Naked Mole Rat Gives Cancer a Dressing-Down

The naked mole rat probably doesn’t fit any reasonable person’s definition of cute and cuddly. But to those who are battling cancer, have lost a loved one to the disease, or continue to work tirelessly in the search for a cure, this unsettling looking rodent turns out to be a total thing of beauty.

As reported by PhysOrg.com, an important set of biochemical findings that involves the naked mole rat has recently been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This strange and unseemly rodent, it seems, has an evolutionary trick up its hairless sleeve that has left it essentially immune to affliction by tumors and cancerous growths.

Quite understandably, modern medical science is keen to figure out why this is the case, and to what extent this might be transferred to the human care.

The homely, hairless rodents that live in clusters featuring queens and workers more reminiscent of beehives owe their status as the only known cancer-free animal to a gene called p16. This unique gene possesses the ability to shut down cell replication when the cells become crowded by other cells. In light of cancer being best characterized as runaway cell replication, there is something about p16 that is programmed to prevent the rapid cell growth that forms tumors or other cancerous growths.

University of Rochester researchers Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov, having shed light on p16 and its apparent programming that prevents tumor formation, are now preparing to continue their investigation in the unusual and promising gene with an eye toward transferring the protective benefits to people.

Photo courtesy of Roman Klementschitz, via Wikimedia Commons