Researchers are studying naked mole rats to find a treatment for cancer. Naked mole rats live to be over 30 years old, but unlike rats and mice, they do not develop cancerous tumors as they get older.
Researchers are studying naked mole rats to find a treatment for cancer.
Naked mole rats live to be over 30 years old, but unlike rats and mice, they do not develop cancerous tumors as they get older.
Their tissue has a lot of high molecular weight hyaluronan, which is a sugar capable of repairing damaged tissue.
A team of researchers is working on the study, including Doctor Vera Gorbunova from the University of Rochester in New York, who said: “Studying animals that are naturally cancer-resistant can be very rewarding and can lead to discovery of mechanisms that can benefit humans in terms of treatment and prevention of cancer.”
When researchers activated cancer causing genes in naked mole rat cells that had been transplanted into mice, they still didn’t develop tumors, but when they decreased the amount of hyaluronan, those cells finally grew tumors.
This data is evidence that the hyaluronan is responsible for the animal’s resistance to cancer.
But other researchers think that there might actually be several factors that make the naked mole rats resistant to developing cancer.
