New research involving European researchers has shown that elephants may hold the key to treating human cancers, according to the newspaper.The Independent” British.
A previous study published about four years ago showed that elephants do not get cancer like other animals, because they carry a special gene that destroys all cells with damaged DNA, which later turn into cancerous cells.
The study, which was published in the journal “Cell Reports”, explained that with the development of evolution, this gene became a latent gene that was active only in elephants, and they called it the zombie gene because it returns to activity again as if it lives again.
According to the new study, harnessing the genes present in elephants could lead to finding a cure for various types of cancer.
Study co-author Fritz Vollrath, from the University of Oxford, said: ‘The new study is complex and intriguing about the ability of elephants to fight cancer, so every detail must be carefully studied.
“A lot can be learned about elephants’ resistance to cancer through genetics and physiology as well as the environment, diet and daily behavior of these animals,” he added.
Despite their five-ton bodies and long life, elephants are highly resistant to cancer with a mortality rate of less than five percent, compared to up to 25 percent for humans.
This phenomenon has puzzled biologists for decades, as these creatures, due to their large size, must be at greater risk of developing cancer than humans.
It is known that cells continue to divide throughout the life cycle of organisms, and therefore this carries the risk of producing tumors, both benign and malignant, but elephants inherit 40 copies of a gene called p53, 20 from each parent.
These genes are called “genome guards” because they hunt down and kill cells with defective DNA.
“This is an exciting development for our understanding of how p53 prevents the development of cancer,” said co-author Professor Robin Vahraeus, of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris.
“In humans, the same p53 protein is responsible for determining whether cells should stop proliferating or go into apoptosis (suicide), but how p53 makes this decision is difficult to explain,” he added.
“The presence of several isoforms of p53 in elephants with different interaction capacities provides an exciting new approach to shedding new light on tumor suppressor activity,” he added.
The results of the study, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, shed new light on how p53 proteins are activated, opening the door to the development of drugs that increase the sensitivity of these genes and enhance their response against cancer-causing environments.
“The accumulation of structurally modified p53 pools, collectively or synergistically, regulates responses to diverse stresses in the cell,” noted study co-author from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Constantinos Karacostis.
The herds of elephants, which are so prized for their ivory tusks, are in danger of extinction due to poaching and illegal hunting, as there are currently only about 400,000 elephants in Africa, and about 30,000 in Asia.