What Animal Cancers teach us about Human Biology

Abstract

Cancers in animals present a large, underutilized reservoir of biomedical information with critical implication for human oncology and medicine in general. Discussing two distinct areas of tumour biology in non-human hosts, we highlight the importance of these findings for our current understanding of cancer, before proposing a coordinated strategy to harvest biomedical information from non-human resources and translate it into a clinical setting. First, infectious cancers that can be transmitted as allografts between individual hosts, have been identified in four distinct, unrelated groups, dogs, Tasmanian devils, Syrian hamsters and, surprisingly, marine bivalves. These malignancies might hold the key to improving our understanding of the interaction between tumour cell and immune system and, thus, allow us to devise novel treatment strategies that enhance anti-cancer immunosurveillance, as well as suggesting more effective organ and stem cell transplantation strategies. The existence of these malignancies also highlights the need for increased scrutiny when considering the existence of infectious cancers in humans. Second, it has long been understood that no linear relationship exists between the number of cells within an organism and the cancer incidence rate. To resolve what is known as Peto's Paradox, additional anticancer strategies within different species have to be postulated. These naturally occurring idiosyncrasies to avoid carcinogenesis represent novel potential therapeutic strategies.

Cancerogenic parasites in veterinary medicine: a narrative literature review

“…Cancer in non-human hosts has a wide spectrum of biological features and veterinary oncology is familiar with atypical routes of tumor transmission, such as transmissible infectious cancers in dogs, Tasmanian devils, golden hamsters, and marine bivalves [ 25 ]. Thus, research in the veterinary field could play a significant role in investigating this phenomenon.…”

In Vitro and In Vivo Modeling of Normal and Leukemic Bone Marrow Niches: Cellular Senescence Contribution to Leukemia Induction and Progression

“…In spite of the huge advances regarding transgenic manipulation or xenotransplantation of mice, this kind of technology is rarely used in other small rodents or other animal models. Fishes, birds, rabbits, dogs, cats and non-human primates (mainly rhesus macaques Macaca mulatta) have been used, but on a considerably lesser scale than mice and rats (reviewed by [126][127][128]). Currently, there is general awareness that no single model can reflect completely the complexity of human cancer and senescence mechanisms, but most studies still rely on a limited range of models.…”

“…Even though animal models are valuable tools for research, the expenditure is high, drug screening requires a large amount of animals and, biologically, model animals cannot completely mimic human BM microenvironments. These issues emphasize the need for better strategies to improve human systems modeling in vivo; in this context, new results and extensive reviews regarding animal models for leukemic research are periodically published [127,129,[136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144][145][146]. The graph is based on [129], with additional information from [145,[147][148][149].…”

Exploring the link between viruses and cancer in companion animals: a comprehensive and comparative analysis

“…For many years, studies and observations on the animal world have contributed to our medical and scientific knowledge. For instance, porcine dissections were used to write the earliest anatomy textbooks around 900 A.D. [ 1 ], while rodents have been employed as models for cancer research for years [ 2 ]. Over time, animal models have yielded many general concepts in molecular oncology and hypotheses on the role of oncoviruses in tumor development [ 3 ].…”