Chernobyl mutant wolves may have developed resistance to cancer

For more than 35 years, animals have roamed the Chernobyl wasteland.

Exposed to carcinogenic radiation, some of them transformed into wolves.

A team of researchers has discovered a mutation that makes it possible to resist cancer.

38 years later, will nuclear disaster hold the key to curing cancer? If Princeton University researchers aren’t there yet, they claim to have discovered a particularly interesting mutation in Chernobyl’s wandering wolves. According to a press release published on January 5, some samples of these packs have a genetic mutation that makes them more likely to survive cancer.

A mutation was identified

Although the area around the former nuclear power plant was abandoned by humans after the 1986 nuclear disaster, dogs have thrived in the exclusion zone, so that wolf numbers are thought to be seven times greater than in neighboring regions. Wild animals, but closely monitored by scientists. Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist in Shane Campbell-Statten’s lab at Princeton University, is one of them. In 2014, she traveled with her team to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The objective is to better understand how these animals survive radiation exposure by taking blood samples. His team also placed special GPS collars on the animals to obtain measurements “Where they are and how much radiation they are exposed to in real time”

As explained in a press release from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

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Ten years later, data shared by these callers will show that these animals are surviving despite exposure to radiation six times the limit set for a human worker. “Chernobyl wolves survive and thrive despite generations of exposure and accumulation of radioactive particles in their bodies.” And for good reason, according to the researcher, whose work has not been published, but who presented his results at a conference on January 10, the immune systems of these animals may have become similar to those of patients suffering from cancer and undergoing radiotherapy. Thanks to blood samples taken in 2014, a team of biologists was able to investigate “Genomic Signatures”

This is specific to wolves, which as we know them have evolved into stray dogs. Work that allows Cara Love to be recognized “Specific regions of the wolf genome that appear to be resistant to increased cancer risk”.. This would mean that while mutations increase the risk of cancer in humans, some of them may actually have a protective effect.

Crucial information when we know that man’s best friend fights cancer like a human. Which makes its wild cousin the perfect companion for explorers. However, the war in Ukraine continues to hinder this scientific progress. As Cara Love expressed her priority during a conference held on January 10 “Is that people and employees on site are as safe as possible.”

It is an impossible condition to guarantee when we know that these places have become minefields after the departure of the Russian army.