Why elephants so rarely get cancer
The diversity of foot soldiers in their cellular defences seems to play a role
Elephants have always presented a paradox to biologists. They are much larger than humans and live for a similar length of time, yet they only rarely develop cancer. That is odd. Cancer, after all, is something of a numbers game: the more cells, the more replications. The more replications, the greater the likelihood of random dna damage and a cell going rogue, failing to be detected and ultimately starting the runaway process towards a tumour.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Protein shake-up”
From the July 16th 2022 edition
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