report a while ago that mothers carried some leftover fetal cells in their blood even decades after giving birth. Makes me wonder...
That is kind of sad but it's only a dog after all.
You will probably get a bullet in the back of the head if you swing your club at someone acting on behalf of the Chinse government.
What happens when one of those weirdo ladies "accidentally falls asleep" on her couch and wakes up to her [infected] dog licking her? Is it contained to dogs, or do we have the next human version of cancer on our hands?
Far more likely that one of our fellow idiots will figure out some way to use this new discovery to kill us all.
I'm sorry to hear about your dog, but don't beat yourself up about it, or let this deter you from taking future dogs to the park to socialize.
The transmissible cancer described in the article sounds like a very specific, sexually transmitted illness.
Anyway, dog parks aren't doggy sexual playgrounds. Most specifically ban she doggies in heat, and I don't think play-humping would do the trick.
Funny how we can talk of "mind" as opposed to "brain" and nobody raises an eyebrow. The idea of consciousness is not that far removed from the idea that DNA is selecting host animals.
It's a question of degree of complexity. There simply isn't enough processing horsepower in a single cell to provide the framework for what we comfortably refer to as a mind. So, I would actually would "raise an eyebrow" is someone attributed cognition and volition to a strand of DNA, but have no trouble assigning "mind" capabilities to very complex brains. DNA doesn't select host animals, it either succeeds or doesn't in the host into which it's placed. That's a world of difference.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Contagious cancer? As if I didn't have a million reasons to stay a pasty, game-addicted, furtive and nervous agoraphobe. If it can happen to our canine brothers, it can happen to us.
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
If the body didnt detect these cell then it could also be possible to use these kinds of cells to grow new body parts that wouldnt be rejected by the patients body.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Could this be used as a method for keeping people from rejecting transplants? The cancer is different genetic material from the host dog, it probably also used different blood type in its previous host, but it seems that the dogs bodies don't reject it. I don't know anything about cell rejection so I could be completely wrong. Are there any doctors that could explain it?
This story has a lot of implications that aren't necessarily obvious. First, if both dogs and marsupials can have a contageous, directly-transmissable cancer, then so can any species, through ANY mechanism that involves a transfer of cells. I wonder if blood banks are being screened for such cancers. Given the total lack of speed they showed over AIDS or vCJD, I seriously doubt they've got any serious monitoring in place for such pathogens. (Sure, it's a theoretical, but it would seem better to KEEP it a theoretical, rather than wait until it's a major problem.)
Since this was presumably two different spontaneous mutations, transmissable cancer must be capable of arising in almost any organism at almost any time. I doubt there would be many carcinogens in common between Alaska and Australia, despite them having the same first and last letters. Understanding that mechanism would seem very important, as it would seem reasonable to assume that anything that easy to start would be equally easy to stop.
Finally, for the cancer to spread in the way described, we must be talking about cells with a high degree of mobility. This can't be something attached to something, like a tumour, or it couldn't spread identically from organism to organism. It must also be fragile enough that an airborne version has not yet evolved. However, that may be merely a matter of time. I think medical labs should be putting the effort into understanding the mechanisms and the limitations of transmissable cancers, as we really don't want to be in the usual mess of playing catch-up afterwards, but don't need to do more than necessary if research shows that the limitations are barrier enough.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I sure wish I had known that before I shelled out $10,000. Don't get me wrong. My dog was worth every penny. But it sure would have been better to know beforehand that there was absolutely zero chance of him surviving cancer.
The main problem is the lack of animal cancer research. The good doctors who treated my dog (and he had an entire team of surgeons and specialists) tried very hard, but they just don't have enough information. Doggies don't respond to chemo like humans do, and they don't respond to radiation like we do. The doctors have to play extreme guessing games with each patient. It's all trial-and-error.
Before he passed, dear old Blooba donated a sample of his blood for research purposes. He always was a generous soul.
Don't bite your dog, or sleep with it, and you should be fine.
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
When reached for comment, one Tazmanian Devil had this to say, "Blaugaugaguagaghag *SNORT*"
You know the one - where the guy inflates the dog by blowing into his rear end...
Gack!! Now the guy should be tested as well as locked up for blowing (up) a dog.
its the licking im worried about. How many times do you let a dog lick the back of your hand to gain it's trust? or see one licking a kids face?
First the dogs die out, then it spread to cats and I welcome our new Ape Overlords!!!!
So if cells come from only one dog, from more than 1000 years ago, doesn't that make that original dog, at least technically, 1000 years old as some of its cells are still alive? or 7000 years old in dog years?
