Comparative Genomics to Predict Cancer Protecting Alleles

It is inspiring that while we still barley understand how to identify, attack and destroy cancer cells, there are many species already independently “solved” this. For example, some species live underground with high oxidative stress, which is known to enhance cancer. Instead, they evolved to be almost 100% cancer resistant. In addition, the big animals like whales and elephants should have very high cancer rates compared to the smaller animals due to their larger number of cells. However, their cancer rates are much lower. This means that they developed cancer resistance mechanisms. For years, the focus has been to investigate the genetics of cancer susceptibility, as a response to the suffering that cancer causes. Meanwhile, the genetics of cancer resistance have remained largely uninvestigated. However, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. We need to understand exactly how organisms get immune for cancer and try to mimic their resistance mechanisms in human. In other words, we are learning from billions of years of experience of resistant species against cancerous stresses. We are utilizing comparative genomics approaches to detect the that led to the resistance mechanisms. Our comparison contains two groups of mammals; cancer resistant and cancer prone. We developed a score that select positions in proteins that showed significant discrepancy of amino acid between the resistant and the prone groups. We found many significant positions. To test these signatures, we are preparing CRISPR experiments on cells to investigate the effect of these signatures on its cancer resistivity.