Mutant wolves roaming the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), currently colonized by several animal species, have evolved cancer-resistant genomes. This finding, the result of research from Shane Campbell-Staton’s laboratory at Princeton University (USA), could open the door to new ways to treat the disease in humans.
Not in vain, it is known that the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) gets sick and fights cancer much more like humans than the laboratory mouse, the species most commonly used to experiment with treatments. This makes scientists suspect that knowing how its first cousin, the gray wolf (Canis lupus), deals with cancer could be of great help in understanding how we could effectively fight cancer that affects people.
It has been 38 years since a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded, releasing cancer-causing radiation and irradiated waste into the environment. The largest nuclear accident to date in the world. Many operators and workers died those days, but several studies put the number of deaths caused by this irradiation in the following days, months and years at thousands.
According to this work, these animals not only survive in this area affected by the largest nuclear accident to date, but they have managed to develop protective mutations that increase their chances of surviving cancer.
There are no human beings left at ground zero. However, wildlife and animals remain. Biological species such as fungi have re-emerged, and animals such as horses and wolves have recolonized part of this 30-kilometre plot around the former nuclear power plant.
To understand the effects of contamination, in 2014, Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist at this university, entered the Chernobyl exclusion zone and placed collars equipped with GPS and radiation dosimeters on wild wolves.
Thanks to this, they obtained “real-time measurements of where they are and how much radiation they are exposed to,” explains the researcher in a statement published by the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Scientists found that animals are exposed to more than 11.28 millirem of radiation every day for their entire lives, more than six times the legal safe limit for an average human worker.
Consequently, Chernobyl wolves have altered immune systems at rates similar to cancer patients receiving radiation treatment. And here comes the most promising finding of the research: specific regions of the wolf genome have been identified that seem resistant to an increased risk of cancer, which could help research into this disease in humans.
Most research in humans has found mutations that increase the risk of cancer (as BRCA does with breast cancer), but Love’s work hopes to identify protective mutations that increase the chances of surviving cancer, they note in their note. .
However, monitoring of these animals has been interrupted due to the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Since the war broke out in this area, Love and his collaborators have not been able to return to Chernobyl.