Project Reference: TRG27-VET-EM2

Project title: Mechanisms of transmission of a contagious cancer in Tasmanian devils

Project outline

Transmissible cancers are unusual diseases of animals which occur when cancer cells themselves become infectious agents and spread through populations. Transmissible cancers arise, like all cancers, by malignant transformation of cells of the body. Unlike “ordinary” cancers, however, which remain confined to that one body, transmissible cancers continue to survive by spreading their cells to new hosts. This requires transmissible cancers to avoid destruction by the new host’s immune system despite their status as foreign “allogeneic” grafts. Once established, transmissible cancers can persist for millennia, spread vast distances, and even threaten species. However, very little is understood about how these unusual infectious diseases spread through populations.

Perhaps the best known transmissible cancer in nature is the Tasmanian devil facial tumour (DFT1). This cancer poses a severe conservation threat to the Tasmanian devil, a marsupial carnivore native to Tasmania, Australia. It spreads between devils by the transfer of living cancer cells during biting and manifests as facial tumours. This cancer first arose in the mid-1980s, and has since spread throughout the entire Tasmanian devil population, triggering massive population declines. There is an urgent need to understand the dynamics of DFT1 spread through populations, and to trace the impact of the disease in real time.

In this project, which is based at the Transmissible Cancer Group (www.tcg.vet.cam.ac.uk), you will make use of a large panel of longitudinally sampled DFT1 genomes to understand the immunogenetics and spread of DFT1 disease through populations. We will infer the contacts that spread disease, and, from this, understand which interactions and which devils contribute most to disease persistence. You may also participate in Tasmanian devil field work.

Principal Supervisor

Professor Elizabeth Murchison

Email address: epm27@cam.ac.uk

Department / Partner Institute: Veterinary Medicine

Website: https://www.tcg.vet.cam.ac.uk/

BBSRC strategic theme

Understanding the rules of life