Im particularly concerned about the possible mutation of the cell to survive and thrive in human organisms...prognosis negative
Is it possible that cancer is a form of evolution? If you think about it, a rogue clump of cells that somehow (1 chance in a gazillion) finds a purpose that extends an animals life and gets passed on as part of the genetic make up. Quite often cancer runs in families, unfortunately pretty much all of the time it is destructive and ends up killing. If one time it is useful then if might help a species survive.
Symbiotic relationships could occur in the same way. For example, Ruminants eat and rely on billions of micro-oraganisms to break the grasses down for them. Without these organisms, they would not live.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant
The transmitable cancer in dogs and marsupials could conceivably turn into a symbiotic relationship instead of a destructive one one day.
Can someone explain what a prion is?
I read wikipedia on it, but all I gathered is that it's a protein which causes other proteins to mutate like a chain reaction, thereby causing sickness, and that is how it becomes infectious.
:(){
yet another reason not to let your dog hump the guests' legs at your next party.
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
I think of all the things I've lost over the years, I miss my faith that there was, somewhere, a limit to human stupidity the most.
--MarkusQ
I hear that dupes spread on Slashdot like cancer
Earth, unfortunately.
--MarkusQ
It's the alien species from John Carpenter's The Thing! Trust no one.
This article reminds me very much of the human cancer cell line HeLa. I first heard about it in a biology class in high school, years ago. It is a cancer cell derived from a single person's cervical cancer around 1950, which is sufficiently fast-growing that (according to the Wiki article) it forms a common "weed" in lab cultures. It has even controversially been named a new species. Thankfully, unlike the dog cells, the HeLa line doesn't seem to be able to infect living humans (yet...)
- Kevin B. McCarty
My dog is currently dying from cancer. I live in Pennsylvania, and although my dog is neutered, he "sniffs" other dogs on walks and such. What are the chances that it is from this?
ME: YA, (cough, cough) boss, I wont be in today, I feel really awful (sniffle, cough). Boss: Well what seems to be ailing you?? Me: I think I caught a case of that you know ,whadaatheycallit dog cancer stuff, Its killing me.
Boss: Maybe you should see a vet. PRONTO!
Me: YA, I'll do that, I still get the day off though,right??
Mod parent up, because this is the first thing I thought of when I read this article. Someone who knows more should address this concern.
That's alright. We americans eat cows, and we'll get clubbed in India for it.
2. I'd choose bark park with a 3/4 life span vs. no fun for a long time and all the other dogs I know agree.
Sshhh! Sshh! What are you doing? On the internet, no one's supposed to know that you're a dog!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Maybe this will put an end to all the "dog on girl" pr0n.
agreed, a dog getting sick is sad, but if this jumps to humans then it's ability to kill could be extreme.
face cancer from kissing someone, hand cancers from trying to get infected gum off your shoe, hell depending on how infectios it is you could get it from a sneeze!
As long as we can keep the freaks of the world from "screwing the pooch" then human kind is safe... right? Right?
...and I could have sworn that most bears live in the wild.
Now we're done for. That will be the one that wipes us all out.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Ok, now how do I explain this to my Irish Setter?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I strongly suspect the devils contracted their disease due to their habit of gang-raping rottweilers.
So they drew lots and 1 out of 10 is beaten to death by the other nine?
Harsh (it was the Roman armys punishment for unit cowardice in battle).
I hate that word. It's got to be the most misused word in America.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Simple. Just feed the excess people to the bears. Both problems solved.
As for the tasmanian devils, it seems to me to be the wrong idea to attempt to eradicate the disease. The devils will most likely evolve an immune system competent enough to ward off the face disease within a few generations. If humans intervene, this will never happen. The process of evolution of the immune system would select for outliers--animals with a varied or unique immune system--which would leave the devils in a better place when the next disease comes around. For any immune system to work well, it must be different from a significant portion of the population. Inbreeding, as in dogs, kills diversity and leaves the species vulnerable. This is somewhat acceptable in dogs, as they are cared for by people. The devils cannot have constant care while living in the wild. Nonetheless, rabid conservationists attempt to solve the problem by quarantineing devils with weaker immune systems than those that would come out of this so called crisis. This behaviour only increases the chance that the devils will have an outbreak in the future and does nothing to bolster the devil's chances for long term survival.
