Happy Friday all. Revolution Medicines announced this week that the FDA accepted its daraxonrasib application for review, so the anticipated approval for the drug is moving along.
In other news, researchers at the University of Vermont discovered a new transmissible cancer in brown bullhead catfish living in Lake Memphremagog, which borders Quebec. So far, scientists only know of transmissible cancers in clams, Tasmanian devils, and dogs, so this marks a new discovery of what seems to be a relatively rare phenomenon. Julie Dragon, the senior investigator, told me that Fish and Wildlife Service officials first became alerted to the illness when anglers began reporting discoveries of strange inky black spots on catfish after Tropical Storm Irene caused flooding in the region.
When a pathologist confirmed it was melanoma, Dragon was asked to investigate to see if it was a virally driven cancer like HPV. To her surprise, she found that the tumors among different fish was more genetically alike to each other than to the host fish, a hallmark of transmissible cancer. Interestingly, a 1920s paper from Ohio State University also documented the a very similar (or possibly same) cancer and referenced writing from Henry David Thoreau who described fish that also seemed to have the same thing.
People who study veterinary cancers often make the argument that this kind of work can be useful to understanding human cancer as well. Dragon brought up a point about how transmissible cancers can somehow survive in a new host with a different and fully competent immune system. Cancers affecting bivalves have even jumped species. Understanding the mechanism behind that could be really useful, she said. Xenograft mouse models, for instance, have to be immunocompromised so the host doesn’t reject the grafted cells, but perhaps there’s an insight about transmissible cancers that could lead to xenograft models with fully competent immune systems. That would make it easier to study new immunotherapies, for instance.
“I think these transmissible cancers are an opportunity,” she said.
As for the other question, apparently brown bullhead catfish have a reputation for tasting awful, but Dragon said plenty of people in Vermont seem to enjoy eating them.
