Tasmanian Devil

Tasmanian devils are endangered mainly due to the fatal tumors which develop among the Tasmanian devils. These tumors which grow on the Tasmanian devils are called “devil facial tumor disease” or DFTD. The disease is a transmissible cancer that is spread by physical contact, and quickly kills the animals (Tasmanian devil).  According to the researchers, DFTD has caused the Tasmanian devil population to fall by 60% in the past decade. Dr Murchinson, researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (US), said the teams findings had a number of outcomes: “Tasmanian devils are susceptible to a number of different types of cancer. Just like humans, they can get breast cancer, leukaemia, etc – especially in their old age.” Dr Murchison hopes that by identifying the catalogue of genes associated with DFTD would lead to the development of vaccines, or possibly therapies.

“As yet, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to help the (Tasmanian) devils that have the disease,” she said. “This (Tasmanian) devil facial cancer is very unusual as it is an infection cancer; it is a little bit like an organ transplant,” she said. “In an organ transplant, you have an organ that is transplanted into an unrelated individual. In the case of the (Tasmanian) devil cancer, you have a cancer that is transplanted into another unrelated (Tasmanian) devil through biting. One of the big questions about this cancer is why it is not being rejected or being recognised as a foreign graft. If we could understand that… we could perhaps use this data to develop a vaccine that could help the (Tasmanian) devils’ immune system reject the cancer before it takes hold.”