The cancer that just won't die!

(breast cancer cell, source)

I was procrastinating the other day on wiki, jumping from one entry to the other until I came across something that really blew my mind!

Well, let's talk about cancer a bit first. We all pretty much know that it's essentially a bunch of cells going rogue, multiplying again and again, consuming resources and damaging everything until the host dies. Or something like that. And once the host dies, the cancer dies too.

Right?

Well...turns out there is a group of cancers that have ascended to a totally new level. They just refuse to die..Even when the host dies.. But how?

Simple. They just transmit to another host like regular pathogens do!

The best known example of such a cancer is "Canine transmissible venereal tumor":

A canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT), also known as a transmissible venereal tumor (TVT), canine transmissible venereal sarcoma (CTVS), sticker tumor and infectious sarcoma, is a histiocytic tumor of the external genitalia of the dog and other canines, and is transmitted from animal to animal during mating. It is one of only three known transmissible cancers in mammals; the others are devil facial tumor disease, a cancer which occurs in Tasmanian devils, and contagious reticulum cell sarcoma of the Syrian hamster. source

At this point CTVT has essentially evolved to be something like an STD but it's not a virus or a bacteria. But a 10000 year old tumor 🤯🤯🤯🤯

It is now essentially living as a unicellular, asexually reproducing (but sexually transmitted) pathogen. Sequence analysis of the genome suggests it diverged from canids over 6,000 years ago; possibly much earlier. Estimates from 2015 date its time of origin to about 11,000 years ago. source

As a wise man once said...Life, Uh, Finds a Way!