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Scientists Ponder the Prospect of Contagious Cancer (cnbc.com)

Posted by yaelk on from the lets-hope-this-doesnt-come-true dept.

Cancer causes many deaths each year, and anyone that's lost someone to cancer knows how painful and grueling it can be. The one saving grace is that it ultimately only kills the host. But is this changing? According to several recent papers, scientists have suggested that cancer could become contagious. Cancer cells could have the ability to metastasize, not just from organ to organ, but from person to person. While this is not an imminent threat, it has already happened in unusual circumstances.

4 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Tasmanian Devil Facial Cancer is transmittable by Harlequin80 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a nasty cancer which is decimating the population of Tasmanian Devils. It forms lumps and lesions in and around the mouth meaning the animal eventually starves to death. This cancer is spread through contact.

    That said it is believed that a lack of genetic diversity is a major reason in why the healty devils body doesn't recognise the invading cancer cell as coming from another animal.

    http://www.tassiedevil.com.au/...

    1. Re:Tasmanian Devil Facial Cancer is transmittable by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is another transmissible cancer, in dogs that is an STD. Luckily for the dogs, it is substantially less aggressive than the Tasmanian Devil cancer, and while it spreads reasonably readily(estimates of the length of the cell line vary; but it is definitely the oldest living dog in the world, for certain values of 'dog') the host's immune system typically controls it well enough that it causes only minor symptoms or is asymptomatic.

      There have been a few once-off transmissions of cancer in humans; but no (known) ones under 'natural' conditions. An improperly screened donor organ, followed by immunosuppressants? Sure. Surgeon accidentally cutting himself and tumor cells from the patient getting into the wound? I believe that that has been documented; but no known in-the-wild transmission of actual cancer cells.

    2. Re:Tasmanian Devil Facial Cancer is transmittable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Decimate == reduce by 10%

  2. Dogs by xlsior · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's also a canine cancer that transmits through sexual contact:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    "canine transmissible venereal sarcoma (CTVS), sticker tumors and infectious sarcoma is a histiocytic tumor of the external genitalia of the dog and other canines, and is transmitted from animal to animal during mating."
    ...
    "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 a 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.[2] Sequence analysis of the genome suggests it diverged from canids over 6,000 years ago; possibly much earlier"
    ...
    "believed to be the longest continually propagated cell lineage in the world"