Naked Mole Rats Curing Cancer?

Remember how Grandma used to tell you not to judge a book by its cover?

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If this isn’t a major kick in the behind to anybody who holds prejudice against anything, then nothing will ever be. Who would have EVER thought that a creature as hideous as the naked mole rat would ever prove to be beneficial to science– much less the possibility of curing cancer.

I mean, honestly, the name isn’t even fun to say.

But sure enough, the naked mole rat has recently earned itself some respect within the scientific community, thanks to the research of Dr. Vera Gorbunova and her associate researchers at the University of Rochester in New York. Dr. Gorbunova’s work has taken cancer research down a completely new path, introducing a completely unstudied organism to the playing field.

Much like all great scientific findings, this one began with the simple observation that “Hey! I’ve never heard of a documented case of cancerous growth in mole rats,” which later graduated to “Hey! I’ve never heard of a case of cancer in squirrels either!” Using this as a diving board, the research group from Rochester eventually discovered that each of these organisms had a two-step cancer safeguard as compared to humanity’s one-step system.

That’s all. One extra gene is what keeps naked mole rats from developing cancer. Does that seem frightfully simple to anybody other than me? Welcome to science.

You see, in human cells, there is a gene called p27 that acts as a nanny, keeping our cells in check when they try to grow more than they’re supposed to. But what happens when the cells figure out a way to sneak past the nanny when she thinks they’re in bed asleep? That’s one way that we develop cancer.

So how do you fix this problem? Hire another nanny!

In the cells of not only naked mole rats, but all small and long-living rodents, there are two nannies at work: p27 and p16. Although one would think that eventually, the cells would be able to work around the second nanny as well, the data simply says no. In the entire history of ANYBODY studying naked mole rats, NOBODY has EVER written down any cancer-like traits under any circumstances. Apparently, there is something going on that is yet to be discovered.

So far, we know that both genes code for proteins that play a role in telling the cell that it’s growing too much, but when put together, the result is significantly more strict. When scientists attempted to grow mole rat cells in a laboratory for study, they found it difficult not only to mutate the cells into tumors (in a petri dish, not on the animal), but just to grow them in the first place!

What they found was that the p16 gene actually forces cells to stop growing upon physical contact with another cell, making tumors a thing of the past. Our p27 gene is supposed to do the same thing, and for the most part it does, but doubling up obviously creates a much worse environment for cancerous cells to develop.

That’s all we know for now, and it may be all we ever know in our lifetime. Science is kinda mean like that. But who knows? Maybe the cure for malaria lies within jet fuel and the a treatment for Huntington’s is at the bottom of the sea. If we can learn how to fight cancer from an unexpected source like the naked mole rat, then anything is possible.

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