For clues on how to evade cancer, some scientists look to the bowhead whale : NPR

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Where might we look for inspiration for new cancer therapies? Some researchers may be talking about the bowhead whale. This is science journalist Ari Daniel.

ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: So there is this paradox in the biology of cancer. Large animals that live a long time have a lot of cells, which, in theory, should mean a greater chance of developing cancer.

VERA GORBUNOVA: But that’s not what’s happening.

DANIEL: Vera Gorbunova is a biologist at the University of Rochester.

GORBUNOVA: This suggests that these larger, longer-lived animals have additional protections against cancer that they have evolved.

DANIEL: Let’s take elephants. They have 20 copies of a key tumor suppressor gene. Humans only have one. This gene produces a protein called p53 that helps eliminate cells that become precancerous.

GORBUNOVA: The P53 protein can trigger cell death. The cells would commit suicide.

DANIEL: With more copies of this gene, elephants could eliminate more potentially problematic cells and keep their cancer rates low.

GORBUNOVA: We went to another extreme. We decided: what if we looked at whales even bigger than elephants?

DANIEL: Specifically, the bowhead whale. It is not the largest whale, but it is the longest-lived, with animals capable of exceeding the age of 200 years, something the Alaskan Inuit have known for generations.

GORBUNOVA: They use traditional methods like longboats to harvest a very small number of whales each year. So they very kindly agreed to share very small pieces with us so that we could do our research.

DANIEL: According to Gorbunova, research could one day benefit the Inuit, a community struggling with increasing cancer rates. So, with fresh bowhead tissue in hand, she and her team began their experiments. She reasoned that since bowhead whales are larger than elephants, they may have even more copies of this tumor suppressor gene.

GORBUNOVA: But that’s not what we found. So the next step was to ask: what else can they do to avoid cancer?

DANIEL: Maybe, she thought, bowhead whales are better at repairing DNA, because breaks in DNA can be dangerous and lead to cancer. Sure enough, bowhead whale cells were much better than human cells.

GORBUNOVA: They weren’t losing pieces of DNA. They fused the ends correctly.

DANIEL: An ability due, at least in part, to a different protein, much more abundant in bowhead whale cells and which is produced by a gene activated by cold. When the researchers caused human cells to overproduce the protein, these cells repaired the DNA breaks more efficiently. And when they got live fruit flies to produce a large amount of protein…

GORBUNOVA: They began to live longer and also became more resistant to DNA damage.

DANIEL: Gorbunova says that increasing the level of this protein in humans could one day help slow our accumulation of mutations.

GORBUNOVA: The most important message for us humans to take away is that there is room for improvement.

DANIEL: The results appear in the journal Nature. Amy Boddy is an evolutionary biologist at UC Santa Barbara who was not involved in the research. She studies elephants, among other species, and says that making connections between human health and long-lived animals that might be vulnerable to extinction can convey a powerful conservation message.

AMY BODDY: Maybe we should protect ourselves against poaching, because it’s these amazing, magical creatures that may one day help human health.

DANIEL: And these results may just be the beginning. Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University at Buffalo who was not involved in this study, says animals like the bowhead whale likely evolved other ways to fight cancer.

VINCENT LYNCH: We literally discovered a handful of mechanisms responsible for their resistance to cancer. There will be much more to identify.

DANIEL: It might just be the power of looking beyond typical short-lived laboratory animals like mice and flies, says Vera Gorbunova. Whales and elephants seem to have a lot to teach us from their many years on this planet. For NPR News, I’m Ari Daniel.

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