To recap, a disease like this thins out the middle of the population, leaving the more genetically diverse individuals with a chance to reproduce massively and fill in the void left by the wake of the disease. The result is a less genetically similar population. A second point to be considered is that the middle might be better at rapid reproduction than the outliers (because of point muations), so reinstating them could be dangerous as they will again dominate the population. If they are left on their own, quick reproduction and survival would be quickly selected for.
But alas, people love to meddle with other species especially when they are "cute and defenseless". The conservationists will manage to enstill another generation with these ethics, to the long-term detriment of many species that they wish to preserve.
2*31*37*263
Clonal Origin and Evolution of a Transmissible Cancer
Claudio Murgia1, 4, Jonathan K. Pritchard2, Su Yeon Kim3, Ariberto Fassati1 and Robin A. Weiss1, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author
Introduction
CTVT, also known as Sticker's sarcoma, is a histiocytic tumor that is usually transmitted among dogs through coitus but may also spread through licking, biting, and sniffing tumor-affected areas (Cohen, 1985 and Das and Das, 2000). First characterized 130 years ago (Novinski, 1876), CTVT was frequently used by cancer researchers to study tumor transplantation until the development of inbred strains of rats and mice afforded syngeneic models. The notion that the tumor is naturally transmissible as an allograft came from three lines of observation. First, CTVT can only be experimentally induced by transplanting living tumor cells, and not by killed cells or cell filtrates (Cohen, 1985). Second, the tumor karyotype is aneuploid but has characteristic marker chromosomes in tumors collected in different geographic regions (Murray et al., 1969, Oshimura et al., 1973 and Weber et al., 1965). Third, a long interspersed nuclear element (LINE-1) insertion near c-myc (Katzir et al., 1985) has been found in all tumors examined so far (Katzir et al., 1987) and can be used as a diagnostic marker to confirm that a tumor is CTVT (Liao et al., 2003). In two animals that had been experimentally inoculated with CTVT, the resulting tumors contained the LINE-1/c-myc insertion, whereas the normal tissues did not (Katzir et al., 1987 and Liao et al., 2003). However, in natural transmission, inheritance of a LINE-1 insertion near c-myc in the germline might represent a predisposition to develop CTVT after exposure to an oncogenic agent, similar to the Mendelian LINE-1 insertion in the factor IX gene, which causes mild hemophilia B in dogs (Brooks et al., 2003).
The recent emergence of a tumor transmitted by biting in the endangered marsupial species the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) (Owen and Pemberton, 2006) has attracted renewed interest in the concept of cellular transmission, for which CTVT is cited as a precedent (Pearse and Swift, 2006). However, authors of reports describing virus-like particles in CTVT (Ajello and Gimbo, 1965, Battistacci and Morriconi, 1974 and Lombard and Cabanie, 1967) considered that an oncogenic virus might play a role in tumorigenesis. Although most specialists in the field accept the cellular transmission of CTVT, definitive data that this is the case have been lacking, and the concept of a contagious cancer cell has tended to be greeted with skepticism by many oncologists and immunologists.
Molecular genetic markers have not previously been used to resolve the issue of natural transmission, the breed of origin, or the age of the canine tumor. Here, we compare matched tumor and normal tissues in naturally affected dogs in three countries and analyze the genotype and diversity of further tumors collected worldwide. We provide conclusive evidence that a cancer cell has evolved into a transmissible parasite, which represents the oldest known somatic mammalian cell in continuous propagation.
Results
Clonal Origin of Worldwide Specimens of CTVT
Matched tumor tissues and blood samples were collected from 16 unrelated dogs in Italy, India, and Kenya, and we also examined microdissected tumor cells derived from paraffin-embedded specimens obtained from 24 independent natural tumors from Brazil, the United States, Turkey, Spain, and Italy (Table 1). First we sought to confirm whether the LINE-1 element near c-myc previously detected in CTVT (Katzir et al., 1985) is specific to the tumor cell or whether it represents a genetic predisposition to develop CTVT after exposure to a transmissible agent. All of the naturally occurring tumors but none of the matched normal samples from 16 dogs possessed this LINE-1 insertion, as shown for 11 tumors in Figure 1A. The tumor-specific LINE-1 insertion was present in all of the archival CTVT samp
But words change meaning over time. Also, English is not Latin.
Hmm. Not to split hairs with you, but maybe - maybe not. In addition to M-W, American Heritage supports my use, as does Wikipedia, though they offer some comments as to the controversy you're bringing up: Wikipedia on irony usage controversy
IMHO, using a word such as that in a story lowers the standard /. has.
Have you read my journal today?