Comparative Oncology: New Insights into an Ancient Disease

Abstract

Summary Cancer has deep evolutionary roots and is an important source of selective pressure in organismal evolution. Yet, we find a great deal of variation in cancer vulnerabilities across the tree of life. Comparative oncology offers insights into why some species vary in their susceptibility to cancer and the mechanisms responsible for the diversity of cancer defenses. Here we provide an overview for why cancer persists across the tree of life. We then summarize current data on cancer in mammals, reptiles, and birds in comparison with commonly reported human cancers. We report on both novel and shared mechanisms of cancer protection in animals. Cross-discipline collaborations, including zoological and aquarium institutions, wildlife and evolutionary biologists, veterinarians, medical doctors, cancer biologists, and oncologists, will be essential for progress in the field of comparative oncology. Improving medical treatment of humans and animals with cancer is the ultimate promise of comparative oncology.

Positive selection and gene duplications in tumour suppressor genes reveal clues about how cetaceans resist cancer

“…Accordingly, we should expect a higher probability of developing cancer in larger and longer-lived organisms than smaller ones, although this does not occur [6][7][8][9][10] . Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the different evolutionary strategies that have arisen to fight cancer [11] , including specific adaptations to the environment, fitness, DNA damage responses, tissue microenvironments, and cellular senescence [12,13] . Recently, the availability of the genomes of a wide variety of species has prompted the search for genes that could explain the differences arising in cancer incidence between species [14] .…”

A Significant Question in Cancer Risk and Therapy: Are Antibiotics Positive or Negative Effectors? Current Answers and Possible Alternatives

“…There are a number of converging associations between prokaryotic microorganisms, particularly bacteria, and the incidence of cancer in the animal kingdom, including humans [69,70]. Similar to the case of infectious diseases, written records from different cultures [71][72][73][74] and paleo-oncology/pathology data [75][76][77][78] clearly show that cancer is indeed an ancient disease ( Table 2).…”

Independent duplications of the Golgi phosphoprotein 3 oncogene in birds

“…This is mainly due to multiple functions attributed to GOLPH3 (Sechi et al, 2015), including, the sorting of Golgi glycosyltransferases (Ali et al, 2012; Isaji et al, 2014; Pereira et al, 2014), the modulation of focal adhesion dynamics (Arriagada et al, 2019), induction of membrane curvature (Rahajeng et al, 2019), and an intriguing function for a Golgi protein, regulating mitochondrial function (Nakashima-Kamimura et al, 2005). Because cancer has deep evolutionary roots that arise as a consequence of the multicellularity (Boddy et al, 2020), and is widespread across animals (Albuquerque et al, 2018), studying the evolution of the GOLPH3 gene family in non-model species can provide significant information for a comparative oncology approach, which is emerging as an integrative field to tackle cancer (Boddy et al, 2020).…”

“…Today, the GOLPH3 gene family is viewed as a group of genes containing two paralogs (GOLPH3 and GOLPH3L) with 1:1 orthologs among most vertebrate species (Wu et al, 2000; Bell et al, 2001). Among amniotes, it is suggested that birds are less susceptible to cancer in contrast to mammals (Ratcliffe, 1933; Lombard and Witte, 1959; Effron et al, 1977; Pang et al, 2012; Møller et al, 2017; Boddy et al, 2020); although this information should be taken with caution given sampling bias (Hochberg and Noble, 2017). Thus, the study of genes associated with cancer in birds could provide clues about the genetic bases associated with this difference and suggest additional model systems that could help to understand the biology of the GOLPH3 gene family.…”